Everyone's Favorite Pickle-Chugging Ass Clown Speaks

[LorKorub]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45888-2002Nov12.html

"There is no question that when the antitrust lawsuit started, most of our industry did not race to support us," Ballmer said. "We learned that we needed to take a different perspective on being a good industry leader."

.............

Absent from Ballmer's speech was any mention of the growing open-source software movement, which is viewed as the greatest challenge to Microsoft's software supremacy.

Company officials have at various times referred to the open-source approach -- which allows code to be revised by users and discourages turning it into for-profit applications -- as a cancer and an un-American assault on intellectual property.

Although Microsoft has backed away from harsh rhetoric, it is aggressively lobbying government agencies in the United States and around the world to reject Linux and other open-source applications.

Asked after the speech about open-source, Ballmer said only that Microsoft would continue to "make the case for commercially available software."

................

He no longer has anything to say?  I think that this anti-trust case, as soft as it was on them, might have bruised them a little deeper than we think.  Aside from his usual bullshit, he had no finger to point.

[Calum]

the simple case is that if somebody writes something, then that person should be able to choose what copyright licence to use when releasing their work.

Personally i was thinking of publishing a piece of literature of mine online and i will probably use the LGPL or something like that for it. I should be able to do this and nobody should be able to stop me. there is nothing wrong with that in any moral code.

Whichever way you look at it, any anti-open source position is essentially an anti-choice, anti-control and anti-freedom position.

[ November 14, 2002: Message edited by: [calum@localhost]$ ]

[voidmain]

Did you notice in the picture of him speaking that he is standing in front of the giant word "CROOK"?

[flap]

quote:Company officials have at various times referred to the open-source approach -- which... discourages turning it into for-profit applications

Lies, lies, lies...

And I wish the monkey would keep its objections to Free Software consistent, at least. One the one hand it doesn't seem to like the idea of other people "stealing" software developers' "intellectual property"; on the other it objects to the complete opposite; that proprietary developers *aren't* allowed to rape other people's code.

[Doctor V]

But the judge believed what M$ said, and decided to put her complete trust in them.  She thought, 'M$ has always broken the law before, and been caught lying even in court, but I trust them to be good from now on'.  Anyone who 1.) catches someone in a lie and then 2.) believes the next thing they say because...well I guess there is no because, should be banned from making important decisions that affect many many people.

[TheQuirk]

Maybe it's just me, but the way he was holding his arms looked like he was starting a gang war. I decided to follow my instincts, and made a picture:

[jtpenrod]

quote:Ballmer said the company wants to work more closely with government in areas such as computer security, spam, identity theft and other hacking crimes. "We are stepping up our cooperation with law enforcement at all levels."

"We are stepping up our cooperation with law enforcement at all levels".       :eek:    So now it's out in the open. For the past couple of years I've been saying that the whole purpose behind the lawsuit against M$ had a hidden agenda: the threat of ruining the entire company on one hand, or going very easy on it. The price? Equipping Windows with backdoors to more easily allow the Gov't to spy on "We the People". After all, if 90% of the desktops run Windows, isn't that where you'd want your spyware?      

And let's not forget, despite whatever flaws Bill Gates has had over the years, politicking, or rolling over for the gov't, wasn't one of them. Let's not forget that the NSA has already tried to infiltrate Windows systems: the notorious Win 2K service pack with the NSA keys. We learned about that when the service pack went out with all the debug symbols accidentally-on-purpose left in it. At least someone within Microsoft was willing to warn us about this compromise to our (well, not mine - I run Linux here        ) systems. Reading between the lines of Baller's speech, it seems we're being warned once again. Use Windows, and "Big Brother" (or at least Ashcroft) will be watching your every move.
______________________________________
Live Free or Die: Linux

Their fundamental design flaws are completely concealed by their superficial design flaws.

[ November 15, 2002: Message edited by: jtpenrod ]

[SpeeDFreaK]

jtpenrod, have you head of some of the stuff tacked onto the homeland (in)security bill going through congress? (I don't know if you live in the US or not, and yes, it was on /. the other day) sounds like windows would tie into that real well. Check this out for a little bit more on it.If you google for "information awareness office", get a look at the freaky logo for the new department.

Big Brother WILL be watching.

[hm_murdock]

Dude... the Master B thing kills me.

Ballmer is a cheesy, halfwitted, crumbly-brained lip-flapping, shitlicking penis pumper.

[rtgwbmsr]

Quirk, post that on your website!

[Doogee]

my god ballmer is goofy lookin'

[Nobber]

quote:Originally posted by Jimmy James: Mac Commando:
Ballmer is a cheesy, halfwitted, crumbly-brained lip-flapping, shitlicking penis pumper.

All that, and he chugs pickles?

<shiver>

[Pissed_Macman]

I hear there was another Ballmerfoot siting in the woods somewhere. Scared some campers really bad.