MICROSOFT CAVES ON GAY RIGHTS

[athelind]

From The Stranger:
Pressured by Evangelical Minister, Microsoft Withdraws Support for Civil Rights Bill

Time to buy stock in Apple and Open-Source Repackagers like Novell, I think.
Maybe it's the circles in which I travel, but I know a lot more tech-savvy gay and gay-friendly people than I do tech-savvy Fundamentalists. Who's got the bigger boycott stick, Mr. Gates?

Comments

[cargoweasel.livejournal.com]

Microsoft knows what side their bread is buttered on. ditching the fags means more government contracts and playing nice with the feds means doing what the dominionists say. This is why corporations work with fascism so well. I love Apple products but they'll do the same thing when the time comes because they're still a corporation.

The Dominionists know their power is on the ascendance and corporations don't care about morality, only currying favor with those in power.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Apple's already fallen in with the Debbil, far as I'm concerned, with their BOHICO approach to iTunes, among other things.

Soon as I can afford a fresh drive and one of those gizmos that can change your boot drive with the push of a physical button, this thing's getting some flavor of Linux.

[cargoweasel.livejournal.com]

In the grand scheme of corporate evil, even as far as DRM goes, iTunes is not that bad. It's a compromise that allows them major label content. I worked at a company that was passionate about selling unprotected MP3s with a business model very similar to iTunes and they had a paltry fraction of the content. And they no longer exist.

It's not a reason to punish yourself with linux.

I am under no illusions about what will happen when apple or any other company faces a choice between existence and principle. Existence will win. Thus, iTunes has DRM, which was a small one, and Microsoft abandons gays, which is a larger one. Larger and smaller choices will come.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

My bitch with iTunes isn't DRM itself, per se. It's that Apple keeps "revising" things to take more and more utility away from the consumer -- RETROACTIVELY, on tunes they've already PURCHASED.

[araquan.livejournal.com]

So don't buy any music from iTunes Music Store. No DRM, no problem. I've been accused of blind zealous faith in Apple by a great many people- yourself included I might add- but I have never spent one cent at the iTMS and I don't expect I will anytime soon. I don't like DRM any more than you do. Even though Apple's system is about the most liberal on the market, it's still DRM, and Apple still has to ask "how high?" when the members of the RIAA say "jump!" That's the devil you have to dance with if you want to sell music today. The source of that evil is not Apple itself.

But hell, if even using the player for non-DRM'd MP3s (which all of Apple's music software and hardware will play quite happily) just use a different program.

I've heard my share of gripes about Apple over the years, but slagging them and everything they do over their music player ranks right up there with the Single-Button Mouse Complaint as far as I'm concerned.

[araquan.livejournal.com]

I hereby retroactively add "isn't palatable," after the parenthetical phrase in the second paragraph of my previous comment.

[soreth.livejournal.com]

A little bird told me there's something you can do about the DRM part, at least. If you're into that sort of thing.

[pathia.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to get my Father to sell his M$ stock now, but, like many other conservative families.

*cough* Cheney *cough*

Instead of actually rethinking their views. My family seems to just being turning a blind eye, and/or using science as an excuse to explain their one aberrant offspring.

[araquan.livejournal.com]

My circles also include a lot more gays and gay-friendly techies than conservative techies... Myself, I don't know any techies that I'd call fundamentalist.

The problem is that techies don't have the power. In corporate America, who makes the purchasing decisions? Management, not techies. Even in charge of technology, managers tend not to be of techie extraction, and the probability of them being ex-techies seems to decrease the higher up the chain of command one goes. Legions of techies are already pissed at Microsoft, after all, and are advocating alternatives... Little by little other platforms are gaining respect, but corporate rollouts still depend on a strong business case and management willing to allow the boat to be rocked. Microsoft being evil, by whatever measure (beyond high license fees) doesn't enter into the picture... So I don't know what effect this itself will have, even if an army of techies get incensed (as well they should).

[tprjones.livejournal.com]

This is why I'm looking forward to the Tech Revolt of 2012. It'll fix all this sort of mess.

[araquan.livejournal.com]

You've got nothing to lose but your EULA.