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DoJ Rejects Microsoft Settlement
Quite a number of people have written over the last few days regarding the BBC news report that the Department of Justice has apparently rejected Microsoft's proposed settlement. Unless something is reached today, this means it will be up to Judge Jackson to decide what to do on the 28th.
Perhaps what the DOJ really wanted hard core monitoring and business practice changes and was just pushing for the breakup angle to make anything less seem like a consession... bind the company up in red tape, like with IBM, and you'll punish them severely. Of course, you don't want to hobble them permanently, just long enough to stimulate actual competition and innovation, then set em loose again. Maybe then they'll produce something of reasonable quality at a reasonable price... after all, they'll actually need to compete.
And for all you MS apologists out there who say that MS innovated and all that blather, perhaps they did... but at a far reduced level than the innovation that would be produced in a stimulating, competitive environment. That's exactly the problem with monopolies: When you are your only real competition, you tend to get fat and lazy, and the consumer suffers.
Shouldn't the objective behind punishing them for being a monopoly be not to hurt them just to be hurting them but to "make good" to those who were damaged whatever damages they suffered?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Let me see.
Playstation 2, in one country, in one day, sold as well as Windows 2000 did across the entire world in about 3 weeks (actually 22 days). And Playstation 2 did not have any OEM preload channels to claim as "sales".
Yes, Windows 2000 is selling well compared to the original NT 4.0 (which was hardly a hit before Service Pack 1), and compared to some unspecified "expectations". However suppose that your average machine turns over in 2 years. Then Microsoft's sales are consistent with replacement alone on about 33 million machines. Of course the installed base of NT is a lot larger than that, and NT tends to get replaced more often than once every 2 years.
Hmmm...doesn't seem like much "pent up demand" there!
No, if the Windows 2000 news doesn't improve at some point, Microsoft is in trouble.
Regards,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Like other 'natural' monopolies ('natural' in that they have successfully established Wintel as the defacto privatized standard of interworking components, and people will continue to want to buy into that standard for compatability, just like settling on a language or system of weights and measurements of conducting business) - I mean, how ELSE are prices going to be settled, just 'trust 'em'? Personally, I can't even SAY 'capitalism' w/o saying 'competition', so if the competition is over, what's the price regulating mechanism? Charge what the market will bear? Hardware just keeps getting better and cheaper, but Msft software seems to be getting better and more expensive. Shouldn't they have to get prices approved like the local power company monopoly does?
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
It seems to me that capitalism is predicated on a free market where prices are dictated by supply and demand, and that this mechanism of price control breaks down in the presence of a monoploy. Thus anti-trust legislation must a pivotal aspect of a capitalist economy. Anti-trust legislation would be redundant in a centralized socialist economy because prices would be determined centrally. Therefore the US use of anti-trust legislation suggest to me that the US is a capitalist, rather than a socialist economy.
I don't see how being offshore would help either. If the US, EU or Japan can't prosecute the company, they can impose punitive duties on its products. Since all three have at least examined anti-trust charges, I don't see any of them kicking up a major stink with the WTO.
Say for example that "serious" companies (serious defined as having a certain revenue level) were allowed to access the source. That'd still lockout startups and open source efforts. Not to mention the various ways in which the license that is written "to protect Microsoft's intellectual property" could in turn restrict the ability for people to write GPL-resulting code.
In short, the fine print is rather important. Do you trust Microsoft, whose legal accumen has been a critical weapon since its first DOS license agreement and before, to submit any settlement terms that wouldn't have several loopholes they can rush through?
I pored through the Java contract Sun wrote when it became public, and believe me, that one was pretty tight and there were still a few subtle but critical holes that MS was able to drive a Mac truck through.
The very art of compromise and give and take the DOJ would need to eliminate the big holes would still leave need small holes MS could exploit steadily and with substantial strategic success due to their market power.
