No offense taken. I don't categorize myself an extreme evangelical anyway. I was actually just trying to be funny by showing up as the token Christian and saying "you're going to hell". Hopefully it was taken as the joke that it was.
Yeah, and it did make me smile a bit
. Just wanted to make sure to clarify the situation, since religion is often a touchy subject with some and my initial remark was a bit off the cuff. Living in the town where New Life Church and Focus on the Family are based helped to give me a bad taste. I actually attended service a few times back when New Life was just a small gathering in a strip mall, a far cry from where they are now.
What I don't understand is why companies like Microsoft don't get caught by the same accounting rules. How can they give away IE, free version of VS.NET etc
Also, how do Apple get to give away Safari and iTunes on the Windows, why are they different to giving away XCode ?
It all depends on how it's on the books. I've never looked into how Microsoft classifies things on their financials, but Apple has been pretty weird in some cases. I think they may see themselves as a bigger target, so they really want to make sure everything is clean, to the point of probably going overboard at times. And I'm not certain about Safari and iTunes on Windows, Digging into the financial reports can quickly become mind numbing.
I started looking deeper into the SOX mess after John Dvorak kept mentioning it on a podcast. While he's sometimes full of hot air, his dislike of SOX and the impact on tech seems to be well founded. It has kept a few companies from starting the IPO process, due to the overhead needed just to make sure all the financials are in order. For smaller companies, it can easily add a noticeable percentage to their general operating costs.