Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> Who Gets to Upgrade Schools?
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | I cannot help but wonder, though, if the Gates Foundation is--deliberately
> | or otherwise--about to raise a whole new generation of students and
> | workers dependent on Microsoft products.
Microsoft has been trying to get kids as young as possible. Remember,
Microsoft produces Teletubbies, including Tinky Winky. During the
television show for 1-3 year-olds, numerous commercials for Microsoft
are shown, supposedly to the mothers. This implants almost the most
organic memories, almost next to memories of mommy's leg (how kids find
their mothers in crowds).
> | Ideally, projects like Indiana high schools' deployment of Novell and
> | SUSE software will help schools realize that they do have a choice in
> | what tools to use.
Microsoft is doing everything they can to retain as much control as
possible for as long as possible, but even they can see their control
eroding. Today, Linux can be easily run concurrently with Windows, and
can be loaded and run like an application.
The good news for Microsoft is that Linux also supports Windows
emulation and VM clients, which means that OEMs will keep buying
Windows licenses and preinstalling Windows. But, in August, the OEM
licenses expired and it appears that Microsoft has already had to make
some huge concessions, allowing OEMs to install coresident Linux and
Windows, and to install Linux as the host OS on 64 bit machines with
Windows XP running in 32 bit mode (VMWare and Bochs both support this).
There is no legitimate technical reason why the dual-core and 64 bit
laptop and desktop machines can't have Linux and Windows installed to
run concurrently. Furthermore, if Microsoft tries too hard to prevent
this, monitors in at least two antitrust cases are likely to make
things very unpleasant for Microsoft.
Even worse, Microsoft may even NEED Linux to remain on new Itanium,
dual-core, and AMD-64 laptops. Although Microsoft does offer a 64 bit
version of XP, there are no 64 bit applications to run on it, and are
not likely to be any in the near future. This means that Windows will
need to depend on Linux to be able to remain relevant to that high-end
market.
> | Maybe we'll see programs like that some day... on the next Oprah
> `----
> http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2006-08-04-023-26-OP-MS-PB
>
> That closing sentence reminded me of something. Some months ago Microsoft
> planned to pay Oprah to put Windows Vista among her 'favourite items'. One
> of these "Oprah recommends..." thingies.
I have a feeling that if they tried, they would find themselves on the
wrong side of that list. Oprah tends to have some pretty high ethics
and such an open attempt at bribery might end up making Microsoft the
target of one of Oprah's Expose's.
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