Should we not KILLfile this MS guy?

[Jan Panteltje]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/03/26/seach.microsoft.ap/index.html

Steve Balmer says (among other things):

At the conference Thursday, Microsoft also unveiled a study on the
effectiveness of online advertising. The company is using the study as the
basis for an argument that companies spending around 1 percent on online
advertising should consider increasing that percentage to 4 percent or 5
percent because people are spending more time online.

Ballmer said Microsoft spends about 12 percent of its media budget on online
advertising, and that he orders his staff to "saturate" that market first
and foremost.

"I want to make sure [a user] can't get through ... an online experience
without hitting a Microsoft ad," he said.

end quote
So now my PC has to be littered with MS adds!
600 million fine was not enough it seems.

Let's raise it to 6 billion.
JP

 

[The little lost angel]

Ballmer said Microsoft spends about 12 percent of its media budget on online
advertising, and that he orders his staff to "saturate" that market first
and foremost.

"I want to make sure [a user] can't get through ... an online experience
without hitting a Microsoft ad," he said.

Does this mean we will start seeing M$ paid Ad trolls in NG too?
pPpP

--
L.Angel: I'm looking for web design work.
If you need basic to med complexity webpages at affordable rates, email me
Standard HTML, SHTML, MySQL + PHP or ASP, Javascript.
If you really want, FrontPage & DreamWeaver too.
But keep in mind you pay extra bandwidth for their bloated code

 

[Robert Myers]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/03/26/seach.microsoft.ap/index.html

Steve Balmer says (among other things):

At the conference Thursday, Microsoft also unveiled a study on the
effectiveness of online advertising. The company is using the study as the
basis for an argument that companies spending around 1 percent on online
advertising should consider increasing that percentage to 4 percent or 5
percent because people are spending more time online.

Ballmer said Microsoft spends about 12 percent of its media budget on online
advertising, and that he orders his staff to "saturate" that market first
and foremost.

"I want to make sure [a user] can't get through ... an online experience
without hitting a Microsoft ad," he said.

end quote
So now my PC has to be littered with MS adds!
600 million fine was not enough it seems.

Let's raise it to 6 billion.

Very proud to be an American, but I'm not proud of Microsoft and I'm
not proud of the way our legal system dealt with Microsoft's
monopolistic behavior. Proud to be from Massachusetts, the only
government entity not to sell out its citizens. Maybe the EU can do
better.

With any luck, Gates & Co. will wind up wishing the settlement in US
courts had looked fair enough that the rest of the world, the EU in
particular, would have seen fit to let the American legal system take
the lead.

As it is, I think Microsoft has overplayed its hand badly. They may
have won a battle, and they may win one or two more, but they are
going to lose the war.

RM

 

[Jan Panteltje]

Ballmer said Microsoft spends about 12 percent of its media budget on online
advertising, and that he orders his staff to "saturate" that market first
and foremost.

"I want to make sure [a user] can't get through ... an online experience
without hitting a Microsoft ad," he said.

Does this mean we will start seeing M$ paid Ad trolls in NG too?
pPpP

Well, Ballmer is not a fool.
He can do this ECONOMICALLY.
The next MS windows will, every time you boot, display a screen, holding
a legal statement you have to press ACCEPT to be able to use the PC.
In it will be the usual stuff, but also a little line, near the end, in small
print that reads something like:
'And I hereby declare MS is now the legal owner of my *software*.'
It is *software* on the first boot (when you read it).
A small random word generator, linked to a table, changes this word on every
boot, so next is:
house
cat
pen
car ...etc..
The form is long, in the smallest font size, proportional font, and the scroll
bars react too fast to really with the mouse locate any single sentence.
The cursor keys however are soooo slow, using these to scroll would take ages.
So a user simply presses 'ACCEPT'
At the end of the year MS wil own you, all you have, and you will find you
are working for them at 1$ a month.
And, after pressing ACCEPT, you are shown a 1 minute MS commercial.
A similar commercial plays every time you select an URL.

