Why??? Microsft charges more, provides less.

With my limited financial knowledge.... The driver is the financial market, Microsoft's past success is their folly. Last quarter: http://biz.yahoo.com/e/l/m/msft.html _______________________________________________________________________ Financial Condition Cash and short-term investments totaled $30.02 billion as of March 31, 2001. Cash flow from operations was $9.84 billion in the first nine months of fiscal 2001, an increase of $1.11 billion from the first nine months of the prior year, reflecting the growth in earned and unearned revenue. _______________________________________________________________________ The financial market _requires_ an increasing revenue with an increasing earned income stream (roughly every $100 of gross revenue results in $38 of reteined earnings - May 2001 Quarterly Report) http://www.edgar-online.com/brand/eol/financial/fs.pl?sym=MSFT&id=0&op=income So how can this be _increased_??? Squeeze the customer even more - charge more, provide less, make more money, while making the customer think they are getting more for their money. This is not a conspiracy theory, just simple monopolistic capitalism. (Check if your mutual fund owns this stock - likely that it does). The real scary thing is, that every software company wants to be just like Microsoft (the ones that do not, the financial market does not understand, and thus do not have a decent stock price). Tony On Mon, 4 Jun 2001, Purple Shirt wrote:

haha

so you are saying a person who bought 7.0 in January 01 doesn't have support in July 01 anymore? Damn this Linux development really is a race with time...=)

...

From: Ben Rosenberg To: SLE Subject: Re: [SLE] Office 97 Users Lose Free Support Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2001 09:47:32 -0700

Actually, I agree with this. It's old. 4 years old. If you notice SuSE's support supports the current version and one version back..so for example come June 15th..it will support 7.1 and 7.2 .. and at that time 7.0 will fall by the wayside. It's very hard to support software that has out lived it's lifecycle. Some may not agree with this..but then again..I don't care. ;)

Current + 1 version back is a pretty good policy. It would be nightmare to support things such as XFree86 3.3.3.1 and try to get a new video card to work..the list goes on.

I am also kinda sick to my stomach that I don't disagree with this policy.

* Curtis Rey (crrey@home.com) [010604 09:33]: ->That's right Steve and Bill - piss off everyone! ->READ ALL ABOUT IT: ->http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,51565,00.asp -> ->Cheers. Curtis :)

-- Ben Rosenberg mailto:ben@whack.org ----- "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Ben Franklin

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-- Tony Zafiropoulos CTiTEK, Inc. Supporting Linux one system at a time Ph: 314-726-5080 x101 Fax: 314-726-5085 Cel: 314-504-3974 tonyz@ctitek.com "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character give him power." -- Abraham Lincoln