[SC.LUG] Bill Gates to be Knighted?

[David Holden]

On Monday 26 Jan 2004 8:53 pm, Rick [Kitty5] wrote:
> David Holden wrote:
> > To be honest I think this ranks along with people who say princess
> > diana did a lot for charity, maybe but it required very little effort
> > on her part.. what else was she going to do with her time, Similarly
> > what else is Gates going to do with his money..
>
> Thats not the point.
>
> > Personally I think its outrageous to give someone a honour when their
> > company is effectively "stealing" billions of pounds from the NHS
> > budget due to monopolistic practices.
>
> Well its MS boxen or Sun boxen, and you don't need to be a rocket scientist
> to pick the cheaper of those options! (especially if you mention Sun while
> your negotiating)
>
> Rick
>
> Kitty5 NewMedia http://Kitty5.com
>


Well ignoring the restriction to just sun or microsoft, given those two, at 
present given suns new licensing scheme sun is cheaper, unfortunately M$ have 
locked in the desktop and are making 80% margin on both windows and office.

Areas where M$ does not have a monopoly stranglehold - PDA/phone, gaming, 
Internet MSN - its losing lots of money.


With regard to the point if it wasn't microsoft it would be somebody else, 
this is true to a certain extent (any business aims to maximize its profits) 
the problem here is that M$ have achieved a hugely dominant position in the 
market and have gone on to abuse that position - they are a convicted 
monopolist.

One of the benefits of open source as I see it is that it could help prevent 
this happening again


 Dave.


-- 
Dr. David Holden. (Systems Developer)
Crystallography Journals Online: <http://journals.iucr.org>

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