A joke?
Did you ever try to install Kazaa?
I tried it yesterday.
Downloaded some file, but now every 30 seconds the adds came popping up.
I traced it to windows.000/system/P2P.../something.exe.
removed that,
I do not mind file sharing the stuff I downloaded, but cannot work with
popping up adds....
But still, anytime I started that windows, there was this mysterious http
connection to 12.129.205.220
Look it up, it is a placeholder.
Doing a
host 12.129.205.220 in Linux gives host unknown, going to Internick the
same, now try a traceroute 12.129.205.220 !
So, from here to the US, to unknown, are we being spied on by the FBI?

Maybe I am getting paranoia, I removed the Kazaa crap.
Back in Linux now!
It does not hurt to type netstat in a MSDOS window it seems.
So, with Longhorn & CO you will be assimilated.

Legal stuff:
BTW the song I downloaded I bought on vinyl, but no longer a record player,
so now I have it in mp3, tuff luck guys, sue me for getting something I
bought.

Sunday dreams....

 

[The little lost angel]

A joke?
Did you ever try to install Kazaa?

I did... sorta. K-Lite doesn't have the ads and spyware. Diet-K has
some kind of TSR that dynamically blocks and disables Kazaa spyware.
KCEasy's a GUI frontend that uses GiFT and some other network
protocols so you can do several P2P at once. But the GiFT backend
seems to crash often.

Take your pick

--
L.Angel: I'm looking for web design work.
If you need basic to med complexity webpages at affordable rates, email me
Standard HTML, SHTML, MySQL + PHP or ASP, Javascript.
If you really want, FrontPage & DreamWeaver too.
But keep in mind you pay extra bandwidth for their bloated code

 

[nobody]

Try Kazaa Lite, it has all the popup bull$h!t removed. Of all the
flavors of it, I'd recommend K++. BTW, it is _not_ the version
authorized by Sharman Networks, but it works on their P2P network just
fine. Yet be careful to disable all the crap you don't need,
especially chat. Even though I didn't even use it (just left the
setting at default), someone managed to plant a trojan onto my system
presumably using the chat port, and it took quite some effort to
locate and remove it.

....snip...(some stuff deleted)

 

[Tony Hill]

Ballmer said Microsoft spends about 12 percent of its media budget on online
advertising, and that he orders his staff to "saturate" that market first
and foremost.

"I want to make sure [a user] can't get through ... an online experience
without hitting a Microsoft ad," he said.

Does this mean we will start seeing M$ paid Ad trolls in NG too?
pPpP

Well, Ballmer is not a fool.
He can do this ECONOMICALLY.
The next MS windows will, every time you boot, display a screen, holding
a legal statement you have to press ACCEPT to be able to use the PC.
In it will be the usual stuff, but also a little line, near the end, in small
print that reads something like:
'And I hereby declare MS is now the legal owner of my *software*.'
It is *software* on the first boot (when you read it).
A small random word generator, linked to a table, changes this word on every
boot, so next is:
house
cat
pen
car ...etc..
The form is long, in the smallest font size, proportional font, and the scroll
bars react too fast to really with the mouse locate any single sentence.
The cursor keys however are soooo slow, using these to scroll would take ages.
So a user simply presses 'ACCEPT'
At the end of the year MS wil own you, all you have, and you will find you
are working for them at 1$ a month.
And, after pressing ACCEPT, you are shown a 1 minute MS commercial.
A similar commercial plays every time you select an URL.

A joke?

Yes, you are joking.

Did you ever try to install Kazaa?

No, it's pretty widely known that Kazaa is filled with ad-ware and
spy-ware. There are even commercials on TV here that point this out
(they are adds for PureTracks, a legal on-line music store, making
more than a few jokes about getting viruses, worms, porn and generally
annoying adds from "those other guys", showing a VERY Kazaa-like
screen).

I tried it yesterday.
Downloaded some file, but now every 30 seconds the adds came popping up.
I traced it to windows.000/system/P2P.../something.exe.
removed that,
I do not mind file sharing the stuff I downloaded, but cannot work with
popping up adds....
But still, anytime I started that windows, there was this mysterious http
connection to 12.129.205.220
Look it up, it is a placeholder.
Doing a
host 12.129.205.220 in Linux gives host unknown, going to Internick the
same, now try a traceroute 12.129.205.220 !
So, from here to the US, to unknown, are we being spied on by the FBI?