I remain highly skeptical that any conduct remedies could succeed (in fulfilling the purposes of the Sherman Anti-trust Act) in the face of a relentless, aggressive, and highly intelligent competitor with immense market (monopoly) power.
--LP
The Register had this story posted a bit over an hour ago, which talks about yet another offer made by MS since the rejection of the last one. I'm not reposting the whole thing here, though. Aside from not being broken up, MS are still insisting on not being made to admit they're guilty. Seems like MS is getting really desperate!
Look at what Andrew Schulman had to do to demystify the Window95 hype.
Look at all the undocumented functionality that MS Word used, but nobody else knew about, until it was reverse engineered.
But my opinion is, let them exist. Let the CONSUMER Choose. NOT a lawyer. I feel you are doing the BIGGEST Injustice by making my choices for me in court. Microsoft has NEVER prevented anyone from making a compatible system, had they done that it would have been anticompetitve. But simply existing without anything better or no one stepping up to the bat does not make microsoft an evil empire.
One little problem with this is using extremely questionable practices and buying out companies left and right even if they have a better product may be business. But, it is they who are keeping you from the best possible solution. This doesn't rely on the court but in there decisions not to play fair. It is your savior who has dug there own hole.
Now no matter how much you like there products they will be getting a slap on the hand thusly deserved.
Anyone who lets themselves be fooled into thinking that a large corporation is doing it for the consumer is eventually going to find out they care nothing about you or your issues.
off and out
- The DOJ seems poised to win, and you don't settle easily when you're winning
- Microsoft is likely offering minor concessions
However, I heard that Microsoft was actually offering a number of substantial concessions, including releasing source code for Windows. It seems odd the the DOJ would pass on this, as it could seriously change the marketplace.I guess the real question would be: is Microsoft offering to release the Win 9x source code, only to turn around and concentrate on the NT codebase? And would they immediately make API changes to make the old codebase incompatible? Perhaps that's what DOJ is thinking.
Anyhow, I certainly don't have the answer. I don't really like government getting into all of this anyhow, but I don't particularly care for Microsoft, and what they've done to the industry, either.
If anything good is to come of this, they should get Microsoft to release any rights to OS/2 source code, so IBM could open source OS/2, if they want to. That SOM stuff could be very useful to the KDE and GNOME projects.
New XFMail home page
/bin/tcsh: Try it; you'll like it.
Hehe, you do have some good Points. But i don't believe this warrants anticompetitve lawsuits from the goverment.
:) ( think about it....That was my point to a 'T' )
Well that was, and is, up to the courts to decide. In my opinion I would agree, the less government involvment the better.
Wine is a great project, but only came about as a means for linux to emulate the windows environment to run the windows applications. Wine by no means was a commercial effort to compete against windows or microsoft.
Exactly
As far as closed API's has anyone ever tried writing a competing product to Oracle RDBMS that is compatible? Nope, can't be done, but dowe Sue Oracle for that? I mean have you seen there new licensing schemes and how they rape the consumer?
Nope, but in all fairness, there is many more Databasing programs out there then Oracle with much more open standards ( sorry, examples escape me, not up on that I admit )
How about Novell, do we get to sue them because nobody could make a compatible product? Weren't they the cause of the downfall of that good ol' company that made Banyan Vines and lantastic? Is it my right to sue Novell for that?
You're not, and we're not suing Microsoft, the US Government is. Let me just finish by saying I agree the government is sticking it's nose where it don't belong. We are comrads in arms in that respect. But I do not believe Microsoft is without fault, I just don't think it's the government's place to spank 'em.
Sgt Pepper
Its not a lawsuit in the normal way of things, its a goverment/legal ruling on whether a company is anti-competitive.
As for why this is a problem, have you ever seen old style eastern block TV, monopoly gives no drive to improve quality. The aim of a company is to make as much money as possible for its shareholders, this is enshrined in law, that they treat consumers fairly is not.
If the world had no monopoly rules then you'd see a massive merger of Big Companies into monopolies, this would enable them to make more money and not care for competition.
