My Board

[quote]Microsoft is preparing an all-out war against Linux using patents, Lawrence Lessig claimed at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco.

Lessig is a law professor at Stanford University, a board member for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and considered a visionary in the field of copyright legislation.[/quote]
[url=\"http://www.vnunet.com/news/1162352\"][u]Full story[/u][/url]

This could be interesting, guess we\'ll find out what happens <_<

You would think that they would just learn to co-operate. I read an article the other day about software patents and how ridiculous the whole thing is getting with alot of frivolous filings and ensuing lawsuits (pun intended)

Microsoft needs to stop it with all this legal crap and begin to improve [s]IE, XP...[/s] EVERYTHING.

The problem with microsoft is that there really is no other company which can stop them. If that articles sums are correct, $8.1billion/yr gives them enough room to do whatever they want to shut small companies down.

Which makes them just like Disney, or the Olympics Committee...big bullies. Disney\'s been trodding on small businesses for years--right down to the crafter trying to earn a little extra money at craft fairs (no not me) and now the Olympics Committee is doing the \"trademark\" thing--they\'re trying to make a 35 year old restaurant close/change its name/change the sign symbol in Vancouver. It\'s named The Olympic and uses a similar depiction to the Olympic torch (but not exact). If it bothered them that much why not try to close him down 35 years ago? Simple...because the focus wasn\'t on Vancouver like it is now with the 2010 winter Olympics coming here so they didn\'t care.

Granted, businesses have a right to protect their interests but when they start bullying everyone just because they can and because they have the money to do it doesn\'t mean they are always in the right.

Thats the thing with big businesses, they just feel so damn sure they\'re right, they\'re willing to go at extraordinary lengths to make sure they win. Maybe the get a thrill out of waking up and deciding who they\'ll mess around today.

ahaha, prepare to lose MicroShaft

I think you\'re right, Vulture. The bigger they are, the more they like to toss their legal weight around and they more often than not pick on the small businesses who are trying to go by the book and just make some money. Granted there are cases which should go to trial, but more and more the \"lawsuit mentality\" seems to be taking over the mindset of modern society. You don\'t like someone? Sue them. You don\'t like how something is done? Sue the ones responsible. You do something stupid but can\'t take responsibility for your own actions? Sue whomever you think should have been babysitting you. It\'s not like there aren\'t a thousand other things in the world today that are more important.

And all the while the only ones who are not loosing either money or respect are the lawyers. I would imagine a Microsoft lawyer will be making a quiet killing from all of this.

Long live the American justice system <_<

It is my belief, that the large corporations have forgotten that they too were once on the bottom rung of the ladder, and how they climbed (perhaps most anyway) to the top was to treat each and every customer with respect and pay attention to their wants and needs, instead of treating them like a number, that number ringing up at the cashier.
Enter the "baby boomer" generation. This mass number of the populace is changing the way of the marketplace, they have reached the age of retirement having worked all their lives. Their desire now is to enjoy life, spend their hard earned savings, and what they want most is to be treated with respect and be given that special treatment by the store owners. Small companies that pay attention to these details will survive and flourish. The large corporations have indeed noticed these spending habits, and hopefully have had a wake up call.

One can surely hope your right, Carson. However, Microsoft at least has its finances covered for many years to come.

I don\'t know how many of you have seen the new microsnot TV ads, but they\'re trying to change their image and show how important they are to everyone\'s everyday life and how user friendly they are. They still fail to see that it\'s their \"we own it all\" attitude that has led to people\'s opinions of the company. Instead of travelling around the world to different conferences telling everyone in the industry how great microsnot is and how advanced they are, perhaps they should make a tour of the world and find out from user groups what people really want from them and then actually work towards that.

That reminds me of something which happened over here a while back. Highland schools wanted microsoft to make then a gaelic spellchecker. Microsoft never replied, nor made them one. The school ended up making one themselves and selling it. Microsoft can\'t really say it helps every body, everyday...it simply doesn\'t.

No it doesn\'t, but that is the image they want to portray--perhaps they really are starting to feel the squeeze of Linux and open source software...hence the other article in this section about Microsoft trying to cozy up to the open source community.

[b][i][color=\"gray\"][font=\"tahoma\"]I was going to say i'm surprised they havn't attempted to sue the Mozilla Foundation for something yet, then i realised that Internet Explorer is really a free utility, so from Microsofts standpoint, they are losing nothing from it. Whereas their fight with Linux, they are losing popularity with Windows, which can cost hundreds. So obviously they are going to do everything they can to take the opposition off the market, as opposed to doing what has been suggested so far, and that is making their OS more desireable than Linux. [/b][/i][/color][/font]