JG> As for Keating. If he didn't suck up to Bill, who else was he
 JG> going to get to help Telecom fund Australias 'information
 JG> highway'?

  What "information highway?" It's all Gates' bullshit! Does he mean
the Internet - that has nothing to do with Gates and M$ anyway - or
his fucking Encarta that's not an encyclopaedia's arsehole? M$ has no
handle on information, and is never likely to. *Information* comes out
of people's minds - not a dickhead software company.

  It amuses me that the so-called highway already exists, developing
freely all by itself world-wide, and the poor pollies are running
around doing their best to stop it - screaming pornography and child
sex and Christ knows what! Freedom of information frightens them.
They actually believe that information is power. What a heap of crap
that is!

  *KNOWLEDGE* is power, not information, and there is very little
danger of pollies ever knowing anything, least of all computer
technology... so they suck up to the Dick Smith of America: the US
"Electronics Wizard": rich, dopey, Bill, who knows bugger-all but how
to make money and suck pollies.

 BL> TV from China, and the warranty is total! If you don't like it
 BL> in 12 months you get your money back or a new one. If we can do
 BL> that for Chinese TV sets, why not software?

 JG> Good question. I don't know the answer.

  Because Gates sucks up to no-brain leaders like Keating and makes
them feel warm and fuzzzy inside. Gates is a genius, and Keating is
nothing at all.

 JG> Write to your local member of Parliament about it. Seriously,
 JG> he might even be interested :-)

  I was talking to a rich genius lawyer the other day, *THE* man in
commercial law, and he was saying that he was the first to change over
to computers. I asked him if he had any trouble with software. "All
the time!" he laughed. ""Why don't you sue the
bastards?" I asked.
"It's all the same, isn't it?" he replied.

  Bloody hell! Here's a guy who sues companies for a living, and he's
quite happy to get screwed over buggy software.

 BL> We need a special warranty, with free bug-fix updates for all
 BL> as part of it, and a guaranteed lifetime of 2-3 years. It's
 BL> insane that you buy V1.0 and v2.0 comes out in 6 months.

 JG> That is one thing that I've noticed does annoy people. Being
 JG> out of date so quickly and the software company no longer
 JG> supporting your old version of their product.

  My oath! In *their* position I'd recommend the same thing. I'd like
to dump all warranties on TV sets, design them so they only last six
months, and keep no spare parts. We could increase our profits
tenfold! Of course, we'd have to fuck our customers...

  You can't blame businessmen for making maximum profits. It is the
responsibility of government to write laws that control them and give
everyone a fair go... as they do in TV sets and other consumer
products. Gates and his ilk have managed to place software above the
law, and they're milking it for all they're worth, sucking up to
fuckwits like Keating who don't know software from a hard-on.

Regards,
Bob
  
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12
@EOT:

---