flatfish+++ wrote:
> On Sat, 02 Sep 2006 13:21:49 -0700, Rex Ballard wrote:
>
>
> > My guess is that he has been talking from more than just an "opinion".
> > I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't have some audio recordings,
> > e-mails, and possibly even written correspondence and chat transcripts
> > to back up a statement like this.
>
> Whirrrrrrrrrrrr...
>
> That's the sound of the black helios....
You mean the chinook reconnasance helecopters?
I remember seeing the "black helecoptors" flying low, far away from the
major highways. Someone in a car would not hear the rotors, and I
could barely hear them on my bicycle. I was about 30 miles away from
Denver, I think it was in the late 1960s. But they were hardly
"alien". Today, they are in common use in Iraq and Afghanistan to
provide strategic information.
> > It's no secret that Novell has been very aggressively courting the
> > OEMs, offering them terms and conditions, along with profitability,
> > that were almost too good to be true.
>
> Really?
>
> And where is your proof of this?
HP announced that one of their top-of-the-line proliant laptops, along
with one of their desktop machines, would be offered with SUSE Linux.
They were introducing the AMD-64 processor based machines. For a few
weeks, it looked like HP was about to "break out" and start
mass-marketing machines preinstalled with Linux.
Within a few weeks however, things very suddenly changed, and HP
stopped promoting their machines with preinastalled Linux, even before
there was a chance to do a "test market". Why did they suddenly stop?
Was there a sudden management change? If so, what triggered that? It
certainly merits at least a simple investigation, by federal agents,
and some sworn depositions collected in confidence. Just to confirm
whether or not Microsoft is honoring the "No retailation against OEMs
who offer Linux" provision of the settlement.
Lennovo as well, announced that they were going to offer the T60p,
their top-of-the-line T series thinkpad, with Linux. Within 48 hours,
they withdrew the offer. Again, it merits investigation, even if it
turns out to be nothing.
All negotiations with Microsoft, even Job Interviews, are protected by
very strict and comprehensive nondisclosure agreements. The details of
those negotiations can only be disclosed to law enforcment
investigators, and even then only while they are under oath.
It's unlikely that the Bush administration will investigate. They
don't even seem terribly interested in enforcing any of the provisions.
Even the issue of the protocol disclosures seems to be a way of
diverting attention from other violations of the agreement, and
unwillingness to investigate these "unusual occurrances".
Nearly all of the OEMs now offer their top-end machines as "Linux
Ready". Machines with Intel Duo, or AMD-64 processors are almost
always available in "Linux Ready" configurations, yet there is no
option to purchase machines with Linux preinstalled.
This may be because these OEMs have decided that it's "safer" (in terms
of retaliation from Microsoft) to offer the machines as "Linux Ready"
and let the user do the installation, than to suffer retaliation. Only
the OEMs know exactly what the pressure was. They seem to have told
Novell something, but I'm not sure what.
Generally, corporate officers of publicly held corporations don't make
public statements alluding to actions of a competitor that imply direct
violation of a well publicized court order, without being prepared to
back it up. This may have even been an attempt to "bait" the DOJ into
investigating.
> > It's no secret that many of
> > these OEMs even accepted these offers initially. It's also no secret
> > that almost immediately, even before the market could be tested, the
> > OEMs recoiled from the practice as if they had been poked by a Cattle
> > Prod a few hundred times.
>
> And where is your proof of this statement as well???????
As mentioned before, HP, Lennovo, and Dell all offered Linux, and then,
very suddenly, they didn't. No explanations, no public disclosures, no
"clean up". Not your typical business practice. It's a red flag. It
merits investigation.
> > I can't help but wonder if these OEMs are also recording their
> > interactions with Microsoft, how they are defying court orders and
> > settlements by covertly retailiating or threatening OEMs with
> > consequences so terrible that even when faced with the potential for
> > enormous profit, the possibility of some spectre, possibly as extreme
> > as the revocation of ALL Microsoft licenses to ALL PC lines.
>
> Oh God, get a shovel.
> It's getting deep in here!!!
I'm speculating here.
The details are undisclosed.
When somebody makes a legally binding offer, and then withdraws it,
it merits investigating.
It's either fraud or collusion on the part of the OEM, or Microsoft up
to it's old tricks.
They certainly have a track record, based on the transcript from the
Antitrust cases.
Perhaps someone will investigate.
I'm not holding my breath.
Sure makes John Ashcroft look like an idiot.
Alberto Gonzales is looking like a toothless dog as well.
> > I really
> > can't imagine anything less that that which would drive these OEMs to
> > not even consider "test marketing" at least one line of computers in
> > the retail market.
>
> Imagine is the one thing you do VERY WELL Rex!!
Yes. But I wanted to make it very clear that I was not attempting to
state anything as "facts", only something that merits investigation.
> > When Sam Palmisano ordered the PC division to stop preinstalling OS/2
> > on PCs in 1995, he specifically stated that the retailers had told him
> > that they would not sell the OS/2 machines.
>
> Wrong again Rex.
I was looking directly at the DOJ transcript when I wrote that.
Looking at the memo being sent by Sam to the head of the Software
division.
> The spiltting up of the various IBM business units into toally autonomous
> groups, each accountable for their own bottom lines.
IBM has run that way for a long time, especially since Lou Gerstner.
Even as far back as John Akers, the business units ran "agnostic",
largely to reduce the risk of being accused of using monopoly power in
one market, such as mainframes, to control another market.