Basic rule of business
"Fuck 95% of the industry but leave the other 5% to prove you used KY"
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
As a small long-term (5+ years) stockholder of Microsoft, I wouldn't mind the company being broken up rather than to have some restrictive remedies. In five more years, I'm confident that I'd still be doing better than the market index.
The remedies you suggest are pointless:
Opening APIs without opening source is irrelevant; knowing the syntax of calls without opening the precisely-defined semantics (bugs and all), something really only available with reference source code, is useless for the purpose of interoperability, which is what customers most want between their various software programs; this is one (of several) important reasons why Linux has succeeded as a centralized UNIX platform when all past UNIX standards efforts have failed.
The hard-charging culture and high intelligence at Microsoft (along with a dose of legal savvy that has been with the firm since the DOS license agreement) will basically make "curbing business practices" largely ineffective at solving the issue of Microsoft's wielding of monopoly power. In two years, the issue will just reassert itself, and we'll be back to square one. While Microsoft management seems to think that stalling tactics would be profitable (I'd agree this is factually true; every day cements their dominance further), such tactics are shortsighted evasions of a willingness to recognize the validity and purpose of anti-trust law, and the refusal to tackle the real problem of distrust and fear that their previous behavior and relationship with partners has earned them from friend and foe alike. (Try naming one serious Microsoft partnership that has succeeded. They're like the bully of the playground who wins and keeps trying to but in when people leave to play another game. A breakup would help break this cycle of counter-productive dominance.)
As a stockholder who has watched his small MS holdings go up 10x in the last five years (wish I'd bought 10x more!) I wouldn't mind a short-term dip in return for a more workable, less threatening long-term corporate structure.
Sure, as a stockholder I have some concern that a dip would cause employees to flee their golden handcuffs, but at the end of the day, this is like a gust of wind carrying a huge load of acorns off a heavily laden tree. Like a tree struggling to reach the sun (justifying itself by describing the increase in square footage of shade for consumers such an effort would generate,) Ballmer et all can't succeed in their struggle against the law of large numbers forever without getting smaller and more focused. Microsoft would be able to play more effectively in a lot more strategic markets (e.g. WinCE) if they presented less of a threat to everyone else. A breakup would help them reduce their threat profile more effectively than any API opening or business practice remedies that would leave them on their enjoyable but pointless treadmill.
--LP
But my opinion is, let them exist. Let the CONSUMER Choose. NOT a lawyer. I feel you are doing the BIGGEST Injustice by making my choices for me in court. Microsoft has NEVER prevented anyone from making a compatible system, had they done that it would have been anticompetitve. But simply existing without anything better or no one stepping up to the bat does not make microsoft an evil empire.
In my opinion, choice has been the first thing to go out the window (sic) since MS reached such a high level of market share. Until about 1 year ago (well after the case started) there was effectively little or no choice to be had when buying a computer for home use. You either bought a pre-loaded Window machine, often with MS Office bundled, or an Apple machine. In many ways, the bundling of MS Windows + Office has done more to throttle the development of competing apps than anything else - it is an insidious method of halting the competition before it has begun. How many people will buy a second Office suite to replace their pre-bundled one? Only those who know precisely what they can or can't do with the MS Office suite, and that does NOT represent a majority of the computer-buying market.
Sure some of you don't like the "Windows Tax" when you buy a new PC
So you think I should pay for something I may never use, may format off my hard drive as soon as the computer is powered up for the first time? Again the situation is better now - more vendors provide computers with alternatives (i.e. Linux), but the MS dominance of the bundled solution market is still extremely widespread.
Why would someone want to choose something that is Niche when they can choose something that is a standard?
When I work, I want to work with an environment of my choosing. When I need to exchange files with other users I want those OPEN standards to be available so that my file can be interpretted by their system, regardless of their operating system. For interoperability, all we need is exchangable file formats and open networking standards to allow us to communicate and pass information between systems.
