In July, CodeWeavers – whose software lets Mac OS X and Linux users run Windows programs without having to pay Microsoft for a Windows OS license – launched the Great American Lame Duck Presidential Challenge to encourage President Bush to make the most of his remaining days in office by accomplishing a major economic or political goal by January 20, 2009.
The goals focused on President Bush making specific positive accomplishments in areas such as the economy, home values, the stock market, the war on terror and other key issues. Specifically, one goal called for President Bush to help down bring average gasoline prices in the Twin Cities to $2.79 a gallon.
On Monday, Oct. 14, gas prices in Minneapolis and St. Paul did just that.
“That morning, I was filling my tank at Big Steve’s Gas Palace in St. Paul,” said Jeremy White, president and CEO of CodeWeavers, in the press release. “I had just finished my morning corn dog and 64-ounce Dr. Pepper when I looked at the pump and noticed gas was at $2.79. I screamed ‘Woohoo,’ then I yelled ‘Oh, crap!’ as I realized every American can now have my software for free. Kind of upsets my fourth quarter revenue projections…”
White admits this is not how he foresaw the Challenge unfolding.
“I launched the campaign to inspire President Bush to make the most of his final days in office. Who knew that our Challenge would have this kind of impact on the country?” White also said. “On the other hand, who knew that the economy would implode, causing oil demand to drop into the abyss and gas prices to plummet as well. Clearly, investigating Bear Stearns, AIG and those guys is misplaced – CodeWeavers is responsible for this mess. So it’s free software for all!”
On Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2008, any one visiting the CodeWeavers’ Web site will be given a deal code that will entitle them to one free copy of CodeWeavers’ award-winning CrossOver software. Each copy comes complete with support.
MacDailyNews Note: CrossOver Mac is normally priced at US$39.95 for the standard version and $69.95 for the pro version. More info on the differences between the two versions here. We assume it’s the standard version that we’ll all be getting for free tomorrow.
White states in the press release, “I realize that by giving away all my software, I’ve caused horrific damage to my company’s bottom line. In fact, our vice president of sales wretched Starbucks all over his shirt when he learned the news. But, I figure, the way the economy is going, in a few months everyone might be out on the streets, wearing potato sacks and standing in line for squirrel soup, so why not?”
White also noted that if other Great American Lame Duck Presidential Challenge goals are met, CodeWeavers will once again provide free software. Goals include:
• Return the stock market to it’s 2008 high
• Reduce the average price of a gallon of milk to $3.50
• Create at least one net job in the U.S. this calendar year
• Return the median home price to its Jan. 1, 2008 level
• Bring Osama Bin-Laden to justice
CodeWeavers’ Web site is here.
MacDailyNews Take: Thanks, President Bush!
[Attribution: TUAW. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Mark” for the heads up.]
Wow, it took him nearly 8 years but something good finally came from the result of Dumbya being in office!
I’m lucky, there’s not one single Windows software that I need or want.
Actually, President Bush is only indirectly responsible for the falling price of gasoline. By destroying the economy (through out of control spending on handouts and the war) he’s caused demand to plunge. But I wouldn’t necessarily view that as a good thing.
If Codeweaver’s stuff is free of snoop and nannyware go for it…
No way this guy really believes Bush sets the gas prices.
Jimbo Von Ahole,
Bush will go down as one of the best presidents ever. If this present bunch of commies gets elected kiss the US good bye. Obama is on the record all over the place as wanting to spread the wealth around, close down the military, befriend Iran. It’s sick. The guy isn’t a US citizen. He was doing cocaine as recently as 2003. He’s friends with terrorists, racists, criminals, etc. Obama couldn’t even get hired as a secret service agent with his past record. Obama and libs are not for freedom of speech. These people are the worst of the worst. Biden knows we’re going to get attacked if Obama gets elected. This whole thing is unbelievable.
Cool of him to keep his word like that….
CrossOver has a 4-star rating on VersionTracker.com. I already have VMware Fusion, but maybe I could use this on my Mom’s Mac or something….
Alex – and he drinks the blood of virgins!
Which is why I’m voting for him – I need more virgin blood!!
Can we get back to Apple and off of politics?
(Of course, MDN knows these stories mentioning politics are political catnip–they must get A LOT of hits from them.)
Hey MDN. Maybe you should incorporate some code in your pages so stories like this one only appear in American browsers. IP range checking or something. Cos it sounded great until I read it was free for every “American” 🙁
I’d love to test my sites in IE without having to boot up Windoze.
Scratch that. I’d love to not have to test my sites in IE full stop.
@jimbo & Darkness
The economy was destroyed by the Democratically introduced Community Restoration Act of 1995 combined with the regulation changes in 1999 that tied mergers that could save banks to the CRA scores. This gave the usually very conservative (fiscally not politically) bankers an incentive to make bad loans. I would like to blame the Democrat Clinton administration full credit for the debacle, but the Republican Senate passed the measure 90-0 thus putting their fingerprints all over it.
If you want to blame Bush for the war, more power to you, but it was the Bush administration that first warned of this problem, and republicans in 2003 that tried to address the issues while democrats like Barney Frank who insisted that the semi-government banks were in great shape – even praising the now Obama adviser that was falsifying the books to give the impression that the banks were healthy in-order to give himself huge bonuses and Congressional campaigns kick-backs.
If you want to hate Bush for over-spending, that is fair because he did not veto bad budgets that congress gave him – in part because he is not a fiscal conservative. Blame congress, they are directly responsible for this crisis, and they are the constitution source for ALL spending bills.
It is right to blame a president for foreign policy, as that is where His power lies, but the economy where congress has power. Sorry for adding to the political rant, I hate doing so on mac sites, but I am scared to death that we are about to put a socialist in power to give congress a blank check to make things worse.
