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A Post-Microsoft World
"Good morning, and welcome to the post-Microsoft world." Words many of you have been waiting to hear for years. Yesterday's court ruling didn't end the Microsoft Age, just focused attention on the fact that it's over.
The response to the ruling yesterday, in fact, defined hype. Almost all the significance was symbolic. The findings changed little in the short term, and probably even less in the long run. The most significant and blessed fallout from yesterday may be the loss not of Microsoft, but of a host of those annoying dot.coms flushed out by a NASDAQ mourning a world without Omnipotent Bill. Truth is, we are already living in a post-Microsoft world, and nobody really much cares.
Until the mid-90s, Microsoft was the technological Godhead. Everyone involved with computing or the network hated, used, exploited or feared it. That's no longer true.
The Microsoft Age began to unravel when programmers all over the earth connected and demonstrated that they could create a viable, ethical alternative operating system, sharing freely what was costing everybody else billions. It was accelerated by Bill Gates' profound and distinctly non-visionary arrogance. Anybody who has ever watched TV would have known to settle a long time ago, but Gates must have been reading his own press, thumbing his nose at the one mega-corporation on earth bigger than his.
Had the government intervened a decade ago, when it would really have mattered, yesterday's court ruling might have been as ground-breaking as the pundits and analysts were claiming last night. Who knows what kind of smothered, suppressed and acquired innovation might have been unleashed had Microsoft been reigned in at the height of its abuse and power?
As it was, the decision felt profoundly anti-climactic. It's hard to think of a single major thing on the Net that will change. Bill Gates, it was clear, had given up on this judge, first patronizing, then brazenly lying to him, finally going for the end run, perhaps in the hope that a Republican would shortly take up residence in the White House.
In a few years, after the platoons of lawyers have been as enriched as Microsoft's middle managers, it's possible that computer users will have three or four operating systems to choose from -- if there even are traditional operating systems, sold and downloaded in traditional ways, which seems less likely by the week. But even if there are, it isn't clear that any "remedies," once they are finally contested and sorted out in the courts, will have much meaning. Gates is still trying to come to grips with a political system that is slicker than he is. How odd to see him all over the evening newscasts, practicing his own annoying what-me-worry? spin, proclaiming his company the world's greatest, cheapest and most benevolent technological empowering force.
It seemed pooped and lame. Bill Gates' company hasn't dominated any of the significant technological movements and evolutions of the late 90s: open source, nano-technology, AI, genetic research, hand-held and wireless computing, supercomputers.
For those who've spent years battling and fussing over this rapacious, insatiable company, there was belated satisfaction in seeing a federal judge confirm what a lot of people already knew: Billl Gates is a monopolistic, predatory lawbreaker.
But apart from terrifying high-tech investors for a day or two, it's difficult to discern a single significant outcome from yesterday's decision, a single reality likely to change for people who use computers, the Net or the Web. The pundits couldn't even agree whether Microsoft would be more of a menace broken up or left alone. And the hysteria about lawsuits was laughable. Microsoft has a big enough legal budget to tie up class-action lawsuits for years, and its insurance company is already putting aside billions to start drawing interest for the inevitable day when the settlements must be paid.
Yesterday brought the odd spectacle of 21st-century economic problem confronted by a century-old law (the Sherman Anti-Trust Act) being deployed by a 225-year-old institution (the federal judiciary) and analyzed by an ancient information structure (the news media). All this was also being trumpeted endlessly by a federal bureaucracy eager to appear to curb the unchecked power of run-amok corporations, when it's far from clear it will ultimately even be able to curb one.
Perhaps the post-Microsoft world began between when Linus Torvald began his software experiment and Judge Jackson's eerily retro ruling yesterday. Why eerie? Because it pitted a string of l9th-century laws and institutions against a 21st-century economic system. And the antiquarians really thought they had won.
When all is said and done, many of the people reading, working on and joining this site had a hell of a lot more to do with this than those Justice Department pols falling all over one another yesterday to get their pusses in front of the TV cameras, trying to convince the world that they were out there fighting for the little guy.
> Some of us have been post-Microsoft for over five years!
No you haven't, you have just been non -Microsoft. Microsoft is still here and still has 95% of the desktop.
Just because you choose not to use a system does not mean that it does not exist. (Unless of course you really believe that when you shut your eyes nobody can see you!)
Personally, I will be waiting for a while before declaring the days of Microsoft over. Linux is cool, I use it, but at the moment it has nowhere near the level of application support or user-friendliness required to beat MS on the desktop. (ditto BeOS, Amiga etc.)
as a die hard macos and linux user, i never thought i'd see the day, and now it has come. i myself have seen the power of microsoft's monopoly. i run windoze on one box because i have to, not because i want to... and as soon as i start to get used to it, i turn on my powerbook and am amazed at how much it sucks. The problem is, most people don't have that choice; they're stuck with the computer they're forced to buy. the solution: the opening of windows. that should be jackson's remedy for microsoft's practices.
But the Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer was invented by HP - all Microsoft is doing is manufacturing and marketing it. Some innovation
Most of you people are delusional when you think that this is the death bell sounding for MS. Yesterdays ruling is but a small blip on the screen for MS. They are so large and already well diversified to make transitions into many other sectors...operating systems and web browsers are maybe just 10% of Microsoft's (see puppet of BG's ego) vision to be everywhere. MS want to badly to be several things, content provider, service provider, applications, os, communications carrier... Microsoft will most likely win it's appeal in a federal court. MS is already 2 for 2 when it comes to federal appeals (can someone say contributions to Mr. federal judge?) and the odds are that they will repeat. And besides all that the market changes so dramatically in short periods of time that by the time this is all sorted out it wont be much relevant anymore.
Choose an OS:
[ ] Windows NT
[ ] Solaris
[ ] Linux
[ ] AIX
Choose an application server:
[ ] Dynamo
[ ] WebLogic
[ ] WebSphere
Choose a personalization engine:
[ ] Dynamo
[ ] NetPerceptions
[ ] FireFly
If what Katz says is true, then the desktop market will look the same way:
Choose an OS
[ ] Linux
[ ] BeOS
[ ] Windows
Choose a productivity suite
[ ] Microsoft Office
[ ] Star Office
[ ] PerfectOffice
Choose games
[ ] Civilization
[ ] Myth II
[ ] Railroad Tycoon II
It's good the it's gone, but I sure as hell home Linux will not be the next big thing. Imagine a software world where all you stupid GNU fanatics with serious personality and attitude problems are the rulers. I rather have M$ than that.
I rather see a software world where we have 10 camps so that people can use what they want and need... and not what the stupid press people or retard-hip-teenage-"insert the latest trend here"-followers do.
I guess what I'm trying to say is: I hope that one day all of you latest-trend-followers could be seated in a gigantic rocket and fired into the sun... BURN!
The one thing that really ring though to me is that M$ has a seriously skewed point of view thoughout.
Ouch, you were so close to the truth I could taste it. I think much of what you say is true, but you miss the important point that Microsoft IS in the Entertainment Industry.
See, now, there you go. You've done just the same thing JonKatz did: you can't see the forest for the tree. You want to continue to think that Microsoft is "the enemy" by redefining the way it controls PC software.
The point is, Microsoft only dominates one thing: the PC market. The Entertainment Industry I'm referring to is Hollywood and Big Music, and they're the real threat because they're the ones lobbying for things like the DMCA. Things that use the law to take everyone's freedoms away. Microsoft acts in unscrupulous ways in that it abuses the fact that its OS ships on virtually every Intel-type PC sold. The much bigger and more dangerous big entertainment companies have gotten together and are trying to use the law to ensure that you can only buy products that they have sanctioned and that they receive money for (like DVD players) and unlike Microsoft they are actively trying -- and succeeding -- in preventing free software from competing with them.
At the risk of repeating myself, what you miss, and what Jon Katz has evidently missed, is that while we celebrate Microsoft's legal woes, a much worse enemy is already acquiring a much tighter hold on a much more wide-ranging marketplace than Microsoft ever tried to control.
Yeah, yesterday's ruling will wipe Microsoft off the face of the earth, just like previous rulings did to Standard Oil and AT&T....
Geoff
p.s. Just in case anyone doubts, the above is sarcasm.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
That is a beautiful article, and a wondrous solution. If I could have mod points, and the Score could go above 5, I'd give the points to you.
I've often wondered why it is that MS couldn't simply play fair, even with this lawsuit and the facts staring them in the face. They always release their apps to the Mac late, and now that Linux has at least as much market share, they still try to ignore it as a viable platform (even if it would make them money!).
But they've always had the gall to completely ignore the industry, their customers, their supporters and detractors, and only follow the money. Well guess what, that approach isn't working anymore. Following the money only ends up hurting everyone, including yourself for not seeing further money-making opportunities down the road when people like you and aren't conspiring against you. Microsoft isn't stupid, but their greed clouds their judgement, even still.
I'd love to see an actual "Open API" attitute to standards across the board, but I don't think it'll ever happen. The only solution right now seems to be to create competing open standards and patent them to keep them open.
Microsoft is a problem, but they aren't the only problem. I'd like to be able to legally use and create mp3's, gif's, and perhaps one day mp4's. I'd like to have a chance in hell of playing Sorensen encoded Quicktime 4 movies on Linux. I'd like to be able to write or use a truly free software DVD player without being branded a criminal.
There's something very wrong with the current laws and climate towards computer standards and intellectual property. There's nothing wrong with making a little money, but don't do it on the standards, do it on the apps! Would you play baseball if someone charged you for "using" the official rules? Of course not, you'd play wiffleball and softball if you had to, but you'd *want* to play baseball, and maybe you'd be forced to do it in secret...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
It's a reasonable argument. It isn't *completely* wrong, but it has some problems...
:(
Personally, *I* wouldn't even want to touch Microsoft's code! Their code would be invaluable for finding out how they really implement a particular feature, but I wouldn't necessarily want to copy their implementation.
Porting Wine to DOS would be much easier than cleaning up Microsoft's code. The code base is *much* smaller, and it has similar levels of functionality. Also, the extra features should be implemented much quicker with more code and more interested parties. (look at what Corel's support did for the project. Now think about what would happen if everybody got interested in it...)
Also, then Windows really would be free, and its source would be a lot cleaner, and it could run on anything x86, with Unix vendors free to hack in everything else. And it would run on Unix on Merced, quite likely.
As Windows is right now, yes, it's a huge mess. But it doesn't have to be. Bug-for-bug compatibility sucks, but hopefully some of that would get phased out over time, just like Windows does now. And if the Microsoft code had to be used, the first thing that would happen is a massive code cleanup, making the Mozillia project look like a cakewalk.
Of course, this might also mean that Windows would never *die*, and we'd all have little Windows apps mixed in with our X apps.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Funny you should mention file formats. M$ has an incentive to make sure the file conversion utilities in its programs don't work, to force you to upgrade to Office. And it seems that it's used that to great advantage. Not to mention incompatible file formats between various versions of Office, to force upgrades.
(currently testing something about signatures here)
That crack about eighteenth century laws annoys me somewhat. First off, the Sherman Antitrust Act is from the 19th century. Second, yes, the Federal Judiciary is from the 18th century, as well as the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Would you call the Bill of Rights "hopelessly outdated" for that reason?
There's a heck of a lot of good law from the 18th and 19th century; the first state without an official religion, the abolition of slavery...
I don't think anyone would call that obsolete.
Also, doesn't Katz protest a bit about media consolidation? It sounds to me like the Sherman Antitrust Act would be relevant there too.
(currently testing something about signatures here)
You may be on the debate team, but you're obviously not experienced the difference between the old "Ma Bell" and today. Sure there were some hicups, and now there are (oh HORRORS!) a lot of choices to make when you get telephone service, but today is vastly better.
Would you be happy if you were given these sets of options?...
1 Leasing each phone in your house from THE phone company OR Leasing each phone...
2 Chosing between black, canary yellow, beige, or sky blue for the afore-mentioned telephone(s) OR Spray-painting your phone, and hoping they will never want to switch out the old phone with something else...
3 paying 25 cents per minute for long distance OR not using long distance at all...
That's your vast list of options with the old system. The operators didn't care if you got good assistance with your phone calls, and had no incentive to be nice; where would you take your business to?
Before you get all excited about your victory...
/. would be pro-MS and their non-big blue OS...MS-DOS.
Remember IBM in the early 80's....odds are
IBM is still around and making MORE money than ever. To think that MS will go the way of the dodo is both stupid and shortsighted.
In 10 years will we all be extolling the virtues of some other OS and blasting Red Hat as the evil empire??
Those who don't learn from history are destined to repeat it!
...Sounds like a profitable business plan to me. Isn't this what most businesses try to do in one form or another? Yes, all companies try to do this, however for monopolies to do this is a violation of the law. Most companies who try to achieve this have to team up with other competitors to carry this out; monopolies can just go ahead and do it. That's why our society decided that it was fundamentally bad and made it illegal.
Let's see...
We used to ride around in horse-drawn carriages. They worked great. Use was widespread. Carriage wheels could be found anywhere. Then came the automobile. Parts were scarce, almost nobody knew how to fix them when they broke.
But they were better. And they caught on. And now we all use them (well not all of us, but you get my point). It certainly wasn't because the government broke the back of the horse-drawn carriage industry.
We don't need the US Government to win our battles for us. If Linux or some other OS is superior and people are able to work more productively with it, then it will eclipse Windows just as the automobile eclipses carriages as a means of transportation.