I would feel sorry for the thousands of employees, the foundations that Gates supports, the 5,000+ college students that could loose scholarships, the grants and donations to the city and areas of which microsoft works (redmond receives lots of support from microsoft).
So you are arguing that because MS contributes so much in charitable ways, its sharp business practices and leveraging of its market positioning to its own ends is acceptable? That argument is extremely fatuous.
SGI, Sun, Sparc, Alpha, Mac, Amiga, RISC OS, RS2000, Aix, FreeBSD, NeXT, DOS, Novell DOS, CPM, TRS 80. They were all your choices. You chose a PC witch Built its foundation in Windows. You didn't Choose a 10,000 dollar Sparc to not run Solaris on it, so why should it be any different here.
Why would I necessarily run Solaris on Sparc hardware? There are other choices. But this is a diversion - take a look back at the previous contender in the PC marketplace - OS/2. What happened there? MS leveraged its market position and made it difficult for OS/2 to get a foothold in the market. Result: another choice goes west (although you can still get OS/2, although it hasn't really changed a lot in the last few years).
What you seem to miss entirely is that MS has managed to make the OS market into a MS-only field for 95% of computer users. And in my opinion, they have acheived this by leveraging their marketing might to remove any competition in the field. So yes, most applications are written for MS Windows, because that is where the market has ended up. My concern is that had there been a wider playing field, we would now be in a better position to choose which OS we wanted to run, and that interoperability between systems and OS's would be vastly improved over the situation we have today.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
It's a frequently made statement that MS did the world a favour by bringing the windows desktop to the consumer. I think it is uttered repeatedly without the consideration of what the world could have been like if computers had remained something of a black art.
Enabling millions of people to use a computer without having to learn a thing about them is not a service to IT. I get the feeling that a lot of users, having strained to figure out the perils of the taskbar, thought to themselves, "Great! Now I can ask some <i>real</i> dumb questions."
So thanks MS, for making sure most of the computer hardware produced in the world will be wasted on some some lazy bozo, to perform such useful tasks as finding and storing pr0n. Not to mention passing on that e-mail from Bill Gates about the disneyland tickets to every person he's ever met.
Thanks for wasting countless man-hours as trained professionals answered questions like "What's a cursor?"
Thanks for making it possible for Intel's shoddy 8086 architecture to mutate into the leviathon, overheated, overpowered, underdesigned, hacked together monstrosity we call pentium.
Thanks for MS Bob. That was a laugh.
Thanks for a horde of standards shattered and torn in the wake of your monopolistic greed.
Thanks for the death of Netscape. They weren't great, but at least they tried to read the RFCs.
Thanks for the Melissa virus, and all it's friends. You made that all possible.
Thanks for keeping IT dishonest. Now that everyone saw how well it worked, we can follow your business model. Lie, lie, lie.
Thanks for Visual Basic, and a horde of programs designed to make managers think they can produce code without hiring programmers.
Thanks for helping IBM put the final bullet into DEC's dying corpse.
Thanks for winmodems.
Thanks for the Blue Screen of Death. And memory leaks. And all the other bugs you couldn't be bothered to fix.
Thanks for DDoS attacks.
Above, thanks for all the morons who think you brought something to the IT industry. Pop quiz: If I come to your house and give you ten bucks, then steal your car, are you going to sit around saying, "Well, he did bring me ten bucks."?
Wake up. MS didn't do anything but lie and steal and hinder real development. If they hadn't brought computing to the common man, some other loser would have. Say, Apple. Or Xerox. Or even Amiga.
More aptly, what if 95% of all popular music was controlled by only four or five record companies and those companies formed a trade association whose main purpose was to keep its members' products selling for high prices instead of allowing "the market" to determine what a given song was worth?
The end result would probably be wholesale music piracy using technology the record companies couldn't control.
Not that anything like this could ever happen in real life, mind you; this is just Monday morning speculation on Slashdot...