Do yourself a favor, go to:

www.lavasoft.nu

And download Ad-Aware. Ad-aware is free. Ad-aware is good. Ad-aware
is your friend!

 

[Tony Hill]

Very proud to be an American, but I'm not proud of Microsoft and I'm
not proud of the way our legal system dealt with Microsoft's
monopolistic behavior. Proud to be from Massachusetts, the only
government entity not to sell out its citizens. Maybe the EU can do
better.

With any luck, Gates & Co. will wind up wishing the settlement in US
courts had looked fair enough that the rest of the world, the EU in
particular, would have seen fit to let the American legal system take
the lead.

Guess you missed the news over the past week. The EU brought out
their final verdict, a $600 million fine. Lots of money for sure,
though hardly a drop in the bucket for MS, and it's HIGHLY unlikely
that this will lead to any long-term changes.

 

[Jan Panteltje]

Do yourself a favor, go to:

www.lavasoft.nu

And download Ad-Aware. Ad-aware is free. Ad-aware is good. Ad-aware
is your friend!

OK, I downloaded it, when I reboot in MS win and see more unknown connections
I will give this a try.
JP

 

[Jan Panteltje]

I did... sorta. K-Lite doesn't have the ads and spyware. Diet-K has
some kind of TSR that dynamically blocks and disables Kazaa spyware.
KCEasy's a GUI frontend that uses GiFT and some other network
protocols so you can do several P2P at once. But the GiFT backend
seems to crash often.

Take your pick

OK, just downloaded K-Lite.
Will give it a try later perhaps, when in MS win.
JP

 

[Robert Myers]

Guess you missed the news over the past week. The EU brought out
their final verdict, a $600 million fine. Lots of money for sure,
though hardly a drop in the bucket for MS, and it's HIGHLY unlikely
that this will lead to any long-term changes.

I thought there was more to it than that; viz, that Microsoft would be
required to release versions of Windows stripped of some features;
e.g., Media Player.

The money, I'm sure, means little to M$, even if they do pay it. The
immediate consequences of releasing a version of Windows stripped of
something or other would be nil, but the long-term consequences would
be enormous.

M$ has always claimed it can't pull it's "features" out of Windows
without compromising the entire OS. I don't doubt that they have
designed the OS to be that way to the greatest extent possible, but if
the EU ruling stands, they will just have to figure out a way, now
won't they?

Even one "feature" successfully challenged and put to the mat would
force M$ to rethink and probably to change its long-term strategy.

The latest I read, unfortunately, is that it could take years to make
M$ do _anything_. My hope is that, if nothing else, a protracted
legal battle in the EU will continue to earn it enemies there,
especially if it becomes established in the public mind that SCO is
really a Microsoft-funded second front.

Over the long haul, the European slap on the wrist may be the one that
counts, and Microsoft would have to buy alot of influence to change
the outcome of an EU legal decision.

The Asian market is gone. The South American market is going. Europe
is going to continue to buy M$ products while Gates and Ballmer
stonewall its legal system? Only Americans would do that.

RM

 

[Stacey]

Robert Myers wrote:

Over the long haul, the European slap on the wrist may be the one that
counts, and Microsoft would have to buy alot of influence to change
the outcome of an EU legal decision.

Which is what they will do. Or at least attempt to do. Why "fix" the problem
when you can buy people to vote your way.

 

[Tony Hill]

I thought there was more to it than that; viz, that Microsoft would be
required to release versions of Windows stripped of some features;
e.g., Media Player.

I think the final decision is still pending on that, but it doesn't
seem likely.

The money, I'm sure, means little to M$, even if they do pay it. The
immediate consequences of releasing a version of Windows stripped of
something or other would be nil, but the long-term consequences would
be enormous.

Sort of like how they were forced to strip the web browser out...
until they weren't.