For goodness sake, let's stop asking our government to do more for us and insist that it start doing less!
So Katz is right, the MS World has been falling apart for years now. I think that the ruling is simply another victory against MS in a long string of victories over the past few years.
(he withdraws his beady eye from the end of his softly glowing crack pipe)
Sorry, no offense intended, but can you back that up with a list of these victories? I find it difficult to believe when 99.9% of desktops where I work run Windows. Where I work is not atypical.
I also certainly don't hope that the world ever becomes TOTALLY void of MS
The chance of this happening is so small. Think of how many copies of windows are being used. Think of how much investment has been put into buying all these, and supporting them. What is going to happen? The entire basis of corporations, changed over to something different? Unlikely.
thenerd.
The camels are coming. I'm in love.
We're in a First-post Microsoft Age!
We've just got to wait for the inevitable:
The Naked & Petrified Microsoft Age (after being wrecked by Jackson)
The Grit Microsoft Age
The Meept Microsoft Age (I hate to think what this would mean)
I couldn't resist. I'm sorry. It's true - we haven't been in one before, and we might be in new post Microsoft ages, perhaps.
thenerd.
The camels are coming. I'm in love.
Who can I get support for my MS-DOS installations from now? I think this is proof that Microsoft is needed to the 21st century and beyond.
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a funny comment: 1 karma
an insightful comment: 1 karma
a good old-fashioned flame: priceless
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
and of course we live in a post-ms world, we even didn't really lived in, take an example of TCP/IP or the whole Internet protocol suite (from layer 1 to layer 7), it exists BEFORE M$ and has always been the world of unix, "true" server (http/nntp/ftp/etc) runs under UNIX. I agree we are not a lot of people that use un*x since 10 years and never touch a windows box, i even have a window box at home for games you know...
--
BeDevId 15453
Download BeOS R5 Lite free!
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
We, a community of concerned "experts", need to start explaining to people that Microsoft wasn't broken but that the idea of a closed source operating system is broken! It's time to break out of the cycle, and if people don't understand why it came to an antitrust trial to stop Microsoft, it's just a matter of time before another Microsoft emerges.
I define operating systems as - All components that are shared by unrelated programs and applications in a fully documented* fasion that are not single purpose programs* or applications themselves.
*Fully Documented - any discrepencies in documentaion will void OS candidcy.
*Single Purpose Programs - Browsers browse, Games play, Cad apps edit Cad files etc... If editing a cad file becomes a 100% documented standard then it would be eligble.
A few examples of how this would work.
Closed source operating systems will always assimilate everything in their path if unchecked. If people don't understand this we are headed for Microsoft #3 (IBM was #1) be it Sun or AOL or one of the the big media companies.
The pristine image of Microsoft been destoryed opening up new dicussions. I don't want to fight big company #3 for standards, drivers etc, so lets educate people! We may not have a third come-back.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
There will be a massive protest against trade globalization and the encroaching corporate hegemony, and the support it gets from our absurd political system (the democratic aspects of which are entertainment only) in Washington this April 16.
If you don't like it, attend. It's going to make Seattle look small
support gun control: take guns from cops
Microsoft is doing fine, but lets look at the Linux stocks...
VA Linux Systems: 52 Week High: $320 Currently: $53
Red Hat: 52 Week High: $151 Now: $38
Anti-trust laws have never helped a single consumer. Of course, the Bell System was a product of restrictive government licensing, so I don't count that one.
Shouldn't Katz be lurking on Slashdot and writing this kind of stuff for the outside world? Does anyone else still publish him?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Funny, I'm hearing Pink Floyd and the O.J.'s :_)
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
"...for PC-based entertainment (like MS Word)..."
I've called MS Word a lot of things but never that. If that's your idea of entertainment you must be a real glutton for punishment.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
He probably understands what's going on here better than Bore and Gush.
The Register has an article today that points out that Reagan called off the dogs during the IBM anti-trust case and that Boy George will probably do the same for MS.
The article ends with a disturbing thought--"...there is in the USA a very real possibility of executive interference with the job of the judiciary, casting doubt on the effectiveness of the separation of powers. It is disturbing that the issue may result being of Microsoft's breakup might well depend on who becomes President."
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Outside of the college dorms and such, Linux seems to be only a drop in the bucket of computing.
You pretty much answered your own question. Whatever is popular in the college dorms today will most likely become dominant in the future.
That's basically how the PC gained corporate acceptance. Young people bought them as toys for home, realized that VisiCalc might be handy at work and took their computer to the office. Eventually the suits realized that their was some usefulness their and began approving purchase orders.
That's pretty much where I see Linux at right now. And as for corporate use, trust me, there are lots and lots of companies out there that depend on Linux today, in the here and now, and are completely unaware of it.
It may be too early to shout "Linux is taking over!" from the rooftops, but it's certainly getting entrenched. When that little departmental file server running Linux and Samba gets upgraded to a shiny new WinNT box and suddenly starts crashing and the PHB says "Just put it back the way it was.", he has no idea that he just issued an order to reinstall Linux, and won't count himself as using Linux in his business when he fills out his PC Computing surveys, but it's there and being relied on. (yeah, that IS a true story)
Why is it that I hear about "linux is taking over! Linux is more popular than windows! Linux is the future!" and other assorted hype ONLY on slashdot?
Because we're the ones who know just exactly how entrenched Linux is becoming. We're the ones who know how those 3 file servers and 2 web servers got set up even when there was no money in the budget for it. We're the ones who know what's running on that stack of 10 headless PC's in the back corner of the computer room.
You don't hear much about it at other places because the people filling out the Ziff-Davis surveys don't even know that they're already relying on it every day.
Fine Bill personally? Can't, Limited Liability of a company forbids this, I think, so Bill personally is free and clear (AFAIK, IANAL)
IANAL either, but I seem to recall hearing something through a hungover haze in an early morning business law class back in college about certain situations where high-level executives can, in fact, be held personally liable for the actions of the corporation.
No idea if that's even remotely applicable in this situation, though.
2. Ok, so Redmond churns out "Office 2002 for Linux". It's 600Mb and costs $500. How is this a good thing?
Because now I can run Linux at work without having to reboot every time I need to look something up in one of these damn Acess databases we've got floating around all over the place here.
Are you stating that is is ok to be a monopoly, you just can't leverage it?
Yes, that's precisely the case, according to U.S. law, anyway.
Take this example: Let's say all auto manufacturers except GM go out of business. This gives GM a monopoly in the car industry. Nothing illegal yet.
Now, if GM suddenly quadruples the price of a car even though they have had no increase in costs, that's most likely illegal. There's going to be some increase because of lack of competition, I'm not sure exactly where the line gets drawn to make it illegal, though.
Now, being very happy about their new solitary position in the industry, GM decides to expand into the automotive floor mat business. OK, no problem yet, perfectly legal. They manufacture nothing but cheap, thin, ugly plastic floor mats. Of course, they have trouble selling them. That's just a bad business plan, not illegal.
In order to make up for lack of floor mat sales, they implement a new policy. When you go to your GM dealer to purchase a new vehicle, you are informed that they cannot sell a car without a set of GM "customized" floor mats. They sell for $5000. If you want a car, you gotta take the mats, even though better floor mats are available at the K-Mart next door for $30. Now we're breaking the law.
Hope that helps. Anti-trust law can be a little confusing.
Well, if we're talking about using the software in a corporate setting (and I can't think of much reason to use MS Office elsewhere) then I really don't care what they charge for it. And truthfully, it wouldn't be in their best interests to do that. If they are being forced to commit development resources, then it wouldn't make sense to price themselves out of the market. If they've got to spend money on development, might as well generate some revenue. It seems likely that any ruling requiring multiple platform support would also forbid such pricing inequities anyway.
Not to mention that, at least in large corporations, it's well within reason to believe that site licenses would be negotiated that would simply allow a certain number of copies of the software to be run, regardless of platform.
Smaller companies would be the ones getting screwed here, as a $1200 office suite could be out of reach for a lot of little mom & pop outfits, but how many of them have heavy enough computing requirements to be running Linux anyway?
As far as home users, no big difference. Really, what percentage of home users do you suppose went out and paid the $600 (or so) for the full version of Office 2000 they're having their kids type reports on at home?
Good points on the bulbs, but I would still say that the floor mat analogy is especially appropriate for the IE/Netscape situation. A web browser is a simple part, anyone can make one, and they all do basically the same thing. But Microsoft forced their browser down people's throats just because they could. (OK, so they forced it down people's throats for free, but that's just as wrong as overcharging for it since it was done to extinguish competition.)
As far as the OEM deals MS made, I've always wished manufacturers would have just said screw it. Up until very recently, the difference between OEM pricing and full retail pricing for Windows would not have made a very significant difference in the price of a computer. Seriously, if you're in the market for a $2500 computer, is $100 one way or the other likely to make a huge difference in your decision?
Actually, you just made my point for me! :)
</p>
<p>The law is <strong>less</strong> than 100 years old -- this case was startedt in THE SAME century of the law. Katz's slant is that this is some kind of old-world concept applied to new-world realiaty, metaphorically speaking. I disagree. I think the Sherman Anti-Trust is a <strong>product</strong> of our modern era and applies perfectly to the situation at hand because it has always been up-to-date. There are people alive today who were born before Sherman Anti-Trust even. And the effects of the break-up of Standard Oil are still felt today. Try driving around Northern Virginia and imagine all those Mobils and Exxons used to be the same company -- and now they will be again -- creating a near monopoly of petrol in the area. And you yourself have already mentioned the AT&T break-up of less than 20 years ago. Point being, what's the fuss? The law is there, it is a modern law, and it is being applied. Justice at work.
</p>
<p>Be Seeing You,
</p>
<p>Jeffrey.
</p>
Time Lord, Dark Horse: The Techno Mage of Gallifrey
Just to make things clear, which they aren't from the article, the Sherman Anti-Trust act, the chief law in question for this case, was passed during t eh William Howard Taft (R) administration, 'aught-8 to 12. Certainly before all the events that shaped the modern world (War of 1914-18, Market Crash, Television, Nazism, WWII, Cold War, Transistors, C, Microsoft AND Linux.
It <b>is</b> newer than the automobile, radio, photography, cinema, incandescent light, the telephone and telegraph, and certainly the modern thirst for oil, since that's what it was enacted to protect consumers against.
Something to keep in mind.
Be Seeing You,
Jeffrey.
Time Lord, Dark Horse: The Techno Mage of Gallifrey
I dont think that anything will really change, except people's opinons of Microsoft. The general population has a big herd mentality, and, however goes the press, goes the public. I think that in the next few weeks/months, we'll see alot of pro-linux/pro-mac/pro-whatever/anti-microsoft press, and that cant be anything but good for us. Even if the appeals drag on for years (as I heard this AM on NPR) Microsoft will be slowed, and allow the rest of the OS's to make more headway.
-=Bob
To some of you, including Jon, this may be the post-M$ world. For those of us who have to work in the "real" world, where most real companies are, it's still a vision.
*Way* too many companies (incl. mine) have already leaped (fallen?) to Lose2K, rather than take a wait-and-see approach.
And Jon's first cmt, about "18th century laws", makes no sense, whatsoever. If Jon means the anti-trust laws, then he's no better than M$NBC. The anti-trust laws were passed before WWI, in the 1900's and early 'teens, when unions either had little power, or often, were illegal, as a repsonse to such monopolies as Rockefeller's Standard Oil.
Newt the Grinch promised to take us back to those thrilling days of yesteryear, the days of the robber barons...and did. With the little I know of Standard Oil, Microsoft is *exactly* like it, and is *explicitly* what those laws were passed to prevent. I suppose there were folks back then, who didn't see what breaking up Standard Oil would do, or mean.
Jon, do your homework. And I would not say that the, ahhh, Women of Substance Chorale has not yet begun their aria.
On the other hand, to quote Megaphone Mark Slackmeyer, from Doonesbury, nearly 30 years ago,
"guilty! guilty! guilty!"
mark
Agreed - however, I still see lot's of ppl have yet to be gyped, and are still buying Wintel boxes like "country bumpkins at a county fair". No free help from me, tho!
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
That jon katz should see it to jump on the Anti M$ bandwagon is about as newworthy as saying that NT will blue screen today.
In all practicle terms this case is about 3 years away from a DECISIVE action. Factor in the appeals, the court procedings, the money and loby work that is working and you are way out in the mid of this decade before M$ gets truly uncomfortable.
Rather than Rah Rah cheerlead along with Jon Kats and his pom poms of stupidity you should be doing the real damage to MS, and thats making linux work more like MS so that MS's customers can quickly and easily move away from the big Redmond machine.
GNOME and KDS are great examples of this, as is Corel and the like. Never has LInux worked and looked so much like MS as when it boots directly into a GUI with apps cluttering up the screen. Good job folks, youve moved closer to becoming that which you despise. But for a good cause, so that makes it all ok.
Katz forgets, as do many of you, that outside of the bubble of slashdot there is a thriving Growing hungry world of End USers. Theyuse MS products in such numbers that you would probably wet yourselfs if you had to think about it too long.
Yes, the world runs on Applications and MS feeds the hungry. Fast food, yep, but look around the block and notice how many Mickey D's and Booger Kings there are.
You begining to see the big picture?
MS is the fried food fast service pablum the masses are tought to crave, and crave they do. In numbers so large that until recently MS was the largest corp in the sector users are buying and using MS products.
Change comes in waves, and already we are seeing the awakening of the end user to the alternatives. MS sees this and , surpirse surprise, is moving to meet the demands of its paying user base.
