On Tuesday 30 December 2003 06:55 pm, Ken Fuchs wrote: > Florin wrote: > >I don't trust any company to put their long term interests above the > >next couple of quarters "revenue" numbers... > > For almost all companies I would agree, but one of the few companies > that often puts their long term interests above their short term > interests is Microsoft. Of course with $40+ billion in cash they can > afford to invest in their own long term interests. > At this point Microsoft is concerned with protecting its cashflow. They've got $50+ billion in the bank at last report. That doesn't help the stock price if they are generating the revenues people are used to from them. > As far as Secure Computing and the Secure Internet is concerned: In my > opinion, the United States of America is probably the only country that > will legally mandate Secure Computing and the Secure Internet (at least > Microsoft's vision of these). Other countries have no interest in > supporting Microsoft. > Even in the US much of what I've read about "secure computing" has trouble. There's the potential for conflicts with various data privacy laws. One of the scenarios I read about (I apologize if this has been touched on, I missed the beginning of the thread) talks about receiving a file from a "blacklisted" copy of Office. Your copy of Office would refuse to open the file. The first time this happens in a legal, regulatory, or other "emergancy" situation you can bet there will be a lawsuit to undo the controls. > Sincerely, > > Ken Fuchs <kfuchs at winternet.com> -- Jack Ungerleider jack at jacku.com _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list