M$ has always claimed it can't pull it's "features" out of Windows
without compromising the entire OS. I don't doubt that they have
designed the OS to be that way to the greatest extent possible, but if
the EU ruling stands, they will just have to figure out a way, now
won't they?

Media Player actually isn't all that tightly integrated into Windows,
certainly not anywhere near as tightly integrated as Internet Explorer
is.

Even one "feature" successfully challenged and put to the mat would
force M$ to rethink and probably to change its long-term strategy.

I doubt it. What we really need here is for MS to be split into two
(or more) companies. Browser and operating systems in one company,
applications (including Media Player, but especially Office, Exchange,
etc.) in another company. Probably should have a third company for
their network business as well.

Until that happens, I really doubt that anything much will happen,
just business as usual. The US anti-trust screwed up on two fronts.
The first problem was that they tried to split the browser and the
operating system, despite the fact that the browser was quite
obviously an integral part of the operating system (even the founder
of Netscape said that it was a dumb idea to split them). The second
major problem was simply that the government was bought out.

The latest I read, unfortunately, is that it could take years to make
M$ do _anything_. My hope is that, if nothing else, a protracted
legal battle in the EU will continue to earn it enemies there,
especially if it becomes established in the public mind that SCO is
really a Microsoft-funded second front.

Over the long haul, the European slap on the wrist may be the one that
counts, and Microsoft would have to buy alot of influence to change
the outcome of an EU legal decision.

The Asian market is gone.

Gone? Microsoft operating systems still run on something like 95%+ of
desktops is Asia. Of course, there are VERY high levels of illegal
copying of software, so I'm sure that MS isn't making quite as much
money over there, but they are certainly not gone by any stretch.

There have been noises made about some kind of Asian operating system,
possibly based on Linux, but it seems to be mostly noise with very
little action.

The South American market is going. Europe
is going to continue to buy M$ products while Gates and Ballmer
stonewall its legal system? Only Americans would do that.

I think you're giving the Europeans too much credit! They really
aren't all THAT different from Americans, despite what some (on either
side of the argument!) would like to believe.

 

[The little lost angel]

OK, I downloaded it, when I reboot in MS win and see more unknown connections
I will give this a try.

Get Spybot Search & Destroy as well. Both appear to have some blind
spots here and there and they catch each other out. Though they CAN
get a little overzealous at times, so try not to delete the files
unless it's clear cut trojan. Like some of my ad-supported stuff won't
work if I delete the ad .dll, firewall blocking the IP/app is better
for these.

--
L.Angel: I'm looking for web design work.
If you need basic to med complexity webpages at affordable rates, email me
Standard HTML, SHTML, MySQL + PHP or ASP, Javascript.
If you really want, FrontPage & DreamWeaver too.
But keep in mind you pay extra bandwidth for their bloated code

 

[Robert Myers]

I doubt it. What we really need here is for MS to be split into two
(or more) companies. Browser and operating systems in one company,
applications (including Media Player, but especially Office, Exchange,
etc.) in another company. Probably should have a third company for
their network business as well.

Such a thing will never happen, of course.

Until that happens, I really doubt that anything much will happen,
just business as usual.

Not so sure I agree with you on that one. There are too many people
who want a piece of the action and too many ways to get it. IBM is
using its own Linux on desktops internally right now, and IBM isn't
chopped liver. I think Oracle might have some ideas, too. Sun has
all kinds of neat ideas, of course, but I don't know how seriously to
take the ambitions of a company whose bonds are rated as junk. As for
the home market, it will be a triumph for Microsoft if there continues
to be a home market for Microsoft to dominate.

Gone? Microsoft operating systems still run on something like 95%+ of
desktops is Asia. Of course, there are VERY high levels of illegal
copying of software, so I'm sure that MS isn't making quite as much
money over there, but they are certainly not gone by any stretch.

Right. Asia has *two* free operating systems, and Microsoft is still
worried. I'm sure that China and Intel really like the deal they've
got going, but when it comes to closed source American software that
doesn't create jobs, what's in it for them, other than the likelihood
that it's riddled with backdoors, intentional and otherwise?