Open source, unix based, blah blah blah... MS will keep the pace and sell to the masses what the masses are taught to want, wether they learn form the OSS buzz words of the MIS buzzwords of the Slashdot buzzwords...
Like the great one says weekly "It dont matter what you think.." cause billy borg and the MS crones will be putting thier sized 11 marketking boots right up your candy asses.
So get to work and pervert Linux some more.
And get down on your knees and give thanks to Jon Katz, the becon of light to keep the moths fluttering round and round and round and round and splattttt.
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
The only remedy is the one that is already in place.
:-) People need faster machines, different forms, bigger, better, you say... Yup!
Leave M$ on the x86 and ONLY on the x86. Declare it a dead loss. Since they have no presence on any other platform it requires no change.
But the x86 platform is going away, you say... (Not even Intel wants to do it anymore
Let M$ go the way of DRI. Superceeded by superior software on superior hardware. (Linux is ALREADY on Merced/Itanium, PPC, Alpha, AS400, S390, Cray, hand-helds...)
That's the only remedy that's required. Nail them to their own coffin.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
This is a security feature not a bug or oversite. A weak security feature true (we are talking MS here) but this capability was intentially left out to increase security.
But don't get me started on leaving out a defragment tool until W2K.
Melvin -- Heinlien had it right. Any soceity that grows to the point of requiring IDs is a soceity to leave behind.
Bill Gates, it was clear, had given up on this judge, first patronizing, then brazenly lying to him, finally going for the end run, perhaps in the hope that a Republican would shortly take up residence in the White House.
All right Katz, stop trying to grind your own political axe here. Antitrust enforcement has been a bastion of Republican administrations from Roosevelt to Reagan; it's hard to put faith in "free markets" without allowing the system that guarantees them to work to do so unfettered. So I hardly think that trying to push otherwise-conservative computer professionals away from Bush in the fear his administration might deliberately bury the MS case constitutes "journalistic integrity". Especially since a certain other pers^H^H^H^HVic^H^H^Hcandidate made overtures to Redmond as well, that might be perceived as even "friendlier".
Perhaps a subtle reminder is in order. When John Perry Barlow was Wyoming's congressman, what side of the aisle did he sit on? Or, more telling, that same Sherman Act that was applied in the case is named for Sen. John Sherman from Ohio, a Republican who sought his party's Presidential nomination three times (1880-88).
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
MOO;IANAL.
There used to be a picture linked here.
I never understoof the problem people have with rebooting a machine during an install. Yes it would be nice if I didnt have to reboot, but to use rebooting as a reason why Windows is hard to install is just idiotic.
I disagree. Just look at the articles that have gotten moderated up ? They all say the same thing: Katz is wrong.
It would be nice to be able to say that Microsoft's reign is over. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and it is unlikely that it will happen anytime soon, no matter what happens in the trial.
If Microsoft is broken up, Windows is not going away. The applications will become better, because they are going to have to compete on a more level playground. Microsoft is not going bankrupt.
And, for the record, yeah, I hate Microsoft, and I hope they will eventually be brought to justice. And, I do hope that they might become a responsible company with ethical business practices.. I know it is far too much to ask, but one can always hope.
Well, let's see what the punishment for Microsoft will be...
Backing out of the settlement may look bad on microsoft. but let's step back for a second.
Scenario 1: the punishment seriously affects microsoft's profits
Microsoft has demonstrated that many people are dependent on microsoft doing well. If microsoft goes down, the will take down NASDAQ, DOW, DJIA, etc all the way to London with them. Microsoft is an essential part of the US economy, if not the world. they are telling DOJ/USGOV that if we go down, we'll take everybody down with us; so go easy on US and we'll go easy on ALL OF YOU.
Scenario 2: Microsoft able to appeal / fine and damages not too severe.
With steady revenue and cash at hand, they are able to buy back microsoft shares at ridicolously low low prices.
Brilliant
Hasdi
I wonder if Jon really believes this stuff he writes, or if he does it just to ingratiate himself with the readers of Slashdot. Seriously, was there ANYTHING of any significance in that?
The Microsoft world is over, but why Jon? You seen afraid to come to the conclusion because it goes against the anti-Microsoft sentiment; the answer is that competition has ended the Microsoft world, for the betterment of Microsoft and everyone else. It wasn't this lawsuit, it wasn't the finding of fact and it wasn't this ruling...it was the same people out there who in the spirit of capitalism and free enterprise decided they wanted a piece of what Microsoft had and they went out and got it. Did they wait for this ruling? No, they went out and did something about it; they took pieces of what Microsoft had, making it better, making Microsoft reach to become better to keep up. You and the Naboo^H^H^H Microsoft form a symbiant circle: you push each other to do more, to do better. Whether the motivating factor is seething hatred or fear of losing marketplace dominance it doesn't matter.
If you think that the government and states are in this to stick up for the little people (5 billion dollar Netscape?) that Microsoft supposedly squashed think again. The government wants the $$$$; they go after tobacco, they go after guns, they go after Microsoft...unpopular companies with deep pockets.
So I guess just keep using your feelings for Microsoft to your advantage: work to knock every leg out from under Microsoft..that way everyone wins no matter if you are successful or not. And to those of you who just whine and ride the bandwagon here, ha ha!
There are 2001 software companies out there who have a *great* idea and are trying to market it. Some will succeed mildly, and die out. Some will completely fail before selling one copy of their software. And some will grow to be the software powerhouses of the future. The point is that everyone wants the latter to be the case for their company. Everyone wants to be the biggest and the best. We can criticize Gates and MS, but most of us wouldn't mind being where he is. Money is a powerful substance, and most people would exchange their ideas, beliefs, and maybe even their operating system if enough money was on the line.
Linux: Because rebooting is for adding new hardware.
I don't think anyone is surprised at the ruling, even those who may not agree. Even if Microsoft was lilly-white, their behavior during the trial was amazingly arrogant and suspicious.
However, with the media attention and innovations elsewhere, the dirty little secret is that Microsoft has become increasingly irrelevant. They're up against new and newly-appreciated OSes, the web dominates, Open Source poses new challenges, ASP comes in several flavors (and faces competition with PHP), etc. Microsoft does a lot of stuff, but anyone else can do it another way, and in many cases, better. Right now they make an OS that more or less works and some products - that's it.
The ultimate irony, to me, is that I feel Microsoft undermined themselves with their delayed rush to the web and the internet. It made people aware of their flaws, it brought out their worst nature, and it gave people access to options they never would have had. They could have learned FROM the internet and the web and Open Source, but by merely rushing to get product out the door, they highlighted their own flaws and gave people the tools to get around them.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
I really don't disagree with the points you're making about the short-sightedness; the only disagreement is whether the short-sightedness is the problem, or their predatory practices are the problem.
For all of the problems you note, I can't think of one that would have survived in an open marketplace. The only reason their products survive with these flaws was that any competetion (meaning: anyone who was doing it better) was silenced by one means or another. The list of products that tried - Desqview, DR-Dos, a long line of office products and so on - couldn't compete with factory-installed Microsoft products (particularly when Microsoft wouldn't let the factories install anything else!).
Monopoly? You bet -- if they weren't, they'd have been put out of business long ago.
Is it really fair to call Microsoft's approach short-sighted, though? The problem isn't with lack of foresight, but with the approach. Short-sightedness surely slows the technological growth, but it also leads to eventual economic problems for a company. That's bad in a lot of ways, but not illegal.
The approach taken (according to the judge's ruling) was illegal: using a leading position in a market to effectively wipe out competetion. Essentially, it's using force to obscure the short-sightedness. When this approach is taken, the entire marketplace suffers (which, according to current law, justifies intervention by the government). Those with sufficient foresight pursue alternatives while the masses are still blinded, but eventually the truth will be known.
And, as in most cases, the sooner the truth is known, the better off we all are.
What a bunch of open-source self involved rhetoric. Open source and slashdot saving us from the evil empire. My A$$.
Get your ducks in a row. It's quite possible that the "Justice Department pols falling all over one another yesterday to get their pusses in front of the TV cameras" set up an environment in which Open Source, Slashdot, and Linux could come to the forefront like it has.
I think the reality of this situation is far different than you have seemed to make it. But hey all you slashdotters don't you feel good, Jon Katz said we were important in the fall of Microsoft. You sound like a politician too, Jon.
/*---------------------------*/
Man? What is man?
But a collection of chemicals with delusions of granduer.
/*---------------------------*/
Man? What is man?
But a collection of chemicals with delusions of granduer.
Ensemble studious made both AOE and AOE2.
Microsoft was "only" a publisher.
Well, for the Win32 API we have that, in theory. However, we all know that the documentation (or any documentation for a closed source API of this complexity) is insufficient to develop anything Microsoft is capable of developing. When I am trying to do something new with Windows, I spend far more time trying to "reverse-engineer" what the API actually does through trial-and-error than anything else.
Fortunately, MFC _does_ come with the source, otherwise it would be useless for anyone who doesn't use the highly-restrictive and unpowerful ClassWizard tool to generate code. Having the source is the only way to understand much of what goes on in MFC and to use it most effectively. Actually, my experience in effective use of MFC is systematic replacement with my own class library, no small task, but doable a piece at a time.
You're absolutely right, but given the Micros~1 track record with documentation, even when they _are_ trying to be forthright, I think they will always have an unfiar advantage. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to level the playing field, but I think investing your energy in open-source alternatives is probably the best way to change things for the better.
Of course, Microsoft could document their file formats, keep their OLE interfaces consistent from version to version, and give copious and less trivial source code examples with their development tools. Those won't fix all the problems, but it could help a lot.
Another crazy idea that they will never do is to release the source to Windows 3. It's dead, unsupported technology that still has millions of users. Micros~1 could earn lots of good will and actually help a lot of people by doing that. Furthermore, since so much of Windows 3 is still in Windows 4 (er, Windows 98), it would give developers of current code more insight into how this stuff works.
The fact remains, that no one will ever be able to compete on level ground with Micros~1 in the Windows OS territory or, to a large extent, the the office applications market, because everything is closed source. We will never be able to understand Windows as well as Microsoft can, and we will never learn the hard-won lessons of most vendors writing Windows software. Thankfully, there are projects like Mozilla to help turn the tide, but the only alternative to put power in the hands of the software developers is platform that is open source from the ground
up.
Micros~1 won a long time ago, and it's up to the software community to evolve the industry to something more mature, powerful and productive. Micros~1 wants to maintain the status quo and any meddling from the government, however well intentioned, will AT BEST fail to improve the situation.
Rick
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Not bad, a 50% day for Jon Katz. This rant was as bad as the Pinkerton one was good.
Jon, you and all the other who complain about using '19th century' laws to defeat a '21st century' company are missing the point. A good law stands the test of time. Hence 213 years under the US Constitution. To put it another way, is Linux bad because it emulates a 30 year old operating system? Didn't think so. Quality in any form stands the test of time.
When a company with a greater gross profit than the GDPs of most countries of the world gets out of line, there's only one institution that can take them on: the US government. Were you this annoyed at the IBM case? the AT&T case?
Maybe you live in a post MS world, but I think you missed a further point: this case was about who would control what might become the post-MS world. If MS keeps bundling IIS/ASP with Win2000, if IE comes with every OS except Linux and BSD, if all set top boxes run WinCE, how post-MS is this?
This case has likely prevented MS from being more onerous and simultaneously gave other OSes the breathing room necessary. The decision yesterday DOES matter. It gives a little more breathing room. It will also hopefully kill off some of these miserable dotcom's that never should have gotten any public funding to begin with. BTW, did you happen to notice that RHAT was up in yesterday's trading? So were many blue chips. This decision finally sent a message that it's time to grow up. dotcom's and e-businesses (M$ being the most obvious in the eyes of the public) are still companies. They are hives of wizened mages. They are companies allowed to form for the PUBLIC good. In that respect, they are no different from a coal mine, a train company, an oil company, or an auto maker. And as such, they are subject to the same laws. A corporation is given a certain level of trust by the government. M$ broke that trust, and now it's time to pay the piper. It's the right thing to do. 19th century or 21st century.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
So what happens to MS? If they're broken up, the Windows division will still be vomiting out the OS most people use, and other divisions will still be spitting out software for it. Although they might then have more of an incentive to port the talking paper clip to other OSes, most users will stick with what they know. Of course, it's great to see more software available for Linux, but a post-Microsoft era it ain't - it's another small step, just with extra hype.
Microsoft is more than a software company, it's a content provider (MSN), and with the coming of the X-box, is moving quickly to become a hardware provider, as well.
Katz is correct, Microsoft has not pioneered the forefronts of technological innovation. As a matter of fact, though, Microsoft has never pioneered anything. The danger in Microsoft is their abilitiy to sell products, inferior or breakthrough, to consumers, thereby dominating consumer thought, and taking away choice.
Erm... I'm sorry, but I have to reply to this one. I'll try not to flame... really...
If you linux users could ONLY connect to the internet like good win9x users you wouldn't need a secure OS.
Anything that connects to the internet has to be secure these days. You just try hooking your Win95/98/00 machine up with a cable modem for more than 6 hours without getting hack attempts from all over the world. If you leave Netbios ports open and have file/print sharing turned on, you might as well just buy a billboard ad along any major freeway and put your machine name, IP address, and administrator password on it. And guess what? Windows (all varieties, all versions) comes with all that crap enabled BY DEFAULT! Yes, MICROS~1 wants your machine to be as secure as a dollar bill blowing gently down a busy sidewalk; there's no other reason why they'd do that.