- Robin
First of all, let me just say that that was a very well thought out post, and very well spoken. There's just one point I'd like to discuss..it's when you say here:
/do/ think they try to prevent others from being able to interface to Windows in a fully compatible, open way. Full Disclouser of all Windows APIs and Protocols would be, in my opinon a very satisfactory resolution to this whole mess.
:)
Microsoft has NEVER prevented anyone from making a compatible system, had they done that it would have been anticompetitve
This right here....this is exactly what they HAVE done. This is the whole crux of most of our feelings behind Microsoft. Why has WINE been in development so long and still can't run 80% of the software out there ( Disclaimer: Percentage exactly unknown, last time I checked though it was still a large amount of software that either didn't run or was buggy ). In fact you back this up later on in your post with:
Sure it may not be an OPEN standard, but gee golly sir when i go to the story and there is 400 games and 1000s of applications i can run on my computer. THAT IS A STANDARD!
A closed specification ( or "Standard" ) is meant for one thing....to prevent compatibility, so you can be the only kid on the block with those nifty APIs. Which change...from release to releast from Service Pack to Service Pack. Now I'm not making any kind of suggestion on how evil Microsoft is, or what should be done to punish them. But I
Ah well, thanks for listening, and again, nice post
Sgt Pepper
Whatever the solution the judge comes up with, I think the absurd platitudes from the hoards of paid Microsoft astroturfers hear have every reason to fall upon deaf ears. We've heard it all before, and most of us see as clearly through the lies and propoganda today as we did when this all started a few years ago. If you must insult our intelligence by spewing such nonsense here, don't come crying to daddy when the followup posts are a little hot under the collar.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Microsoft has NEVER prevented anyone from making a compatible system, had they done that it would have been anticompetitve
DR-DOS was compatible (and superior in every way). MS purposely, actively and consciously used several mechanisms to stop it, up to and including per-processor licenses (which were illegal) and purposely incorrect error messages...
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
I for one, USE linux. Let me say that again. I USE LINUX. and I also Use Microsoft. I don't consider them the Evil Empire, since in my time with computers i have used other OS's such as OS/2, FreeBSD and Solaris and for the Desktop *I* chose to run Windows.
I don't understand how people can pick at microsoft for writing the OS and the Applications. After Microsoft will sun be next? Will they have to split the processor division from there OS division? Doesn't that give them unfair advantage in the market? Or is it because the consumers who don't know about Sun and other Systems out there don't think to sue them too?
Flame me all you want, slashdot is about opinions and not about whats right or wrong.
But my opinion is, let them exist. Let the CONSUMER Choose. NOT a lawyer. I feel you are doing the BIGGEST Injustice by making my choices for me in court. Microsoft has NEVER prevented anyone from making a compatible system, had they done that it would have been anticompetitve. But simply existing without anything better or no one stepping up to the bat does not make microsoft an evil empire.
Sure some of you don't like the "Windows Tax" when you buy a new PC. But for the average consumer, why would they want to go out and choose something else that there friends or neighboors don't use? Why would someone want to choose something that is Niche when they can choose something that is a standard? Sure it may not be an OPEN standard, but gee golly sir when i go to the story and there is 400 games and 1000s of applications i can run on my computer. THAT IS A STANDARD!
I would feel sorry for the thousands of employees, the foundations that Gates supports, the 5,000+ college students that could loose scholarships, the grants and donations to the city and areas of which microsoft works (redmond receives lots of support from microsoft).
I'd feel sorry for all the ASP's, Developers and people who make a living off software because that is what the chose.
You have always had a right to choice. I'm just curios why you think it is YOUR right to make my choice now?
SGI, Sun, Sparc, Alpha, Mac, Amiga, RISC OS, RS2000, Aix, FreeBSD, NeXT, DOS, Novell DOS, CPM, TRS 80. They were all your choices. You chose a PC witch Built its foundation in Windows. You didn't Choose a 10,000 dollar Sparc to not run Solaris on it, so why should it be any different here. Like i said, Sun will be under the radar next, hell RedHat could get sued for anticompetive faults with Microsoft coming up and saying they're dumping there product for free to saturate the market.