IBM was investigated back in the 1970s, and started "cleaning up their
act" back then.
> The PC Division (Remember Boca?) told IBM corporate that THEY COULD NOT
> SELL PCS WITH OS/2 on them and that THEY had to meet their bottom line.
> Henceforth, they were selling PC's with Windows,because that is what
> people wanted to buy and which turned out to be an embarrassment to IBM.
Read the memo from Sam.
> Man do you twist things......
>
> >
> > I wonder what kind of pressure was applied to the retailers? Could it
> > be because Microsoft was applying pressure to the retailers, possibly
> > revoking there status as authorized Microsoft dealers, possibly even
> > threatening to have rival OEMs terminate agreements with retailers who
> > offered the OS/2 machines?
>
> Pressure?
Pressure, you know, offering someone two choices, each with very
unpleasant consequences, and no alternatives that don't have adverse
consequences. Then limiting the time available to make the critical
decision.
> It was market demand.
> OS/2 despite being superior technically, was a marketing disaster.
Actually, OS/2 wasn't really great until Warp 4.0. There was a race
condition in the hard drive management software related to caching the
hard drive. The machine would crash, giving a 'TRAP 0D" or "TRAP 0E"
error, and the system had to be rebuilt. Warp 3.0 offered a "spare
tire" mode, which would help a user recover from a corrupted desktop
(when you got the TRAP errors, the desktop was almost always
corrupted).
Warp 4.0 fixed the race condition, and maintained a stable record of
desktop changes. This made it easier to recover even if the user just
"pulled the plug" accidentally.
> Kind of like Linux..
Linux has far exceeded anyones expectations (except perhaps mine), and
continues to grow at extraordinary rates. Millions of machines are
sold with Windows, but are upgraded to Linux by the end users or VARs.
This upgrade doesn't eliminate windows, just adds Linux to Windows. In
some cases, Linux is the client and Windows is the host, in other
cases, Linux is the host, and Windows is the guest, which gives all of
the advantages of Linux performance, security, stability, and
flexability, with Windows compatibility.
> The public chose Windows over OS/2 much like they choose Windows over
> Linux, which is even a worse case because Linux is fee.
Court records contradict your statement. It is very clear from court
records, now sealed, that Microsoft very directly manipulated the
market, forcing competitors out of the market through the use if
illegal acts and illegal use of monopoly power. The cases have been
settled, the records have been sealed, and the claims have been
dropped, but this does not change the facts that Microsoft executives
themselves openly admittted to committing illegal acts, including
fraud, extortion, blackmail, sabotage, and obstruction of justice, as
ruled by federal court judges. They hid behind license agreements,
justified their actions as "corporate self defense", and demanded
immunity as a precondition of any settlement, but the Judges had
already ruled that the actions were illegal, and that the evidince
would be admissible if the case went to trial.
> > Microsoft insisted that a Microsoft lawyer be present for all
> > questioning, interrogations, and depositions, even in the DOJ vs
> > Microsoft antitrust case.
>
> And what would you do if you were arrested
> for DUI while dressed like a girl?
I stopped drinking in 1980, probably before you were born.
> "I want a lawyer" would be your only statement
> to the police if you were smart.
Yes. But if the prosecutor were investigating me, and had not yet
gotten an indigtment, I would not have the right to have my attorney
present as every witness was being interrogated, and then being allowed
to threaten those witnesses with dire consequences to their families if
they didn't develop a case of amnesia during the questioning.
> > It was only after Judge Jackson ruled that
> > this was obstruction of justice, that Microsoft softened it's position,
> > allowing OEMs, Retailers, Corporate customers, and other Microsoft
> > Licensees to make statements to federal investigators without the
> > presence of a Microsoft lawyer. The DOJ was flooded with leads, and
> > people saying "talk to me". Many even offered sworn depositions, and
> > during the public input, many licensees provided information indicating
> > that the settlement was sufficient to protect them.
> >
> > After the trial, the records were sealed, and Microsoft retaliated
> > against many of those who had provided information, as well as the
> > companies who testified.
>
> Let's see some proof of this one as well......
Nope. If you can't see a pattern, then you are just not willing to see
it.
IBM had to warn it's employees not to install Windows XP SP/2 because
it would have prevented them from doing their jobs.
Netscape was swallowed whole by AOL, then development was dropped.
AOL released the source code as Mozilla, because they were not allowed
to make enhancements to Netscape, only bug fixes.
Corel has had a radical change in corporate officers since the trial.
Caldera is now SCO and filing suit against "Linux", going after the
deepest pockets supporting Linux in a groundless case.
Most of the politicians involved with the Antitrust case are now
completely out of power, many of them publicly discraced, many other
defeated in primaries by party opponents who seemed to have infinite
funding for the primaries and then no funding for the election.
The Judge in the case has been discredited as biased, even though he
made his public statements AFTER hearing all of the evidence, being
insulted by Microsoft repeatedly during the preliminary phases of the
remedy hearings, and AFTER turning his final decision over to his law
clerks.
When a United States Federal Court Judge, presiding over a major case
against a corporation, calls it's officers "A bunch of criminals", that
is an opinion worth considering.
I'm sure that he actually wanted to put that phrase into the final
rulings of law, but doing so would have prevented the filing of
criminal charges.
>
> Whirrrrrrr....
> There are those black helios again.........
Gee, usually, when the black helios show up (now painted to match other
landscapes), the big Apache Gunships are not far behind. And if you
see one at night, the Apaches are probably the last thing you will ever
see.
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