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Originally Posted by scaeagles
Well, today, the congressional hearings start on these evil money grubbing pirating profiteering oil companies.
Interestingly, does anyone know what Microsoft made in the 3rd quarter of 2005? $3.1 billion in profit. This is just about the profit posted by Conoco Phillips. There is one major difference, however.
Who sets the prices of Microsoft products? Well, that would be Microsoft. No one else. There is no software commodity market. Microsoft says "here's the product, here's the price, take it or leave it.".
I would offer that with the tremendous amount of computer technology that is integrated throughout every ounce of our existance, from the internet to operating systems to software to whatever, that it is just as important to our economy and daily life of citizens as is oil.
However, the commodities market sets the price for oil. Speculation. Fears of natural disaster. Etc.
I wonder how long it will be until Bill Gates is called before Senate committees to justify the gouging going on. I wonder how long it will be until Microsoft is subjected to a "windfall profits tax".
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Considering Microsoft was found guilty(for lack of better word, and proper research at time of posting) of anti-trust violations, not far fetched that they would be brought before the powers that be again. Microsoft was able to snake out from under the restrictions placed on it without any further inquiry......
I am personally a *nix fan myself, and run a FreeBSD server to hold important files.... been running since the last power failure in my area.... my windows machine on the other hand has had to be upgraded, rebooted, or crashed many times since then......
Price differences:
FreeBSD.............Free
Windows............well over $50(don't remember exact price anymore)
Sure FreeBSD is not prefered as a workstation machine to replace Windows, but there are other flavors of *nix that are geared to windows replacement, and their cost is "free" too(only cost is a bit of a learning curve which with every passing day becomes more and more negligable)