We do not need a repeat of the Carter Administration. I like single digit inflation and unemployment. Put the blame where it belongs, if you are mad about the war, fire a president (wait he is out either way), so vote on the economy and vote out the sitting congress (other than a few fiscally responsible ones).
Bobby – that’s total nonsense. Although there were systemic problems at Fannie & Freddie, this claim that they are responsible for the total Wall Street crisis is nonsense. There are at most about $7trillion in subprime mortgage, but over $45 trillion in Collateralized Debt Obligations and Credit Default Swaps, these bizarre inventions of investment banks where were only ALLOWED to be created as a result of the deregulation pushed by Phil Gramm which removed the separation between banking, investment, and insurance. And Phil Gramm is McCain’s #1 economic advisor, and might well be appointed Secretary of the Treasury under McCain! Once again the right ignores the elephant in the room, that deregulation and anything-goes Wall Street is the central culprit, while trying to pin the problem on those shiftless minorities who made all those banks herd them into getting risky loans! Shameful!
MDN: I think you should thank Jeremy White and Codeweavers for this. Bush had nothing directly to do with it.
I love how they take personal responsibility for the financial crisis. Finally, somebody admits to it! haha
The press release does say “all” our software. Maybe there’s a chance for the Pro version.
@Alex
Thanks for the nonsense, Alex. Everything you wrote is wrong. I’m going to vote for Obama… and we’re going to win!
You knee-jerk, jingoist, war-monger republicans will wake up to a new world on November 5th.
Bwaaa ha ha haaaaaaaa!
O’Cain, McBama, let’s not argue the future.
It was the worldwide falling economy that reduced the demand for petroleum that caused gasoline prices to fall, not George Jr.
If I could only find a USB 5 1/4 floppy drive to install wordperfect.
Whoohoo white Impreza in the Lame Duck Challenge video! One company I love as much as Apple, Subaru.
That’s all I really have to say about this though since you’re all doing a bang up job covering the fact that it is Bush’s fault, but not because he did well.
Humph! I thought I was doing a favor by giving MDN a heads up on this one but I’m sure they would’ve found out eventually but not expecting the political ramifications here in the comments section.
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If I’m not mistaken I heard it will be a Pro license but I guess we’ll know more at midnight tonight! I almost bought this anyways to run what little M$ software there is out there without adding a partition and bloat monster XP or V-buzz!
One Twin Cities suburb had a gas station selling regular unleaded for $2.24 a gallon this morning.
It’s redistributing the wealth that I would have spent on CrossOver back into my own pocket!
Does this critter actually work? Or is it some sort of evil “W” spyware?
Left Wing. Right Wing. Doesn’t matter? They are both attached to the same bird. Until the people fire about 530 members of Congress, plan on getting more of the same whether it’s a Democrat or a Republic in charge. Foolish, foolish people the american people.
Mr. White. President Bush did nothing to bring fuel prices down. You owe us nothing. Keep your hard earned profits.
What BS.
Nobody bought this software ’cause it sucks.
I tried every version, which is why Fusion is one my and our Macs.
Don’t just blame “W” it’s every asshole on Capitol Hill that’s to blame – them and the CEOs of these f*cking jokes for banks, etc.
@ Rheinhard
The CRA goes much deeper than The two government banks. All banks had to up their CRA scores if they wanted to cross state lines – which they all wanted to do. So they offered loans to people that could not afford them. Most banks were affected, but “Freddie and Fanny” had more than half of the bad notes, where other banks had much smaller percentages. The banking crisis came about when these loans started defaulting and the banks became cash strapped. The failure of the two big banks created the banking crisis when banks were afraid to lend money to other banks to cover the short term losses.
Wall street reacted by turning negative but did not tank until the bail out was approved. A bailout that simply uses tax funds to cover bad debt without addressing the underlying reason that the bad debt existed.
The CRA created an incentive to give loans to people that could not afford them. The only reason this could work was because you could always get the investment back because home costs have almost always gone up. So banks that would not normally provide loans to people who could not repay would take the bad debt and the asset so they could improve their CRA scores allowing them to merge with other banks to improve their overall strength.
Traditionally people do not default on home loans because for most the home represents their largest real asset. So people will make house payments when they can’t afford the utilities. However the sellers market that the loose credit created overinflated home prices. This was a large portion of the “bubble.” However for the last decade home inflation outpaced inflation and most investment options so more speculators moved into the market, driving the bubble even further. As more of the market became inflated due to speculation combined with a slowdown in the economy, let to a housing glut. Most speculators got out early, deflating the values of the homes. Home owners continued to make payments until their value dropped below a point where they could not foresee gaining equity over the next 5-10 years. This is a point when people will let the house go, because a bankruptcy is more desirable than fighting to hold a poor asset.
This hurt all the banks that made loans to people that could not afford them, but especially for “Freddy and Fanny” as they had a much higher rate of default. They were truly the cause of the broader market issue as they hold about half of all the mortgages in America – because they were able to offer government backed paper to other institutions, their failure threatened pull down the other institutions that discovered not only was the market going to be flooded with bad paper, but perhaps some of their purchases from the government banks may not have been properly backed. So the credit market seized up as banks struggled to get their house in order and could not risk making loans to other financial institutions that were likely to fail.
Prior to the fall of the the sub-prime market, the overall economic outlook was pretty good – amazingly good given a quadrupling of fuel prices.
The problem here is one of mismanagement that makes Enron look like a well run company. If the two banks had been totally private company’s we would be having congressional investigations, to see who profited from this scam, but the answer is a large number of congressmen – mostly democrat, but many republicans too. The fact that it happened during an election year, simply created the most expensive cover-up ever attempted. And we are about to reward the people that did it!