marketwatch.com — Ed Homan, an orthopedic surgeon representing a central Florida district in the state legislature, thought an amendment touting open-source document formats he tucked into a 38-page bill wouldn't draw much attention. As lawmakers like Homan have learned, Microsoft's hardly taking a passive position.
Apr 30, 2007 View in Crawl 4
szandorMay 1, 2007
"It's just as bad when done for a good cause as when it is done for a bad cause."Nice slogan, but it's bulls**t.There's no way you could convince me that cheating for a good cause *is as bad* as cheating for a bad one.I'd cheat my ass off if it would stop the Iraq war tomorrow.
fkr3May 1, 2007
Schestowitz why don't you focus your narrow little mind on *truly* evil corporation. Microsoft is ruthlessly competitive and as much as you dislike it, it's often not against the law.Some really evil corporations, in the true sense of the word as opposed to the "omg they were mean to their competitors" sense ...Coca Cola"To date, there have been a total of 179 major human rights violations of Coca-Cola’s workers, including nine murders. Family members of union activists have been abducted and tortured. Union members have been fired for attending union meetings. The company has pressured workers to resign their union membership and contractual rights, and fired workers who refused to do so.”Delphi"In October, Miller took his company into bankruptcy, with the explicit purpose of trashing the social contract between unionized auto workers in the United States and the auto industry. He proposed slashing worker wages from $27 an hour to a mere 10 bucks."DuPont“What’s the appropriate fine for a $25 billion company that for decades hid vital health information about a toxic chemical that now contaminates every man, woman and child in the United States?” asked EWG President Ken Cook. “What’s the proper dollar penalty for a pollutant that will never break down, and now finds its way into polar bears in the Arctic and human babies in their mothers’ wombs? We’re pretty sure it’s not $16 million, even if that is a record amount under a federal law that everyone acknowledges is extremely weak.”Ford"It turns out that over a period of years, Ford Motor Company dumped millions of gallons of paint sludge into a now-residential area of northern New Jersey."W.R. Grace"Despite their knowledge of the hazards of asbestos, the company and executives “distributed asbestos-contaminated vermiculite and permitted it to be distributed throughout the Libby community” by allowing workers to leave the mine site covered in asbestos dust, allowing residents to take waste vermiculite for use in their gardens and distributing vermiculite “tailings” to the Libby schools for use as foundations for running tracks and an outdoor ice skating rink."Sources: 2004 and 2005 Top Ten Worst Corporations<a class="user" href="http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2004/122004/mokhiber.html">http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2004/122004/mokhiber.html</a><a class="user" href="http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0425-21.htm">http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0425-21.htm</a>
escamilloMay 1, 2007
When you compete by resort to sneaking in government mandates to force use of certain tech ("tucking" it into a 38-page bill, hoping nobody notices it), then you've got to question your own tech's merits.
inquMay 1, 2007
Thanks for the repeat of the same story that made front page not too long ago. Running out of stories to try and demean Microsoft?
inquMay 1, 2007
I bet Schestowitz has gigs of text documents of these little quotes devoted to Microsoft. It's all he can do anymore other than post 9 year old pdf documents. For someone who hates Microsoft so much, he sure does spend a good amount of time of them.
masterofnoneMay 1, 2007
microsoft, digging our karmic grave one state at a time.
Closed AccountMay 1, 2007
Gee, from the comments by the Microsoft fan-boy club, you'd think that someone trying to make reasonably priced alternatives available to our various state governments was a bad thing. I guess that having a monopoly is easier than thinking.