In an interview with the St Petersburg Times, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer stressed most emphatically (is he ever not emphatic?) that his company is not an “Evil Empire.” He says, “I don’t think it’s right and I think it causes people to make decisions which are not even in their best interest . . . A, we’re not evil. B, we’re not an empire.” A Siliconvalley.com article has the entire interview with Microsoft’s energetic CEO.
30 years ago, “Tricky” Dick Nixon’s, “I am not a crook.”
The facts are that Microsoft has:
1) Abused it monopoly position greatly in the past.
2) Still abuses its monopoly position.
3) Expanded and expans their monopoly in new markets. Like for instance going against companies which made their platform prosper. (i.e. word processors, webbrowsers, games, email and other internet services, multimedia players, input devices, etc) Their monopoly in the operating system market space allows them to unfairly bundle products and advertisements of other products with their operating system, resulting in unfair competition.
Believe me they deserve a good punishment. Their monopoly should be broken. Best would be to compensate all the rival companies which suffered from microsoft`s illegal practises (Not only Microsoft is guilty but the US goverment as well, both whould pay billions of dollars for compensation). Break it up into a gaming company, an internet service company, a hardware company, a multimedia client company, an office software company and finally a operating system company.
This all is my opinion however, and I don`t think we live in an utopian world. So microsoft will most likely get away with it quite easily…
Well if Microsoft isn’t the Evil Empire… who is?! And do you consider Bill Gates to be the Emperor and Steve Ballmer to be Darth Vader, or the other way around?!
And who would make up the Rebel Alliance? Well you know Linux is in there somewhere!!
“I did not have a http://www.goeast.ch/jgmuender/lacher/Clintong.mpg“>sexual with that woman Monica…”
Uhh oh this is about something else. Well said Mr. Ballmer, you make us Americans proud!
LMAO!
BeOS has dibs on being Rogue Squadron!
These are not the marketing droids you are looking for.
Redmond Spaceport: You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villany.
I’m Bill of the borg, coding is futile – we will rip BSD off !
That was so humiliating, even to watch. I seriously doubt this man’s mental abilities. And now “Microsoft is not the evil empire”? No, of course it isn’t.
Boy, MS really has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. What a piece of ….
Motto: We’re no worse than any other quasi-government law enforcement agency run amok. Btw, wasn’t Gary Kildall the guy that invented the microcomputer, CP/M, BIOS, GEM? Oh, that’s right, Kildall didn’t pass the IBM “tyrant we can control” test.
Maybe the worse is to come.
Maybe this guy knows what’s coming next, specificaly in the EULA area…
Maybe we’re going to soon reconsider what “evil” spells…
So, sort of, maybe he’s right : Microsoft is not yet as evil as they would like…
“Where do you want to go today ?”
No question. Anyone is Evil who uses legal FUD like “By opening this package you agree to the binding license within this package, and no you cannot read it before opening the package.”
Forget Star Wars. Bill is more like the Borg. “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.”