Windows hardly ever has a problem or a glitch
Okay, now, I know this has to be a troll... it's just too obviously wrong and too easily disproven. Just ask anyone who experiences the BSOD on a daily basis...
that linux version of McAffe-another 3l33t company-only protects again two virii, the Windows version protects against thousands-- what does that tell you huh?
It tells me that a virus running on Linux has as much chance of propagating itself as a really ugly nun. Unless you do everything as root, and run things without knowing what they are AS root, and are just basically an idiot, a virus cannot do much to you... hence, there just aren't that many for Mc3l33t to protect you from.
Windows... isn't near as hard to fix as a Mac...
You've obviously never used a Mac. I have to support and administer them on a daily basis, and trust me; they are just as unreliable and unstable as Windows.
Windows... doesn't require a PHD level education to administer.
Given the number of Windows boxes out there with port 139 open to the entire world (that's your Netbios/File sharing port, by the way), it must take some level of intelligence/education beyond what almost everyone on earth has. At least Linux doesn't install all of its services defaulted to "allow complete strangers in without a password." At least Linux isn't susceptible to virii unless you're an idiot. At least Linux doesn't crash 12 times a day because of all the OS memory leaks and bad file management. At least Linux doesn't cost you a few days' salary. At least Linux doesn't hide any dirty little secrets in its source code. And, at least Linux isn't limited because it's being made by developers who care more about their paychecks and keeping God Mother Bill happy than they do about making something that works, doesn't stifle competition, and doesn't destroy standards in a desperate attempt to be The Most Important and Profitable Thing in the Universe.
Get a current OS, one marked 2000 from a company you can trust...
The last stable Linux version (v2.2.14) has a date stamp of 2000-01-04 19:40 UTC (that's 2:40 PM EST on January 4th, 2000, for the geek-challenged). The latest beta version is from March 24th, 2000, and the latest alpha test version is from yesterday. Can Windows 2000 claim upgrades anywhere near that recent? Last I checked, there are still many many bugs, and no fixes for them. As for trust... I trust an international, non-monetarily- or politically-motivated group of developers who develop things because they LIKE to more than I trust a bunch of copycat programmers who take 5-year-old Windows code and the best ideas of Unix, put a prettier GUI on it, call it "innovation" instead of "assimilation," change world-accepted standards just enough to break everything except Windows platforms, and sell it at a 10,000% profit. Did you know that Windows NT(r) was developed by taking VMS (oh look; 60's technology!) and porting it to the x86 architecture? Did you? Did you know MS hired the guy who originally made VMS to turn it into NT(r)? Hmmm?
So hot grits to you too! Thank you.
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
Nobody got me... :) It didn't matter if it was a troll or not, because there are people out there who do think like that and they need to be taught the reasons why the way they feel is wrong. Education is the key to our eventually winning this war against MS and all that it stands for; the post I was responding to was just a handy vehicle for the dissemination of truth.
Fight the power! Thank you. heh.
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
I have to disagree with you on these points.
I am in the computing profession (majored in it in undergrad) and while you are correct: I do not know how paging works, however, I do know it exists and that I have to respect its existance.
However, many people have no desire to know or care. It is people like this that benifit from the Windows. Granted this dumbing down produces comments like "AOL is the internet."
Never-the-less providing seemless systems to end users so that they don't have to know about the internals is the name of the game. If you need any proof then look how big a deal the linux community is making of improving the install process. There is no reason that the user should know about scan and refresh rates. Or what an X server is. That there are multiple WMs yes but not Xservers.
Predestination was doomed from the start.
Yes this is a great paradox. By bringing computing to the masses, Bill also acheived a great dumbing down.
Two reactions to this:
a) Is it possible to do it any other way???
b) By definition not Everyone can know how it works, not Everyone knows the workings of the Linux kernel but it is considered to be a freedom bringing operating system.
Predestination was doomed from the start.
So this is the post microsoft world? Will it be known as "The PMS Age" or "The PM$ Age"?
Any old name will do.
No hardware companies, no deep infrastructure, just stuff to keep people busy and happy.
Perhaps you remember the third member of the triad: Bill, Steve, and Paul. You DO remember what Paul Allen has been buying for the last 5 years or so, right? (hint: it's called cable)
--
+&x
Proof positive that business can fix itself...whether or not something has a monopoly, the consumer has the power to change it. *NOT* the government. They've got their damn hands in everything I do, especially all this MPAA RIAA crap, not to mention that they take 40% of my income for crap that has no benefit to me or my liberty, and goes towards programs that actually take *away* my liberty. Thomas Jefferson is probably rolling over in his grave.
Joe
First, Microsoft would be required to provide full applications support for all competitive platforms (anything with approximately 3% of the total market or more). This would include Macintosh and Linux. Microsoft offers partial support for Macintosh today, with a version of Office that lacks web development or database support. They would be required to move the missing pieces of Office as well. Additionally, they would be required to port to Linux and any OS that met those criteria, with full feature parity and simultaneous releases for all platforms. This would ensure continued support for Microsoft's competition, and give users the freedom to use any platform they wanted. It also would probably increase Microsoft's overall application sales.
Ummm...
(1) What if the target OS doesn't have enough features as part of the platform to support full feature parity? For example, Linux printing support is frankly complete crap. So do you force Microsoft to create a full GDI->Postscript engine for that platform? Or do you want a complete rewrite from scratch?
(2) As I've noted before, some platforms just ain't worth it - the Mac has a 1500% piracy rate (going off figures I heard for the software company I work for - which shall remain nameless) compared to a more benign 500% piracy rate for Windows based systems. How much piracy do you think will happen under Linux? Given that people expect to be given everything including the kitchen sink for free...
Third, allow Microsoft to embed Internet functionality in the operating system (but with the same openness requirement as above). Make Internet Explorer a separate program, though. Move it to the applications group at Microsoft. The same with Windows Media Player (which is trying today to kill off RealNetworks' Real Player and Apple's QuickTime).
Ummm... why should IE be a separate program? I mean, heck - let's just remove IEXPLORE.EXE from the system, and leave the DLLs in there. I don't know about any other engineers reading this, but I personally see great value in having a system-wide, readily available, HTML Rendering Surface as part of the OS. It saves *months* of work if you need to display complicated text.
Alternatively, everyone could just switch to using RichEdit. You'd still have to write the parser, but RichEdit 3.0 is rich enough to support maybe 60% of everything that the IE web-browser controls support. Funnily enough, no-one ever considers how damaging this is to cheap 3rd party word-processor vendors.
Come on - even the evidence in the trial states that:
(1) Netscape's QA was regarded as totally inadequate *by netscape's executives*.
(2) Netscape lost the Intuit deals because they weren't willing and weren't able (hey, this is Netscape executives' saying this, not me) to provide a browser that could be used in the same way that IE can - as a component that provides rendering services to applications.
(3) Netscape's business plan was always to give away the browser, and sell the server. At that point, browsers had always been free. So what if Microsoft gave theirs away for free? That's what Netscape was going to do. That's what the NCSA did.
OK... this next one's not trial evidence, but is the evidence of several thousands of users across the planet:
(4) Netscape's buggy, lossy, has problems on the Mac (occasionally wipes out HFS+ partitions - and blames it on Speed Doubler or something - even though I've seen it happen on machines without that app installed, so it can't be that), has problems on Linux (occasionally takes down X; crashes during cut & paste; is slow and generally buggy), doesn't support Java 1.1 correctly (has its own resource handling mechanisms, buggy non-standard AWT support, non-standard security mechanisms), doesn't support HTML, XML, CSS 2.0 and XSL correctly, and much much more.
So... did Microsoft kill off Netscape or not? I'd say Netscape did a pretty damn good job of killing themselves off. Microsoft just sped up the process.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Triple click (to select an entire line) does not work on any M$ ware.
*ahem* Actually, it selects the current paragraph. Which in a wordprocessor that does reflowing/wordwrapping, amounts to the same thing as "entire line".
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
We don't really need the source to Windows itself.. We don't need to know how Windows does it, but we should have a good definition of what "IT" is.. Wether thats the .DOC format, or the authentication that NT uses in NetBEUI, or what, it should be mandatory that what an OS *DOES* be documented in detail. We don't need multiple variant versions of Windows, but Microsoft should be prevented from keeping how two systems (or programs, etc) communicate to prevent someone from making something which is interoperable.
The media coverage of this story was very interesting to me.
It seems that these days fairness in the mainstream media means not taking a mega-corporation to task when they have been proven to be corrupt and unlawful. It's almost as if they don't recognize the damages that THEY incurred along with the rest of us.
Predominately, it seemed like the mainstream press, Washington Post, NY Times, NBC, ABC, CBS, and CNN, were all very soft on Microsoft, tending to focus on strength of appeal for Microsoft, rather than the crimes Microsoft was determined to have committed. It's ironic that in all the discussion focusing on the Microsoft spin, i.e. they would easily appeal, it was never mentioned that it is very hard for appellate court to overturn the finding of fact of a lower judge, it is far easier for them to determine that the judge reached the wrong conclusion based on the facts, but something would have to be seriously wrong with the finding for it to be overturned factually. Thus even if the sentence is reduced it is likely that the finding of fact will always be that Microsoft is both predatory and monopolistic. Moreover, Microsoft's direct damage to other companies, such as Apple, Intel, and Netscape was rarely mentioned in more than a sentence or two.
Its funny that almost oppositely, the computing media, such as Wired, PC-Week, etc. all seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief over the verdict.
I'm going to dig out my copy of Manufacturing Consent.
Some of us have been post-Microsoft for over five years!
What do you mean by that? Do you mean that you're toying around, maybe earning a living, from an alternate platform not M$ sourced?
Or perhaps you mean that you've been fighting middle and upper management, trying to regain your professional credibility, because you think that just repeating M$-produced catch phrases, and their buggy, instable software, is against your work ethic?
To me, Microsoft's greatest damage has been cultural; IT professionals, grunts, "guru's", aren't worth anything anymore; anybody who's been in a position where you have to actually convince people that they've been truly brainwashed by Microsoft's PR department know what I'm talking about.
A mechanic HAS to learn to use each and every one of his tools; if a new one appears, he learns to use it and applies it to his work. But a computer? Hmm... that's tech stuff, leave it to the tech guys. Hell!! A computer is just a tool, LEARN to use it!
Bill Gate's message was: "Don't, no need to learn a new tool, look! You can be as dumb and useless as you want to! Just give us your money and we'll hoard all the power and knowledge, you just do your thing."
The man should be shot for that. And all those who let themselves become useless keyboard-potatos for believing him also.
Flame away. :-)
-elf
The same was said of Big Tobacco.
and its insurance company is already putting aside billions to start drawing interest for the inevitable day when the settlements must be paid.
Wait till they have to make a lump-sum payment of US$300 billion.
Jon, you're making the presumption that MSFT's lawyers are competent, which is a fact not in evidence. Take a look at the trial Judge Jackson presided over, and all of the "mindcrafted" evidence they attempted to submit, much to DoJ's amusement and delight.
Besides, the biggest class of user is going to be the government, both state and federal. The same laws that let them hack on Big Tobacco will be applied to MSFT.
James
Don't start the party yet. MS is long from dead.
There are two main points here. Appeals will take years and a breakup won't (immediately) kill MS.
Pretty much regardless of the decision handed down MS will be appealing. Bill has the lawyers to prolong this case damn near indefinitely. Not that any of the abuses that they are being dragged through court for are current issues. This is one of the problems w/ this case. Tech moves quickly, law doesn't. By the time MS finishes a legal filibuster they will have positioned themselves as to not be affected by the outcome of a loss. I wouldn't be surprised to see this case drag on for 5-10 more years.
Even so, assume they do break them up in the forseeable future. The party still can't start. Just because they aren't the same company doesn't mean they will roll over and dissappear off from the computing map. they can/will still do business w/ each other. maybe in a few generations of post-breakup management the rifts will become more apparent but, in the short term, it will remain business as usual. The company structure is largely broken up into divisions as it is. the split will likely happen down those division lines. the framework for business w/ each other is already there and whom do you think they will be most comfortable working w/?
Somewhat related, the opening of the MS source. I don't see how this would happen at all but it would be fantastic. MS, for all its things that annoy me, has alot of good things bundled into their code. I would love to see what happens when the open source community cleans up the code. Although, I was hoping for the same when netscape went open source nothing good happened there.
The legal way to compete is to provide a better product or a better price. AMD vs Intel is a good example of this kind of healthy competition (although Intel is right on the edge of being legal). Microsoft's exclusionary contracts with the PC manufacturers are just using it's size and dominance to push it's own products where it knows market forces would not have succeeded. You can't blame them for trying (although MSFT shareholders can't be too happy about the last year), but it's hardly in your best interest as a consumer to have competition eliminated in this way. I'm all for free market competition, and that's the whole point of anti-monopoly laws - to support free markets. Monopoly's just gat fat, lazy, and screw the consumer because they can - competition keeps them honest. Of course a smart company will steer just this side of the law - Bill Gates got way too arrogant and got what he deserved (an $11B hole in his pocket).
Except that this is not real money, just monopoly money.
MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
OK folks,
Can anyone here tell me the 2 largest commercial uses of Nanotechnolgy, RIGHT NOW?
Care to guess? I was at a talk on this very topic this weekend, and it's all deep lab stuff except for 2 main uses.
