11.18.08
Microsoft Insults the People of China, Oman, the Newly-elected President
“No less than Bill Gates himself said in a recent Fortune article that Microsoft competes better against Linux in China when there’s piracy than when there isn’t.
“So, Microsoft actively looks the other way as people pirate its software. It builds its market share that way, and lets people get used to the idea of having Windows at a certain price.”
–ECT
“They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”
–Bill Gates (about the Chinese people)
THIS is a subject that was covered here many times before [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. Previous posts about the issue provide suitable background to the arrogance of Microsoft, which labels “pirates” the very same people who make its software ubiquitous and therefore ’successful’.
Microsoft really needs money now. Will there be more Black Screens of Death in China as a result of financial stress?
About an hour ago, over in the IRC channel, one of our readers said: “Incidentally, real piracy is becoming a major international issue around Somalia - it’s about time the music and film industries stopped trying to characterise people who make an illicit copy of a CD as akin in some way to murderous kidnappers making ransom demands for £millions.”
Moving on to the news, Steve Ballmer says that China is not important. Adding insult to injury:
THE global head of Microsoft has dismissed China’s importance to its business due to the Government’s failure to curb rampant software piracy.
Is this the same “piracy” that Mr. Gates spoke about a year ago?
“It’s easier for our software to compete with Linux when there’s piracy than when there’s not.”
–Bill Gates
So, in essence, Microsoft is attempting to dramatise the situation and disguise deliberate attempts to make its software widespread through so-called ‘piracy’. As vain as it may seem, Microsoft even bemoans loss of revenue and warns that the local economy is in danger because ‘poor’ Microsoft is fighting GNU/Linux suffering from ‘pirates’. They try to earn sympathy with these crocodile tears.
It’s not just China though. Oh, no. It’s the same in the majority of the countries around the world, but China is an extreme case because of the size of its population (it’s also the most Net-connected society). Microsoft has just insulted people of Oman in very much the same way.
Piracy remains a concern in Oman, Microsoft says
[...]
“The government has even closed down shops for selling pirated software here in Mucsat,” he said.
“The losses to the industry and governments are in the billions compared to the small savings that people make by taking up pirated software.”
These are lies and spin. Microsoft used to rely on these shops (and continues to rely on them to an extent). Illegal sharing of Microsoft’s non-Free software has been beneficial to the company, but that’s not the story it wishes to tell the world. Instead, Microsoft paints itself a victim.
Microsoft Prefers McCain, Not Osama
Microsoft has many reasons to favour McCain, for reasons that were mentioned and showed here before [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17]. The following is surely accidental, but why is this still not fully resolved several months after being reported?
Dear Microsoft: Barack Obama is not Osama or a barrack
While I write this, the spell-check function in Microsoft Word will indignantly underline President-elect Barack Obama’s name until I concede to referring to him as a building for lodging soldiers.
Well, I’m not giving in that easily.
Both the words “Barack” and “Obama” appear above squiggly red lines in Word documents. The question is: … really?
Microsoft's arrogance could cost it dearly when people catch up and are finally told the truth. █
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.
pcolon said,
November 18, 2008 at 11:48 am
IIRC, a couple of years ago South Korea was trying to negotiate better pricing on Microsoft products. The people negotiating said if they couldn’t get better deals were going to have to use FOSS instead. Not clear as to who said it whether it was Gates or Balmer, but the gist of the message was who needs their business, let them use FOSS, they’re small potatoes anyway.
I think they regretted that move since South Korea has been negotiating with Hansoft and proceeded to substitute windows & office. Now Microsoft’s playing the “dumping” strategy in that area without much success. I think China is a tad bigger than South Korea.
Needs Sunlight said,
November 18, 2008 at 1:02 pm
It gets better. In 2006 on his first to the US as president of China, Hu didn’t even rate a welcome at the White House until he first was called on the carpet and made to answer to minor politicians like Gates:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/04/19/77549_HNprezhuandgates_1.html
So from the get-go, Hu has been kowtowing to Gates.
Roy Schestowitz said,
November 18, 2008 at 1:06 pm
I ought to add that I corrected this post, changing the text from “Jordan” to “Oman”. I confused Amman with Oman.