I believe the rights of the consumer belong to the consumer, not to Hypocrites, people who are anal about things (fuck you to people who will pay more attention to my spelling rather then *MY* opinions).
Like i said, i use linux. I run HP-UX systems, i have a few dozen Sparcs, and yes i have 250 Windows Workstations on the floor and yes, i have a few dozen linux workstations. So yeah, as an educated consumer i know what fits MY bill. And my employees know what fits there own. So let it be.
I will not list all the things MS is guilty of. I will rather let my fantasy flow in the direction on how would I punish that evil corporation.
..." repeat previous 10.000 times). Or they will edit the sources so that the comments are missing. Or they will flatly forge it.
:o)
So, IMO, opening up the source of windows-es is not enough, because we know MS will try to give us the code that is not totally valid ("oh, you meant the source of THAT version of Windows? We thought you meant Windows 3.0 - OK, OK,
Breaking Microsoft up won't work, either. They have been preparing themselves for this since about 2 years. They have formed the communication paths between an OS and an application company to be. A vertical breakup (two or more smaller microsofts, which would compete among each other) won't work for the same reason, and then once the breakup is complete, these mini-microsofts will focus on either the OS, or one application.
Federal monitoring of their activities? That will never work, or it will work as well as the UN monitoring of the Iraq nuclear and bio-weapons labs.
So what, then? Well, here is my proposal (apply ALL themeasures in the list):
- Fine them to pay US$ 100 bln, to be distributed to MS products licensees. For home users, that would amount to approximately a grand/person.
-All the upper management jailed to serve sentences of 20 to 40 years, depending on their position. Alchin would get 30, Gates and Ballamr get 40 (each). VPs would get 25, etc.
-The word "Microsoft" would be fobidden from use on posters, T-shirts and other advertisements, and placed in the same cathegory as the symbols of the Nazy era.
-Federal agents would break into the Microsoft premises, and remove the material with the source code. It would be published in it's entirety, on the Internet, with possibly many mirrors, with noone holding the license rights. Or maybe something like the BSD would be ok. (MS will be forced, of course, to renounce to any copyrights).
-the MS campus in Redmond would be transformed into "The Museum of Monopoly" (I like this one) and the upkeep will be payd by the Bill Gates foundation (I like this even more) forever.
The current MS employees (the ones that didn't make it to the jail) will have the option to work in the Museum of Monopoly. It means, the janitors will be pretty much in place, the only problem are those people who made all those buggy products. (Add Access 2000 to the list of "most buggy")
OK, I have my flame-protector suit on, go ahead
Sigged!
Where do I start?! I should just keep my mouth shut, but I can't resist...
Tell me. As a consumer, how will i be any better off with Microsoft being sued? Driving the costs up because of lawsuits? Fragmenting a stable market with many more buggy programs?
Well, tell me, as a consumer, how much worse off are we because MS used their monopoly to crush companies like Netscape and many others that would have brought choice and lowered prices in consumer software?
I don't understand how people can pick at microsoft for writing the OS and the Applications...But my opinion is, let them exist. Let the CONSUMER Choose. NOT a lawyer. I feel you are doing the BIGGEST Injustice by making my choices for me in court.
Well, you may be a little preturbed that you may not be able to get Win2002 at the same level of quality and low cost that you're used to, but what about the injustice to all those people who couldn't choose their OS or browser because MS effectively blackmailed PC suppliers and bought out or crushed competitors.
The real beef is not that MS writes an OS or applications, remember, but that they use their monopoly position in the OS market to unfairly compete. If this is in fact true (that's Judge Jackson's job) then they deserve to be punished for robbing the consumer of potential better and cheaper options.