Can you say, Industrial cutting tools, and cosmetics? For cutting tools, they are using fused nanopowders to form the cutting tools - when a chunk rips off the tool, it's a smaller chunk, so the tool lasts a lot longer.
For cosmetics, they are using nanopowders to defract UV rays (But not visible light) to make transparent sun screen
THAT'S it! That's about the current limit on "Nanotech".
One of the BIG (or should I say small) problems with nanotech is energy storage and delivery. How do you get energy into a "Nano" device? Yes, people are looking into carbon tubes, but that research has been done mostly by labs that are less than strict about little things like peer review. Remember that one of the highest energy storage densities is buring fossil fuels - try that in your nano device
Oh well, there goes a few karma points, but...
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Sure you'll make a few people happy some of the time. But you'll still need the conglomerates and companies supporting you. Open source is nice, but where would we be without Microsoft? Using IBM's mainframes? Remember that IBM did not think anyone would ever want a personal computer.
You said it, bro! Compatability. Linux is great if you have an infinite amount of time on your hands. For the other 98% of the market who do not, there is Microsoft and Apple. Yes, Apple is there and people are using their computers and no, they are not running Windows. Wow! Did you even realise that not everyone uses Windows? Maybe the DOJ should study this more seriously.
I've installed many a' Mac in my time. You may not believe me (try it yourself) but neither is harder or easier. They both take about the same amount of effort. I built my own PC running Win98 and have hooked up Mac after G3 after Quadra. WinBlows installs with a CD. Macs install with a CD. You hit 'install' on either and wait.
I'm not sure what you are trying to say; either M$ is a dominating, monopolistic force destined to take over the world OR they should not be held accountable to 18th century laws. I miss your intended point. Microsoft is NOT a Monopoly. Period. They do not dominate. They most certainly do not PREDOMINATE home and corporate desktops. If they do then Apple, Linux and every other operating system in use today is a figment of my imagination. Of course, I do have a big imagination. Microsoft is not a monopoly. Microsoft is not a monopoly. Microsoft is not a monopoly.
You have the perfect motto for yourself, 'Ignorance is Bliss'. Apparently you do not understand business. I would like to see you start a company and give all of your competitors your secrets and some of your profits so they can implement them for themselves. If your competitors complain about unfair practices then you can let them into your company and help them out. There is no law which prohibits you from beating out the competition. If there is one, show me, because that means that every company in America will have to be punished. We live in a Democracy, a free economy is part of said foundation and the ability to operate without an oppressive government breathing down your back. If you want Socialism, go to Cuba, Russia or some other country.
Yep, it seems to be 'cool' to bash M$ right now. And lots of people have jumped on the bandwagon. They haven't given thought as to what's really going on. You techies in the IT field out there, do you make money off support for Linux or Windows? I'm willing to bet you are supporting yourself or your family working on Windows98 and NT, not Linux or Mac. Well, maybe Mac. Those of you who use Linux probably and most likely have a seperate Windows machine to run all your apps, leaving Linux as a server-only machine. That's what most of my friends do. But you continue to bash M$. Hmmm...why don't you stop using Windows?
I can't believe you guys, as intellectually blessed as you are, can't see through this bull. Whether it is a 'Post Microsoft' world or not, the fact is that it is the 'New Age' for our blessed government. Now they have more power to shut down or break up businesses practicing 'unfair' tactics. You had better wake up because the next company targeted by the government might be yours.
Well now that Microsoft is officially a monopoly that illegaly abused its power there will be no reason for them to continue pretending there are other 'viable alternatives' to their operating systems.
Will there be any reason for them to continue to encourage or even permit their biggest customers to ship alternative operating systems? Will calls go out from Redmond causing the big OEMs such as Compaq and Dell to curtail their Linux offerings?
I don't know if that will happen but I suppose it's possible. I think that Linux would have done well over the last two years on its own; However I would question if it would have exploded like it did if the DOJ wasn't breathing down Microsoft's neck.
Keep your eyes open for the big guns coming out of Redmond targeted on Linux in the next few months.
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
Windows may be bloated and slow, but at least it supports all my hardware, Which is more than I can say for Linux and BeOS, among others. Also we need more software support for these alternate OS.. Linux is getting better but still.. As far as software and hardware support, MS has the advantage because they work with and support the hardware and software vendors.
Even if Microsoft is split up in Baby Bills, this won't automatically change MS Office's market share.
That isn't the point of splitting the company up. I liken splitting up Microsoft to seperating the criminal from a gun. If, for example, Office and Windows are spun off into smaller companies, they will still (theoretically), be able to create Office and Windows, respectively. The difference is: the Windows company won't be able to leverage it's dominance in the word processing field in order to stifle competition, and vice verca (sp?).
All that has to happen for Microsoft to lose its oft-touted 95% dominance of the desktop is for computers to be cheap enough.
How far away are we from a solar powered piece of flexible plastic that costs $5 and has embedded in it the equivalent of a 100 MHz pentium, 32 MB RAM, 800 x 600 x 16bpp display, and a wireless satellite modem that could be air dropped en masse over every poor village on earth? Five years max? Those specs are pretty conservative and are more than enough to run linux just fine.
When hardware is that cheap, and it's clearly headed there soon, nothing will redeem desktop dominance for a company that depends on ~$100 liscensing fees.
Even if every computer user alive today still wants to spend $2k on their system and use windows five years from now, that number of users will be dwarfed by the number of $5 plastic computer users worldwide, and there goes window's desktop dominance.
Anyone have the half-life of the computer user community today (the number of years it currently takes for the number of computer users to double)?
That would be an interesting figure to track.
Attack Microsoft if you want to, maybe you have a point and maybe not. But I think at least they deserve people to look at their whole record not just how they seemed to be at the end of the 20th century.
:-)
During the 70's and 80's I worked for "computer" companies with management so dumb that if it had been left to them everyone would today still be using wooden calculators. Microsoft beat those companies because they were smarter and also(gasp) even cared slightly about what end users actually wanted. Believe me, without Microsoft (OK, and others) breaking up the cosy mainframe world of ten or fifteen years back we would not have the present luxury of the commodity computer market to put cheap iron at our fingertips.
I remember DOS 4.10, OS/2 v1, Windows 1 and 2, and plenty of other products into which Microsoft put money and effort for no obvious reward. When they finally got it right you can't blame them for exploiting that to the hilt and beyond.
Although since now by anyone's reckoning they've had their ROI they could certainly move over and let Open Source see how it likes sitting in the driving seat
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
Oh, there's a great story about Bill Gates in the Onion:
Bill Gates Grants Self 18 Dexterity, 20 Charisma
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
My "Of course, good luck to the U.S. government if they ever want to break up Sony..." quote was actually meant in a hopeless sense, such as "Good luck trying to sell your refrigerators in Alaska.." Since Sony is unperturbed by US law, like all Japanese companies, obviously the US government can't break them up even though they seem to be headed closer and closer to a Micros~1 style monopoly in this country. In fact, it occurs to me that the US government is more or less powerless against companies located in other countries if you combine the anti-trade restraint WTO with the other country's national sovriegnty (in as much as that still exists with the WTO in place).
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
-=General MSFT comment near END=-
/. Posting that your KDE screen is as easy as other OSs isn't too far off the mark, but the thread degrading into a comparative of installation ease is just silly. /. readers can and will install on systems owned by businesses happy to see Linux installed and doing its magic, then (and only then) M$FT has reason to fear.
Maniack's original post was in reference to people UNlike most of us reading
Here's why: Most users of M$FT products *don't* install M$FT products. They purchase systems that have M$FT products pre-installed or they contract a consultant to install what they'll first evaluate or have recommended to them. These lusers are the businesses of America that have given M$FT the stable pedestals to stand on. Once a Linux distro is created that us
Do Linux a favor today: The next time a business asks you to show them software that can do *this* or *that* with easy of use, show some Linux! M$FT will also fear the consultants and contractors that aren't afraid to show off some Linux!
-=General M$FT Comment=-: I found it particularly irksome yesterday to see M$FT counsel claim that this case 'was pushed through too quickly', when not even 4 mos. ago, they were claiming that 'this particularly long case' wasn't moving quick enough because their market was moving in 'Internet Time'... Sheeesh. More evidence of arrogance over-taking common business sense. When Uncle Sam knocks on the front door, you don't attempt to run out the back.
The Sherman anti-trust act is a 19th Century law, and we are still in the 20th Century.
Under 18th Century law, MS would be able to do whatever it wants, for example import slaves to write code, or secede from the US (actually secede from Russia, since they claimed the Pacific Northwest in the 18th Century.)
Under 21st Century business realities, I think (hope) tyranny by vendors of bug-ridden software will be much les than it has been in the 20th Century.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
'Perhaps the post-Microsoft world began between when Linus Torvald began his software experiment...'
The Microsoft world never was - without Unix the internet wouldn't work, without Microsoft the internet would be chugging along just fine. And just look at the money being poured into developing mobile phone systems that are capable of browsing and using email. The internet is going to become the main interface between human beings and all the information and knowledge that human beings have accumulated in our history.
As for Linux, how on earth is it in any way relevant to the bigger picture beyond your personal Intel/AMD deskbound solution?
- OEMs now are less disinclined to even offer another OS besides Windows
- Linux-related companies are making progress
- Microsoft has been somewhat encumbered to use its traditional means of 'competition'
This ruling, this judgement, is an ending of one phase and the beginning of another. It is a milemarker along the way of change.I noted in reading the Findings of Law yesterday, that Jackson said, that despite Microsoft's actions to block Netscape from ever appearing in front of a user's face, that somehow it had managed to distribute 160 million copies of Navigator in 1998. The reason is that Microsoft's usual tactics were not able to stop people from freely downloading Navigator/Communicator on their own, and that this form of distribution, i.e. the Internet, by its nature was immune from Microsoft's efforts at foreclosure. No matter what they did, they couldn't keep people from exercising their right of choice. Blessed be the Internet.
Regarding the thought, "Had the government intervened a decade ago...", I want to ask, Isn't this when the Antitrust Division first started looking into Microsoft's behavior? And that this effort resulted in the ineffectual consent decree of 1994(1995, whatever)? My thinking is that the government, i.e. the antitrust division, had been in the process of intervening even a decade ago. But I could be wrong about going back as far as 1990. And bear in mind that the current judgement is a milemarker in a process that started in 1997, 1998, I think, at least in as much as the suit was formally filed. I imagine there had been considerable effort prior to that formal filing.
I think PART of the success of Linux, etc. has been due to Microsoft's failure to give the customer what they want. I speak of those things that people laud Linux for and decry Microsoft. To list a few: stability, stability, stability, efficiency, lower cost, lower support, more dependable, greater customizability, greater degree of ownership, less entanglements and restrictions, and so on. So I think part of why Linux is succeeded is that Microsoft has failed in a number of areas that are important. Microsoft didnt' see this one coming when they confidently ignored customer wants and needs, comfortable in their monopoly. The old SNL line from a Lily Tomlin skit, "We're the phone company. We don't care, we don't have to!", seems to be appropriate here. Well, oops!!! They didn't see Linux coming.
Gates is either the smartest, most insightful, most deep thinking human on the planet, or he still just doesn't get it, and moreover...refuses to even remotely acknowledge that there is even something to get.
And the anti-competitive tactics used are as old as the wheel. Or older. Spears, Cave Bear skins, Mainframes, Railroads, Oil, Software....It doesn't matter the domain..the intent and the methods are the same.
...have been greatly exaggerated. By this evening, we'll all be back to talking about f-ing Elian. This ruling doesn't carry much weight with non-geeks -- they don't want choice, they want peace of mind.
Now, i know this sucks, and I know that peace of mind, with respect to an os, should come from a knowledge and understanding that you're using something reliable, flexible, and as easy to use as the first two constraints allow for. But the average bear (oh, god, another post condescending re: "average folks") is easily fooled by brand image, complacency, FUD, and any number of other things. They don't *want* a choice. My office runs Office, and so, probably, does yours.
Choices will proliferate, now, but they can't market the way that MS can, and as the kind folks at RC cola will tell you, brand loyalty can be a bitch to overcome. There's been linux for years now, and Mac OS -- this entire mob of us, on any other day of the year, would be talking about how we don't need corporations to produce good software, and yet here we are talking about how finally, with corporations free from MS, good software can finally be produced? The freedoms and the products have been around for years, a bit restricted by MS, and linux is a good example of the decline of MS's control. And yet, there's little decline in market share.
So I'd say that we've been post-ms-tech-monopoly for a while, and it doesn't really matter, cause they've got the name, and it's a name that bothers me, but not my dad or my boss. Legal remedies won't change the fact that Microsoft is the Kleenex of softwares.
god is just pretend.
Post the decision against Microsoft, it would appear that many agree on little will change.
If anything I can see, at the least, attitudes will change. Maybe not Bill Gates attitude, but others will. How, is not exactly known.
Bill Gates has a large self esteem problem. His driving desire to gain a large control, at the same time as wishing to be viewed as somewhat as a visionary, is example of the fact the he cannot satisfy his ego/self esteem.
That said, it twists his view. Not only that, but post a decision that rules against his company, he feels put down, and sticks his arm up, "Dont forget about how much we have achieved and what we have done for the Computer Paradygm."
Now to a point this is true. In a lot of sense, Microsoft has done a lot for PC's, in that they ripped it away from Apple originally.
