Comments

• Roy Schestowitz

  2010-02-05 16:40:31

  However, as many point out, Bill appears willing to lose money indefinitely in any given field just to make sure that no one else can make money there either.

  
  
  "The chief of malaria for the World Health Organization has complained that the growing dominance of malaria research by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation risks stifling a diversity of views among scientists and wiping out the world health agency’s policy-making function.
  
  "In a memorandum, the malaria chief, Dr. Arata Kochi, complained to his boss, Dr. Margaret Chan, the director general of the W.H.O., that the foundation’s money, while crucial, could have “far-reaching, largely unintended consequences.”
  
  "Many of the world’s leading malaria scientists are now “locked up in a ‘cartel’ with their own research funding being linked to those of others within the group,” Dr. Kochi wrote. Because “each has a vested interest to safeguard the work of the others,” he wrote, getting independent reviews of research proposals “is becoming increasingly difficult.”
  
  "Also, he argued, the foundation’s determination to have its favored research used to guide the health organization’s recommendations “could have implicitly dangerous consequences on the policy-making process in world health.”"

  --New York Times, 2008

• Needs Sunlight

  2010-02-05 16:33:29

  Microsoft always has lost money outside of its three cash cows: Office File Format Monopoly and Original Equipment Manufacturer Monopoly and Trading Its Own Stock.
  
  However, as many point out, Bill appears willing to lose money indefinitely in any given field just to make sure that no one else can make money there either. Larry Ellison knows that, we'll see what happens with the Sun acquisition. Sparc hardware, solaris on the high end and mid-range, linux on the low end and mid-range, and a few gratuitous GPLv3 releases ought to boost Oracle and cause at the same time apoplexy in Bill's gang.
  
  I have to wonder now if that Trading Their Own Stock has finally caught up with them, it could have been that last of the three keeping the Microsoft pyramid scheme afloat all these years. Now, without even the ability to even pretend to have money, worn out flunkies are being put out to pasture. It'd be kinder for them, and especially for the rest of us, if Microsoft would sell them to the knackers yard instead. As a bonus, it'd bring in a little, desperately needed cash.

• your_friend

  2010-02-06 07:04:10

  Oracle is already advertising Sun hardware on the front page of the printed Wall Street Journal. It targets IBM and sensibly ignores Microsoft because no one with a clue takes Microsoft seriously where a Sun box would be useful.

• Roy Schestowitz

  2010-02-06 09:26:01

  This is interesting because IBM relies on Oracle for Lotus Symphony.