Sure some of you don't like the "Windows Tax" when you buy a new PC. But for the average consumer, why would they want to go out and choose something else that there friends or neighboors don't use? Why would someone want to choose something that is Niche when they can choose something that is a standard?
I just don't see how that is relevant. The point is not that MS is standard. Everybody agrees they are (at least for Joe Average). The problem is that they use their position to effectively prevent Joe Average from having options and choice.
I would feel sorry for the thousands of employees, the foundations that Gates supports, the 5,000+ college students that could loose scholarships, the grants and donations to the city and areas of which microsoft works (redmond receives lots of support from microsoft).
Sure MS gives money to lots of worthy causes. What they give back, though, is a tiny portion of what consumers never should have spent. Just think of all the scholarships, grants, libraries and public projects that could have been supported if instead of buying thousands of site licenses for MS-everything, universities, schools, and municipalities everywhere could have had access to standards-based interoperable PC OS's, which would have allowed cheaper and better application software. Think of all the developer man-years that have been chewed up in porting applications to stay compatible with each obscure API change in MS software.
Sure this is all hypothetical. We'll never know what could have been. The point is that many people believe that MS forced the market down the road we're on by unfair business practices.
You have always had a right to choice. I'm just curios why you think it is YOUR right to make my choice now?
I'm not making your choice. I just don't want MS to make my choice for me.
I believe the rights of the consumer belong to the consumer,
Well, you got that right at least.
Back to schoolwork - see ya!
Mozilla
"Microsoft is popular because it is easier for non-techies to use. Not True. I personally have several examples (a pilot friend, a sister, a mother, and a friend's grandmother) of people who were very uncomfortable with computers running windows because, whenever it would crash, they felt they were making mistakes. The result - they were afraid to use the machine much for fear of "breaking" it. In all cases they found Linux running X and gnome or KDE to be far easier to use, because it works reliably and consistently. They work in confidence that, unless they are doing something as root (and teaching them to understand what that means took all of about 30 seconds), they cannot break the machine. Net result - they are using their machines more, with greater confidence, and, though still illiterate by our standards, they are picking a few things up while being able to get the work done they need to. Most of all, they are no longer afraid of their machines."
...expecting this post to be moderated down to (-1, Pro-Microsoft Opinion)...
Here's a little story for you...
My parents are probably the definition of the clueless newbie. They can run programs and surf the Internet, and that's about it. They use Windows 98 SE on their computer at home, and you know what? They have yet to tell me about getting a Blue Screen O' Death. Windows may stall on them, it may freeze on them, but they haven't gotten any of the problems that Linux zealots claim every Windows user experiences. In spite of these occourences, they still use Windows.
Why?
Because they know that they can run their favorite programs and get work done. You can preach all about how Linux is the best and how reliable it is. But if my parents can't send e-mail, use programs like TaxCut and Word, play their games, or use their digital camera, they will not use Linux. My parents have a hard enough time dealing with figuring out how to send attachments or how to format a document in Word. You think they want to deal with the fact that their printer or digital camera isn't recognized under Linux?
My parents are able to work in confidence, as you put it, because they know that they can't "break" the computer unless they tried. It took myself a few minutes to explain to them what they should and should not do. And it's worked. I haven't come home from school to the sound of "The computer is broken!" My parents aren't afraid of their computer, hell, they've been doing more work on it now than they have before.
My parents aren't the only people to be used as an example. I have several friends and other family members who are quite happy with Windows. They haven't told me about having a system meltdown either. So much for Linux zealotry.
My points here? Linux is a good OS, there's no denying that. But if people can't run their favorite programs and use their hardware under Linux, they won't use it. The average clueless newbie could give two shits about stats which prove that Linux is reliable, they want to know if those stupid games someone sent them via e-mail will work. And if they can get their work done, they're happy, regardless of what OS they use, be it Linux, FreeBSD, or God forbid I say this in such a Linux-centric setting...Windows.
--
The real Raunchola isn't cool enough to have any imposters