But it lays it down now, for exactly that. Apple and Microsoft were playing the same ballgame. Microsoft ripped it away. Whats good for the goose, is good for the gander. Microsoft is now, 100 billion away from being the largest company in the world. Who is going to stop anyone now Microsoft, from ripping the carpet from underneath you, when they can only be tried for their crimes, in 10 years, long after you have lost your company worth, and someone has bought you out.
You have set the example, even by losing the case, that it is possible to break the law, and get away with it.
Watch Your Back Microsoft, Watch Your Back.
The whole point of the "Baby Bill" scenario is that different divisions of M$ would not be able to cooperate any longer. Browser and internet services would be able to communicate with the operating system, but ONLY through public and well-documented APIs. The mozilla project would have to have the same low-level access to a more-open Windows 2002 as the IE team.
This would also apply to the Office division: they would no longer benefit from the close tie-ins with the parent Microsoft. They would be prohibited by law from neglecting a linux version just to protect their parent M$.
The baby bill breakup method is just one of a set of ways that M$ might have to open up its API system and development process.
While Office might continue to dominate the market, it would only be because it is a superior product, which it currently is. If open source beats it, it's because open source is better. No court decision will ever compel people to use inferior products just because they're "not proprietary."
So no one saw the impact of the Internet and Open Source/GNU/Linux and how it would affect the world, but suddenly Jon can claim to know that the ruling won't affect the future? Does anyone else see the problem with this logic?
The ruling matters because a company with X Billion dollars to burn is strong-arming companies out of the business.
I'm guessing that if this doesn't get resolved, the next big "innovation" will be welding voice-recognition software into the OS. There are only a few competing companies (Dragon just got snapped up), and where MS can't compete technically, they'll throw FUD around.
Personally, I wish MS would just improve its products instead of crushing its competitors. Hopefully the ruling will affect that (or provide real alternatives to Windows).
I thought the whole point of having experts was letting people specialize in fields; that way you can hire someone to come in and fix your computer, even though you don't know how.
You're right, a computer is just a tool. And people do need to know how to use it. But, people who are not into computers (at least not like I am) don't need to know how to recompile a kernel, install programs, etc.
I'm not, however, saying that Windows does a good job of this. It doesn't. MacOS, on the other hand, like BeOS, is, I think, very user friendly. They (well, BeOS at least, I have less experience with Macs) also allow the power user room to stretch his (or her) legs. They don't close off options, like Micrsoft's "wizards" do. They just hide them, until you go looking for them.
-Matthead
I don't buy the idea that Microsoft is primarily a 'software' company. Granted, much of their history is 'software' related, but starting in the mid 90's, that 'software' company started looking at Hardware. Microsoft has an entire line of PC Peripherals (keyboards, Mice, Speakers, Telephones, joysticks), as well as having eyes on things like cable television, 'set-top boxes' (a la webTV), Game consoles. I've been to presentations at MS HQ on home automation (they have an entire 'building' set up as the 'home of the future' type stuff with integrated climate, scheduing, entertainment, and the hole 9 yards).
Truth be told, they haven't had any significant new 'software' offerings since Windows95 (Win2k is a possible acception to this, but the jury is still out as to whether it's 'significant') and even Win95 came up 'short' from what was 'promised'... (remember the DOS-less Windows? It's STILL not here).
The Software sales-base has given them the capital to explore all these new 'hardware' and 'hardware/software' arenas. That's what the anti-trust was all about...
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
Did JK actually READ the conclusions of law? If so (it seems a little doubtful), he should at least, as a writer, appreciate the care with which every effort was made to cover all legal bases. Especially vis-a-vis appeals and...the Supreme Court.
/. community. Certainly neither /. or Jon Katz was gonna change the avergae person's view of M$ as a wonderful US success story based on "innovation".
It's all very well for Mister Katz to feel his pen is mightier than the sword of M$, or that said sword hath grown tired or outdated or whatever. But if he were actually running a high-tech enterprise in the real world he would certainly have to deal with the present presence of M$. When you can afford to give every soul in the US a few hundred bucks - but you settle for shelling out whenever yr PR suffers instead - you remain (whatever scribes say) a very prominent power.
It's offensive that the utterly huge efforts mounted by Boies, Klein and others should be treated as if they were beside the point. Just check out what M$ has been up to in China, Europe, etc whilst JK was deciding their "irrelevance".
There *is* something to be said for the billions of hours of hard, hard work which has gone into revealing M$'s true face to those beyond the
It took a LOT of people a LOT of work and, frankly, that is tougher than dashing off yet another cynical, got-there-first essay.
I'm sorry, but saying one OS is easier to install than another is FUD. The fact is a person is going to be more comfortable with installing the OS that they have more experience installing. Personally, I find Linux quite easy. Linux distro's typically come with everything I need. PCI card setup is simple just as it is in windows. Old ISA cards can be a pain because of resource conflicts. And I have had to install Windows more times than Linux because for some reason, I always seem to break it. Linux has better information and install support. Case in point: Just a few weeks ago, I got a new webcam and wanted to get Netmeeting working through my linux Firewall. After trying to forward the correct ports, I posted a question to alt.os.linux and not 4 hours later I had a reply from a person who was in contact with someone working on an ip masqerading module. He even gave me a link to a 3rd party program to gt it to work in the meantime. Now, If I wanted this kind of support from a MS product, I would have to pay out the ass to talk to someone with less experience than I have. And many seem to overlook that the average end user can not even fix, even install windows, when it breaks. The only reason that people say that Linux is hard is because it is new. And most people got into computers today with either Windows or MS Dos. Microsoft was one of the first to break into the home pc market and this is why so many people trust them. People still use it because we are lazy. No one wants to spend the time to learn another OS when all they want to do with it is write documents, check email and surf the net. And I do not blame them. For Linux to overtake Windows, many things will have to change. But IMHO, the most important thing that could happen to boost Linux is more systems with pre-installed Linux disros. Then, the average end user will give Linux brand recognition. BTW, My mom has no problem sitting down in front of a computer that runs Linux and KDE and doing every thing she needs to do. And she can not even install windows. It does not have to do with ease of install. It has to do simply with brand recognition. Not everyone is as insightful as us Slashdot readers and they don't care to be.
Wherever you are, there you are.
you're forgetting about the years of appeals and bargaining ahead...
anyone hear about the old IBM antitrust case?
I think it lasted something like 10 years before the case was dropped.
Not only that, I'm pretty sure that this is more of a civil case than a criminal case, and most of the penalties will be pecuniary rather than incarcerary (and I have no idea if that's a word or not... heh)
I'm not sure about MSCEs, but most people I see who advocate Windows are just not as computer savvy or technologically oriented enought to do that. Most people use Windows precisely BECAUSE they don't have to know very much about computers. I think what you propose just won't happen.
There's one BIG difference between Linux and Microsoft, regarding Judge Jackson's text. I read the whole thing and he goes to the trouble of explaining evertyhing with a lot of detail. The difference is Microsoft is a "profit maximizing firm"; if it wasn't it couldn't legally be considered monopolistic. Of course RedHat is the same, but even if it was stopped in the same manner, that wouldn't mean much - it wouldn't hurt Linux at all.
Microsoft has a monopoly on operating systems for Intel and Intel-like processors. Well, not a 100% monopoly, but enough that they can mercilessly pound commercial competitors in that market.
How many operating systems run on Sparc hardware? Before 1997, Sparcs had a larger deployed base than PC's (believe it or not, just a matter of corporate fact). Yet Sun was on the "beat MS down bandwagon".
What about C10's? They only run AIX (and Linux).
HP K-series boxes? HP-UX.
ES/9000's? MVS.
Ummm... does anyone else see a problem with this logic?
So, Microsoft provided a free web browser and integrated it with the operating system. Netscape, AFAIK, was the only *commercial* web browser on the market. EVERY other browser was FREE, just like IE.
So, Microsoft said "if you are going to support our competition, we won't give you a price break on pre-installed Windows". Duh! Common sense dictates that you help those who help you, otherwise you treat them fairly (SRP on Windows in this case).
What we see here, is the application of ambiguous laws designed to punish a business for acting in it's best interest (e.g. for doing a good job of being a busines).
It wasn't so long ago that the thought of a government punishing a software company for doing a good job (gaining a MARKET monopoly) would be revolting to the libertarian-minded folks on the net.
If government control of software (commercial or otherwise) seems appealing, someone please clue me in. The thought of a bureaucrat telling me how to write software, or how to conduct BUSINESS shakes me up a bit.
The Sherman Act of 1870 is a bad law, targeted at the wrong kind of business practice and only punishes the good for being good.
The points you make are exactly why I hope the Judge does something really wise, and make MS open up their current Office file formats (and all following changes to the formats too). I think this would be far more important than the source to windows, or breaking up MS, etc.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
Many users just want to install and run, not to search for tar.gz files on the internet, download, compile and then figure out what went wrong.
:), installing 99% of the packages is a few clicks away.
Hmm.. last time I checked, it was Windows where I needed to go search for packages, download, setup, and then figure out which DLL is broken.
With my favourite Linux (Debian, ofcourse
Katz is right. Over the past few years you can see a slow movement AWAY from a MS dominated society. The entire opensoure/linux movement has opened up another option for everyone to use, and the iMac brought back the success of MAC-OS tremendously. We can't all expect everyone to completely drop microsoft products overnight, it just doesn't work that way. If you look at the past few years, you can see that developers have gradually been beginning to develop for more OS's. Also, more and more large companies have been boosting support for things like Linux (Corel and IBM to name a few) as well as the rise of genuinely BIG Linux companies (RedHat & VA Linux Systems).
:).
So Katz is right, the MS World has been falling apart for years now. I think that the ruling is simply another victory against MS in a long string of victories over the past few years.
I also certainly don't hope that the world ever becomes TOTALLY void of MS. Bear with me here. Another company needs equal competition just as much as MS does, we don't want another software superpower to arise after MS's fall. Also, all poor business practices aside, MS generally makes good software (relatively in a "closed-source" market). Generally many of Microsoft's products are effecient, clean, and easy to use (for all the newbies and families out there). Hopefully as MS continues to loose their power, they will begin to make their products better and (though I doubt it) begin to develop for other operating systems. I would love to see MS Office for Linux (or something of the sort... opensource of course
Shaun
I'm not the sort of person who preaches about love of the fellow man, forgiveness, or other forms of apathy. Those would be religous leaders, or hippies. Hippies are nice enough, but dumb. I won't say anything about religous leaders, because it's too easy to find out where I live.
The point is, that this vilification of Bill Gates seems extreme even to me. As someone who engages in this activity quite often, and has even gained some notoriety at it, I usually don't attempt to defend a target, lest I be seen as a hypocrite. However, someone should try to head this off before a mob forms, I think.
I don't have any knowledge of the internal workings of Microsoft, but I would venture to guess that Bill Gates probably is not as powerful as people would like to believe. In a normal corporation, the people who drive the entire process are called "Investors". These "Investors" observe the bottom line, and are happy when the corporation makes a profit. When the corporation does not make a profit, people get fired.
I apologise for the length of my explanation, but I'm trying to make this perfectly clear for some of the slower members of the audience. (Especially myself)
These investors really are only slightly concerned with how the public views the company, and certainly much more concerned about the monetary aspect of the company. An investor generally has money in many different corporations, and cannot really worry about the morality of this one or that. So he mentally passes the burden of morality on to other faceless people who control the company, and happily goes about his business, content in the knowledge that his hands are clean.
Every once in a while, one company or another will do something not only despicable, but highly visible. Then the investors will demand that certain people be canned, or possibly move to the extreme and remove their funding from said corporation (Which generally has the effect of certain people being canned.) The investors will then feel VERY good about themselves.
Of course, the people who run the company view the investors as having control, considering as they are answerable to the investors. So they demand profits from those lower down the chain, and do not worry about details of how those profits are made. When a despicable act comes to light, they know that they did nothing to cause this, they are simply the middleman in this whole affair, and if they resigned, someone else would be more than happy to do this job.
This is a wonderful performance many in America enjoy, known as the "blame game". (I specify since I have not spent enough time in other countries to know wether they have this same ritual) Should anyone actually be called to question about shady dealings, this person will simply point a finger in a random direction and blame the person over there for causing some aspect of the problem.
Bill Gates is simply playing along with the rest of us. For instance, there are a great number of people in the United States with 401k plans. They may not have as much money in a corporation as a large investor, but certainly the immense number of small investors make up for the large investors?
I guess I don't really see why Bill should take so much abuse and blame when there are other rich people we can blame...
>>>>>>> Kvort
-Don't mind me, I'm personality-deficient and mentally-impaired.
Even RedHat (no flame intended) is growing so steadily I begin to wonder...
:).
<p>You try taking Windows, replace IE with Netscape, throw in a copy of Corel, and sell it as a different product. I dare you
<p>You could try it with DOS too, but chances are that M$ will just change Windows so it'll only work with their copy of DOS. Oh, wait, that already happened, never mind...
<p>Chances are RedHat won't change Linux so that RPMs will only work with Redhat; at least not without violating the GPL at some point - don't ask me how, but I'm sure that there would be a violation somewhere.
Is this post not nifty? Sluggy Freelance. Worshi
For those of you who aren't living in the real world, the fact is people still use Microsoft OS's 90-some percent of the time. Linux has NOT become a viable alternative for a serious portion of the computer users out there. I wish it was. Just because you like it, and all the other Linux freaks you talk to like it, doesn't mean it's taken over the world! It seems that /. has totally lost its grip on reality. Maybe once people realize that Linux ISN'T the M$ killer everybody want's it to be, then they can go about making it into OS for geeks AND real people.