There have been noises made about some kind of Asian operating system,
possibly based on Linux, but it seems to be mostly noise with very
little action.

Don't know how to evaluate that. Maybe I put too much weight on how
I'd feel about relying on a company that does what it damn well
pleases headquartered in a country that does what it damn well
pleases.

I think you're giving the Europeans too much credit! They really
aren't all THAT different from Americans, despite what some (on either
side of the argument!) would like to believe.

Don't know how to evaluate that, either. The latest additions to the
EU put its total market size at over 400 million people, and Europe
doesn't seem to be awash in good feelings about the US. Certainly you
see decisive governmental actions favoring open source that just
wouldn't happen in the US, and I can't help imagining there is a bit
of European chavinism working against Bill's dreams of world
domination.

RM

 

[Walt]

Kind-of related to this, this past weekend, I watched a report on
Bush's re-election campaign.

Apparently, Bush has been testing out using Pop-Up ads. Initially
they were worried that people's hatred of Pop-Up ads would negatively
affect Bush. However, Bush's people are now claiming that after their
initial test, not one single person complained to them about the Pop-Ups.
So, now they are chalking up people's hatred of Pop-Up ads as being
simply "urban legion" or myth.

Based on this, the Bush's campaign plans to go full bore, and saturate
the internet with Bush re-election Pop-Up ads. The report mentioned
that the Bush campaign certainly has the funds to do it.

Gosh, I wonder if Bush will displace X10's dominance in this area?

 

[Robert Redelmeier]

The next MS windows will, every time you boot, display a
screen, holding a legal statement you have to press ACCEPT
to be able to use the PC. In it will be the usual stuff,
but also a little line, near the end, in small print that
reads something like: 'And I hereby declare MS is now the
legal owner of my *software*.'

Well, I don't much care because I run Linux & FreeBSD.

But AFAIK the legality of click-thru licencing is untested
in US Court, and is unlikely to stand. It was one of the
main features of the thankfully moribund UCITA legislation.
I do not know what legislation there is in the EU or elsewhere.

The fundamental flaw with shrink-wrap and click-thru licencing
is that the terms are unknown/unpresented at the time of
purchase. So not part of the purchase contract. Simple things
that could be done to establish contract (tear-off signature
cards) have been eschewed by the software mfrs/vendors.
They are obviously more interested in sales volume than in
establishing their licences.

-- Robert

 

[The little lost angel]

affect Bush. However, Bush's people are now claiming that after their
initial test, not one single person complained to them about the Pop-Ups.
So, now they are chalking up people's hatred of Pop-Up ads as being
simply "urban legion" or myth.

Hmm... did they mean nobody bothered to complained or nobody hated the
Pop-Ups? After all, if I had to write a complain about every pop-up
that exists (I say exist because my nice browser ignores most of
them), then I'd probably have no time left to do anything else.

--
L.Angel: I'm looking for web design work.
If you need basic to med complexity webpages at affordable rates, email me
Standard HTML, SHTML, MySQL + PHP or ASP, Javascript.
If you really want, FrontPage & DreamWeaver too.
But keep in mind you pay extra bandwidth for their bloated code

 

[GSV Three Minds in a Can]

Kind-of related to this, this past weekend, I watched a report on
Bush's re-election campaign.

Apparently, Bush has been testing out using Pop-Up ads. Initially
they were worried that people's hatred of Pop-Up ads would negatively
affect Bush. However, Bush's people are now claiming that after their
initial test, not one single person complained to them about the Pop-Ups.

Anyone with an IQ > hat-size probably has pop-ups (all types) blocked,
so didn't see them. Those that didn't manage that are probably not smart
enough to know how to complain.

 

[Stacey]

Hmm... did they mean nobody bothered to complained or nobody hated the
Pop-Ups? After all, if I had to write a complain about every pop-up
that exists (I say exist because my nice browser ignores most of
them), then I'd probably have no time left to do anything else.

Exactly. And I'm going to complain how? Via e-mail? So I can added to
their spam list?