On Mon, 22 Nov 2004, Chris Cox, N0UK wrote: > On Sat, 20 Nov 2004, Mark Mitchell wrote: > > > On Fri November 19 2004 8:10 pm, elhaddi at constantdata.com wrote: > >> Mr. Steve Ballmer goes to Singapore ... > >> http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/biztech/11/19/tech.microsoft.linux3.reut/index > >> .html > >> > > > > I really like this part; > > > > Balmer: "We think our software is far more secure than open-source software. > > It is more secure because we stand behind it, we fixed it, because we built > > it. Nobody ever knows who built open-source software," he added. > > Actually, that is a true statement - very strange indeed coming from > microslop. > > We know who WROTE the code, but it could have been YOU, or ME, or the next > door neighbour who BUILT (as in `make config; make dep; make) the code! > This is the sort of crazy things that monopolies say when they're going down the tubes. I liked the IBM sales rep who cautioned a customer that "you want to be carefull and not get locked into an open solution." What's supporting Microsoft is primarily the belief that there isn't an alternative. Once the perception changes, and people beleive that there is an alternative, they'll switch and never go back. Note that there are a lot of things that feed into this belief- Microsoft's iron grip on OEM preinstalls, those managers who have bet their reputation on Microsoft, etc. One interesting aspect that also feeds into this is, I think, a desire to not have a choice- if there is no choice, there is no *wrong* choice. But what it always boils down to is "we must use Microsoft, we have no choice." Brian _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota Help beta test TCLUG's potential new home: http://plone.mn-linux.org Got pictures for TCLUG? Beta test http://plone.mn-linux.org/gallery tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list