/dev/recycle_bin
Freaks.
Send flames to
... "Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the w
We have the judge applying antitrust rules from the last century, within a context of a legal system and ownership laws derived from the centuries before, to a company that's only existed within the last few decades but predominates on the desktops of homes and corporations. Microsoft's is legally an old model capitalistic entity seeking as near to a monopolist market it can attain...and succeeded, well, a bit too well for antitrust considerations.
The options for legal correctives can limit and restructure, but not change the basic nature of the organization's primary goals of domination through a proprietary product line.
Even if the government gets the source, it's still not open.
Nah, not stuck at all. Just look at all the distro's and flavors out there. Need somebody to pick on, pick Solaris, FreeBSD, Debian etc. We're set for years.
Now if I can just think up a way to make Linus look like a borg penguin...
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
man, that should have been a 4... then again, it doesn't directly address the topic, rather misconceptions about the topic, so I guess a 3 is understandble.
Seeing as Win2k has only been out for a few months, is it really fair to say that NT hasn't made any dent in the enterprise? If history is to be a guide, NT4 didn't move copies until SP2-3, so I imagine that Win2k will probably have the same amount of success once some of the initial bugs are found and corrected. (and before you yell about Service Packs, how many revisions of the Linux kernel have been published since the original 2.0 kernel?).
Wow, I'd like to hear more about this. Sounds like a big load of FUD to me. I've never seen any evidence of this in the 15 years I've used Macs.
Yet, I still haven't met the person who bought the one copy of software all my PC friends have been using for free.
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No, I've been post-Microsoft ever since 1985. I had a GUI, everyone else still had a command line.
Microsoft still hasn't caught up.
Microsoft is still here and still has 95% of the desktop.
86% of statistics are false and misleading.
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You certainly could be right. So many PC versions were pirated that they couldn't afford to have a Mac port done.
Makes perfect sense to me now. Thanks.
Then again, it could just be that most Macs are used in productive endeavors, and are not just overblown game consoles.
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Yes. Additionally, Sierra has a history of dissing the Mac. Any excuse is valid for them, I'm sure.
The Mac experiences THREE TIMES the piracy in a market 1/10th the size of the PC one - making it uneconomical to write software for.
Once again, I ask where?? Mac piracy comes nowhere near the level of piracy on other platforms, either by percentage or by quantity. Sierra made up some new excuse for not producing Mac programs. Big deal. Probably holding some infantile grudge, IMHO.
I doubt there's even valid anecdotal evidence supporting the "three times" claim.
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In 10 years will we all be extolling the virtues of some other OS and blasting Red Hat as the evil empire??
That won't happen because of the nature of open source. Besides, RH's dominance is quickly fading -- they lost a huge chunk of market share to Corel and other distros these last few months. And have you tried other distro's? I've got both Corel 1.0 and RH 6.2, and for the novice user Corel wins HANDS DOWN. Further, there will always be distros like Mandrake that are based on RH but are different/better in some way. And if RH becomes evil suddendly we can still use their code!
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
Okay, so even though Microsoft deliberatly changes their file formats as to force you to upgrade and dick with the competition simulatneously; as well as keeping the formats secret so anyone who wants to write compatibility has to reverse engineer them, it's Corel's fault for not being compatible. Uh-huh.
Here's my DeCSS mirror. Where's yours?
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
We need something that we can beat, so that it will get our creative juices flowing. Competition has always driven new advances in the technology field, and if we move the biggest competitor from the field, what will we do next?
<NEW-AGE HORSE$HIT>Perhaps the post-Microsoft world began between when Linus Torvald began his software experiment and Judge Jackson's eerily retro ruling yesterday. Why eerie? Because it pitted a string of l9th-century laws and institutions against a 21st-century economic system.</NEW-AGE HORSE$HIT>
Anti-competitive monopolists are just as dangerous to the 21st-century economy as any other - the big difference being that they have a cadre of techno-linguists on hand to confuse the issue for the public.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
I think the most hilarious claim I saw was on NBC that Netscape failed because of MS's dominance. BS. Netscape failed because their browser was inferior to IE and they failed to adopt standards as quickly as MS (MS didn't exactly rush to standards, but their browsers is more compliant than that Netscape garbage).
Other than 25 years of corporate history replete with cluelessness, of course. :-)
Seriously, though, I believe that Microsoft could become a serious player in some of the technologies mentioned by Katz. For example, imagine if MS decided that Linux was the key to winning the enterprise market. I believe they would be the number one vendor of Linux software within a year. Microsoft Linux. Microsoft Office for Linux. Microsoft Visual Studio for Linux. The Microsoft Linux Developer Network. The list would go on and on. They have the money and the manpower to do it. All that is lacking is the will.
Is this far-fetched? Damn straight. It would require a 180 degree shift in Microsoft's world view. The thing is, they've done it before. Remember the Browser Wars? Microsoft went from being ignorant of the Internet to being a top player in less than two years. I believe they could do it again.
Basically, my point is that Katz is writing off Microsoft too quickly. Any company with that much cash and that much manpower can move mountains if it wants to. All that's missing is the will.
Milkman Dan
Thats exactly what companies try to do. Bills problem is that he did it too well. Everyone wants to live the American Dream, but no one wants to see anyone else living it.
DOS is dead, and no one cares...
If there's a Bourne Shell, I'll see you there
Point being, Microsoft for all it's faults has probably been the biggest boon to the movement since Linus himself. Deal with it Katz.
And what does MS have to do with genetic research anyway? Are we waiting for Microsoft Genome 2000? -Marc
You can't kill MS at this point. You can't even hurt them significantly.
Just look at all the "funny" tech support stories about people with Macs calling about not being able to get their "microsoft" to work or the people who don't seem to know the difference between an app like word and the os it's running on. To John Q. Sixpack Microsoft simply IS computers.
Look at the way the baby bells still continue to dominate after the breakup of AT&T. In a way it's almost worse. Sort of reminds me of the Sorcerors apprentice spoof in the Simpsons where the cat chops the mouse up into little tiny pieces but the little tiny mice just keep coming back. (how's that for rambling)
This is a big break for non-MS apps and OSes. However if they drop their lunch now they wont just have one big dog trying to take it but a whole pack of yipping, leaner, meaner, legally protected chihuahuas trying to grab their chalupa.
Don't screw up. No pressure or anything.
- How do you determine "total market"? That may be fairly easy to do with Macintosh since Apple is the only source...but what about an open-source platform such as (but not necessarily) Linux? We've seen Microsoft's spinmasters at work, and I doubt that it would take much number-juggling to turn a 3% market share into 2.8% or the like.
- Ok, so Redmond churns out "Office 2002 for Linux". It's 600Mb and costs $500. How is this a good thing?
Second, require Microsoft to open up all the core API's (programming interfaces) of Windows and Office, and to publicly publish all file formats to their applications.I agree with you here. Combine this with a Baby Bill Breakup and I think you have an effective punishment.
Fourth, appoint a judge to oversee this with the authority to intervene at any time, rather than making them wait until a suit is filed.
Just because accused was found guilty doesn't mean he should be tortured. Microsoft the corporation still has rights, and appointing a judge who can act with total authority whenever MS does something somebody else doesn't like scares the hell out of me. Hello? Due Process?
Online gaming for motivated, sportsmanlike players: www.steelmaelstrom.org.
Online gaming for motivated, sportsmanlike players: www.steelmaelstrom.org.
So Redmond churns out "Office 2002 for Linux". It's 1GB, costs $1200 and only runs under Red Hat. How is this a good thing?
My point here is this: forcing MS to build apps for other platforms is a poor remedy. Although in such a case they could be forced to implement the same features for each platform, it would be highly doubtful that they would be forced to charge the same amount or ship each flavor at the same time.
Sure, commercial Linux users would benefit. IF they could convince the guy who writes the check to spend X more on the Linux version as opposed to getting a bargain-basement PC and a much cheaper Win32 version.
This would be like forcing pre-breakup AT&T to make payphones that not only accept pennies, but Canadian coins as well.
Online gaming for motivated, sportsmanlike players: www.steelmaelstrom.org.
Online gaming for motivated, sportsmanlike players: www.steelmaelstrom.org.
Nice to see, though, anyhow. :-)
Stefan.
Talkers are no good doers.
-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
The truth shall make you fret. (Ankh-Morpork tImes motto)
Overall, I feel Microsoft's impact on the world was a good and profound one. True, they have not made any great advancements in science, but it is foolish to say they have no had a deep impact on the world. They have had arguably a more profound impact by designing much of the way we work. Also arguable is whether or not they have made a positive impact. I believe they have. I believe that dispite the bugs and even illegal activities of the company, we have saved money in productivity by having fewer operating systems to deal with. Windows is better. It's better overall, for the majority of users. Perhaps the only way an operating system could have gained so much market share is through methods Microsoft employed. It's popularity is not only due to pushes by illegal practices it is at least due equally to Microsoft's ability make an O/S the rest of us can use without having to think much about it, an ability that includes taking ideas that were already there, and bringing them together in a better way. This is not to say I think Linux is not good, in fact I think Linux is many times better, but not for all applications. Maybe one day it will be, and it will be stronger for having had to surpass Windows, even easier to use. I think we can deal with a handful of operating systems sharing the market, but I really don't look foward to a day when 10 or 20 have equal shares of the market. Maybe Microsoft has stepped the line by trying to eliminate too many. Maybe when they are forced to split, one branch will make a Microsoft Linux and other branches will go after other O/Ss, and maybe they'll be in a better position to dominate in less conspicuous ways. I think they should receive a reprimand, but be kept together.
ford doesnt possition itself so that ford motors are the only option for doing business like ms tried to.
"I had a dream where I was an idiot."
"If you want someone to listen, why don't you go talk to a wall?"
bun-fhuinneog agam!
And besides, folks, do you think that all that M$ cash is going to just sit there? You can buy quite a few senators and judges with that kinda dough.
DT
Is this thing on? Hello?
I also have to agree. I have both an intellieye mouse and a sidewinder gamepad and they are both very well made and confortable. I also feel like I paid a fair price for each.
It seemed pooped and lame. Bill Gates' company hasn't dominated any of the significant technological movements and evolutions of the late 90s: open source, nano-technology, AI, genetic research, hand-held and wireless computing, supercomputers.
Maybe I am just some sort of luddite, but it seems to me that NO ONE is dominating any of these fields yet because they are still too new. Have any of them (other than open source) had a significant impact on your life? I can't see how they have on mine. Nano-tech is not yet doing anything for me, nor is gene research. AI is improving but it exists in so many forms (AI of a UT bot vs. AI of the phone company's voice recognition for example) that it's difficult to pin down exactly what "AI" means. Advanced supercomputers might be nice so that no one has to test atomic bombs anymore and we get better weather forecasts but in reality they have very little impact on MY life. So I find it difficult to see why I should care if Microsoft is dominant or not in any of these categories.
The government that you applaud for dealing heavy-handedly against your foes can just as easily enslave you, and if it's powerful enough to do things for you that you cannot do yourself; it is more powrful than you. This being the case, what safeguard do you have against it turning against you someday? None at all.
I am hoping here by "you" you mean the whole people of the US and not just each individual. The government exists for the SOLE PURPOSE of doing things for me that I can't do myself. I can't keep banks from charging prohibitive interest and convienience stores from lying in their advertising. The government does this and more FOR ME because it is in MY INTEREST just as it is in pretty much every citizen's interest. If the government were only allowed to do things that I could also do myself what would be the point of even having it???
For anyone with knowledge of computers (i.e Linux and other O.S besides Windows) shouldn't be too suprised Microsoft is guilty. To be honest I don't much care if Microsoft is guilty. But since they are, they are. What I am interested in is what will happen. Whether we believe or not Microsoft effects all of us computer users so whatever is done to Microsoft will have an effect on us. Scary huh. -Teiresias :he was the blinde seer of Thebes who despite being blinde knew more than the man with sight. -Oedipus Rex
-Teiresias
Simple. Because these new technologies will eventually take the place of Microsoft's bread and butter, Windows. Do you think we'll be using PCs in their current form forever? Already the changes are coming -- PDAs that can surf the web, WAP over wireless handsets, set-top boxes, network computers, etc. Do you doubt that these things will some not-so-far-off day dominate our technical lives the way the PC does today?
Of COURSE Microsoft wants to dominate all these new frontiers. They know damn well the PC won't be around forever. They want to be the power they are today in 20 years. They will do that by trying to ensure that those technologies develop on their terms. They will accomplish this by squishing, attacking, or purchasing competing technologies like Java and Netscape.
"Honey, it's not working out; I think we should make our relationship open-source."
No. Microsoft gained a large business share early on. This is perfectly fine, as another company would be able to overturn them by making a better product, in a sound capitalist system. However, Microsoft then used their position to force their mediocre products on consumers. They used it to force other companies to go along with them ("do what we want, or you'll be paying ten times what your competitors are for our products!"), and used embrace-extend-exterminate strategies to destroy any company that offered an alternative.
-RickHunter
Yes, the company wants to do whatever it can to sell its product and make a large profit. However, that doesn't mean that it has the right to do whatever it can to sell its product. In Microsoft's case, they used their market share to force other companies to do things their way or face a large encumbrance (higher prices on M$ products, takeovers, promotion by M$ of competing companies, etc). They were operating in a way that didn't allow other companies a fair chance to compete. I'm not saying they should have rolled over for competing companies, but the tactics they used weren't right.
