"Microsoft Skull-fucks Iceland’s Economy, Contracts Syphilis"

[unixronin]

I honestly wasn't sure whether to tag this under technology or humor.  I ended up settling for both.  This is Icelandic blogger Smári McCarthy talking about the implosion of Microsoft's business (and Microsoft Certified partners) in Iceland.  There's some great quotables, like this one:

The only important difference is that OpenOffice.org doesn’t support all of Microsoft Office’s weird macros, and it doesn’t come with a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Access, the only database software on the planet that’s better at printing mail-merged stickers than it is at storing data.

Or this one:

[...]  And the MCP’s, struggling to stay topside, they go to extreme lengths to stay afloat.  One Icelandic company, already embroiled in a massive antitrust scandal by way of their owners, just laid off their entire staff and offered to rehire them at deducted pay.  The networking department, they said no.  They weren’t going to take a pay cut.

So the management types, with Microsoft breathing down their neck on one side, and the Icelandic Competition Agency (samkeppnisráð) on the other, they think, oh shit.  Oh shit.  Our data hosting services department, these geeks, they’re the guys who are hauling in the real moolah.  They’re selling the services, not just reselling dud licenses to software that could be free, and that at a loss.  So let’s do anything we can to rehire them, let’s give them a raise.

And the hosting guys, true to their egelitarian [sic] hacker nature, they said no.

“We appreciate that you’re being skull-fucked, but we aren’t going to screw over our colleagues, our friends, by accepting your raise when they’re taking a cut.  No sir, can’t do it.”

The following afternoon they were escorted out of the building by the police.

Go read.  It's interesting and enlightening.

Comments

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

What, they couldn't just ask them to leave?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm sure they COULD have. But if you're the kind of weasels they clearly are, you don't trust your employees even when they still work for you.