Oh, BTW, thanks for expressing an opposing point of view on a M$ issue without flaming. Every reply I've gotten to a post on that issue so far has been a flame telling me to "grow up and get back to class because I can't understand the issues." (Yes, I am a high school student)
-RickHunter
Actually, from what I've heard, the DoJ was kinda mad that M$ had settled the previous case and then immediately run off and kept doing whatever they bloody well pleased. And if the presidential donation thing is true, its definitely a reverse of the norm. Usually, a big corporation donating to a presidential campaign gets the average person in trouble. This time, its the opposite.
-RickHunter
For instance, here he claims that we've been living in a world beyond Microsoft for about a decade now because we will soon have a choice of several alternative OS's and MS doesn't have their fingers in several examples of terrible violations of parrallelism. Call me heretical, but last I checked Open Source isn't really analogous to artificial intelligence or nanotechnology. As interesting, but hardly a technology, or investable.
And, sure, I know it's fashionable to trash Katz, and for that reason alone I usually avoid his column's like Creme d' Trout that's gone off, but this particular item pushes so many of my buttons, I'm just not sure where to begin. A sampling of my issues here:
Finally, for all of his righteous outrage at the injustice of Microsoft, the anti-establishment Seatle riots coverage, the Orwellian horror at the Columbine fallout, I have yet to hear Katz actually raise any serious issues. I mean, sure this is slashdot, but for all that Katz seems to uphold essential human rights, I've never read him blasting the WorldBank, or the Inter-American Development Bank, for instance. Yes, Microsoft is crushing essential human liberties to the pusuit of happiness and the freedom of information, but I sometimes wonder if Katz would have overlooked National Socialism's treatment of German Jews to blast General Electric for monopolizing electric power.
The upshot? I think there will be definite effects from a real remedy against Microsoft monopoly. We still hear about predation from Microsoft, and I can't imagine not hearing about it without drastic governental action. And that overreaching stain on every sigificant software technology is the hallmark of any "Microsoft Age" you want to talk about.
IP is just rude.
Is there any torture so subl
is that Cisco is now the richest and biggest company - the position that MS was used to have.
That is, the big business is not anymore in stand-alone PC and PC OS, but in the 'Net and everything that is used to build it.
And which will be the next monopolist?
Ciao
----
FB
I'm thinking that their whole XBox initiative is aimed at putting MS everywhere, but not as a software vendor per se, but as a content vehicle. I see them as positioning themselves as a sort of media company in the same sense as NBC or CBS is a TV network. XBox is just the foot in the door.
Whatever the case may be, we are far far from being free of MS and any other corporation in the same stratosphere. MS is simply too pervasively entrenched in the realm of computing right now that removing them from the environment will take years, if it ever happens.
So they're not on the bleeding edge of technology, that dosn't make them irrelevant by any means. The bleeding edge is that top 1-2% and MS makes up the other 98%. They could roll over and squish everone of us without any effort.
-- kwashiorkor --
Pure speculation gets you nowhere.
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
Jumping to Conclusions.
I really can't believe that all of the Linux freaks on this site think that Microsoft has a monopoly and that you don't have a choice. You chose to use Linux over Windows! Microsoft has more competition than ever before. Linux is proof that alternative technoligies will emerge and a complete melevoloent monopoly is not possible. In a free market, new ideas easily surface. The purpose of any company is to create profit. Breaking up Microsoft for trying to get bigger and create market share is basically punishing them for doing too good a job. The reason that Linux has not gained greater use is because it is harder to use than Windows. The real threat to capitalism is from the goernment itself. This is sending a message to all companies out there that if they create products that are too good, they will punished. This is very disappointing.
Had the government intervened a decade ago, when it would really have mattered, yesterday's court ruling might have been as ground-breaking as the pundits and analysts were claiming last night
Like stopping that Win3.1 on DRDOS "bug"
Who would we hate in that situation (MS not becoming all powerful)?
-----------------------------------------------
"If I can shoot rabbits then I can shoot fascists" -
Please gods, no. How 'bout requiring them to follow Apple's developer guide first? Just the other day I had to do a complete uninstall of Office 98 for Mac, M$ puts 23 extensions and 26 preference files in the system folder for office (compare Adobe Photoshop at 0 extensions and 1 pref). Triple click (to select an entire line) does not work on any M$ ware. And those insipid button bars need to be replaced with floating pallates.
I don't want any new features for Office until they make the damned thing correctly.
-=RR=-
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
Now, because of Microsoft's success, software developers can reach a huge majority of users by writing for a single target. All of you whiners who complain "X doesn't work under Linux. There are no drivers for X. I can't run X" Well, yeah, that's the way it used to be for everybody.
There are HUGE advantages to having so many users under one operating system, especially for programmers!
Think about that before you call for "Baby Bills".
Ultimately, every JonKatz article and the ensuing discussion tends to be more about him than whatever he was writing about, so I propose adding a new icon to the /. repository: The Katz Icon.
My idea is a scrolled piece of paper (something like this. ) containing the text "blah blah blah" writting on it. :-)
Any other suggestions?
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Macintosh was all I saw throughout schooling which is probably worst than a Microsoft product.
Thank goodness I have been enlightened to another platform (Linux) other than Windows because I was ready to settle on the riduclous monopoly of incompatible non-crossplatform unreliable $oft products.
The end of the Microsoft Age... just maybe.
TW
Television is dead. Long live That Weasel Television
What you don't see is serious vertical market software, or infrastructure stuff. What do you call the likes of SQL Server(apart from half-arsed that is), Exchange Server, the fact that here in the UK two High street Banks run the cash machines on NT??
J-aims
--
Yo, whatever happened to peas? Join T( H)GS
Wether or not you consider it foolish, and I do, it doesn't change the fact that these machines are here- carrying out there function (apart from the ones with widows error messages on the screen!) and being part of the infrastructure, the fact of the matter is that NT is growing in the enterprise and infrastucture sector whether you like it or not.
J-aims
--
Yo, whatever happened to peas? Join T( H)GS
Hardly. The Sherman Act (15 USC 1-7) dates from about 1890. Late 19th Century. Heck, in the 18th Century, you could still buy monopolies from the King in England.
Or that Microsoft is investing heavily in the banking / fincancial industry ? Do you really trust M$ to NOT correlate you personal information with the info from the banking data ?
Microsoft will do their typical FUD^H^H^Hbusiness as usual. Until they are forced to change, they will continue to usurp as "OS Features" anything they forsee as a potential threat to their OS.
UPS Sucks
What do you call the likes of SQL Server(apart from half-arsed that is), Exchange Server, the fact that here in the UK two High street Banks run the cash machines on NT?? I'd call it two banks making poor choices...I really think Babar has a point here. I'm not sure I totally agree with the whole neo-luddite "computer's haven't really gained anyone anything" (which isn't a particularly accurate paraphrase anyway) sentiment. I think personal computers have made a number of things possible: desktop publishing and (more recently video). But these could also be shoehorned into "entertainment". But in terms of "buisness productivity" (hate that word), the gains are significantly less identifiable. Sure, vast sums have been poured into the tech industry, which I can really appreciate as a programmer, it pays my salary. In terms of "number of widgets sold" though, I'm not sure I really see the benefit
--Mark
Good post, and interesting perspective, BUT....
You forget how POWERFUL our desktop PC's are now.
Power is so cheap that many business run all kinds of NT Servers/Workstations for whatever business they happen to be in.
Stock Brokerages, Accounting firms, Banks, Investment firms, Governments and just regular businesses, all use NT for many purposes beyond entertainment.
Take an average investment company... 10 to 20,000 people all with NT on their desktop advising clients on where to invest? Thats not entertainment, and there's a lot of NT Servers serving those workstations!!!
Embedded devices are unnoticed, and way more important or valuable ($$) than most people realize, so I'm not discounting that point.
But,
W2k/98/NT are way more than just entertainment machines!!!!
"What do you call the likes of SQL Server apart from half-arsed that is)
I currently am running tests on a mySQL database, hitting it with 100000 per min...
The fact that here in the UK two High street Banks run the cash machines on NT??
I would call anyone using NT on their cash machines "Foolish" but then I am Canadian, and we are known for being VERY polite.
Not everyone deserves a 320i
I may be an idealist, but I dont really CARE that MS gets broken up or not. I want to run the best software I can that does the job. Free software is part of the overall compensation of a program sure, but I will not run crap.
I have linux as my server, firewall, and mailserver. I have MS stuff as my mail reader (outlook) and my game machines.
I would hope that people think on this. Are they after WAR to motivate them? Then they are putting out crap without pride.
I would hope the reason you are contributing to Open Source is to make a better product. To Build something because you can and not because We are at WAR with other programmers. MS has done some crappy things but that aint the programmers fault. That is the PHB (Pointy Haired Boss) types that run MS. If you sit and think about it, how many companies do the same thing or try to. Only difference? MS had the power to do it.
Now go play nice and make great software.
I can program myself out of a Hello World Contest!!
I Am Not A Trade Regulator, but since Sony's a Japanese company, it'd seem like a U.S. antitrust breakup of the company would raise hell with the WTO, since, unlike Microsoft, they'd be saying "Break up, or don't do business in our country", which is getting harder and harder to do.
So what we've really entered is the age of the clashing titans. Juggernaut economic interests duking it out for control of the world's consumer markets. We, the little people, just sit on the sidelines, rooting for the lesser evil, until they cease to be the underdog.
(Already I've mentioned several large, evil, economic monstrousities in this post, namely Sony, Microsoft, the U.S. Government, the WTO, Hell, and the world's consumer markets... ;-)
Well, just a thought... slosh it around in your brain for a while with a spinal fluid chaser and it just might start making sense...
--
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
And you believe that MS majors are not snickering at this piece of valuable advice from you.
Yeah, yeah. They'll open up their application formats and all other things that you have demanded and let us open source geeks to freak out with it.
Keep the faith. King Bruce did win in the end.
While it is true that the most recent events in Linux history and the ruling against Microsoft certainly level the playing field, it is NOT a complete turning of the tables. Microsoft may still get away with little more than a handslap: after all, it was NOT proven that they competed unfairly in including Internet Exploder on the Desktop. That means that it is unlikely that they will be broken up. They don't even call the impending judgement a "punishment" but a "relief." (almost as if it is an accident that microsoft extended theier monopoly unfairly) Microsoft was also not convicted on the charge that they forced 3rd parties to chose their products specifically or else be cut from the OS cash cow (even though this was true for 98% of the third parties). All in all, I think it only means that Microsoft shares might be a bargain for a little while. Microsoft will always be something to contend with--
Besides, a POST MIcrosoft World? When the NASDAQ doesn't drop 300 some points because of Microsoft....then maybe it would be a post Microsoft WORLD.
Microsoft's core strength lies in thier connections and partnerships with other large companies in and out of the industry, some who will not tuck thier tails and run away because of a judges ruling
Of course, this is only my opinion. I could be wrong...
I need a TiVo for my car. Pause live traffic now.
But I don't want Linux to be the ONLY choice any more than I want Windoze or MacOS as the only choice.
I would really like to see more emphasis on the Mac (and/or Be) in these sort of discussions. The fact is, Linux *can't* compare with Windows in newbie ease-of-use. But, the Mac kicks its ass! The people who proclaim Windows' superiority because of its ease of use should be obligated to explain how this doesn't argue that the *Mac* should be the system for the technophobes.
Dont automatically assign any large company as a "monopolistic giant". Growth is _good_ , its what companys are designed to do. One thing that really gets annoying after a while is how everyone thinks monopolys = bad. No buts if or ands. Remember the old AT&T monopoly? Telephones were never the same after the government stuck its head in where it didnt belong.
:)
Slashdotters need to remember to not be _so_ biased towards one topic (ie. microsoft) that you are totally ignorant to the other viewpoint. Understand both viewpoints, (you dont have to agree), and then you can talk.
(Yes, I am on the debate team.
-- We should kill all the intolerant people in the world.
Settle down, children.
Quick course in economics 101: The goal of every company is to become a monopoly. No corporation on earth would be satisfied saying "we own 20% of market share, that's enough for us. Send the sales department to Fiji for the next 2 months."
That being said, Microsoft qualifies as a very successful company. The problem comes when it abuses its position by leveraging its dominance in market A to break into and dominate market B.
Most companies that are lucky enough to find themselves in a monopolistic position change their stance and regulate themselves, call it "acting responsibly." Ford doesn't make engines that only run on Ford Gas, GE doesn't make light bulbs that only run on GE Hydro sockets. They could, but a "benevolent company" attitude kicks in.
Once again, this isn't a defense of Microsoft. (so hands off, trolls! My Hot-Grit Fu technique beats your Natalie Portman Beowulf technique!) They didn't play nicely in the sandbox with the other children, pushed them all out, then they tried to take over the monkey bars too. But the evil was not in being a monopoly.
heh for real. i dunno about Windows being so good for the masses, i just that when my Dad used a CP/M computer in the 80s he was knowledgeable enough to even write a database in BASIC. now on his Windoze box he hasn't a clue, i have to fix its mangled internet settings like once a week. not being a Windows user myself (MacOS and Linux la la la) i find Windows pretty difficult to use compared to other OS.
I don't like MS anymore than you do, but some of you're 'facts' are a little warped.
Development of Operating Systems
Memory usage
MS-DOS used 640k ram.
Windows 98 could only use 640k ram and needed advanced memory shuttling to use the upper memory
That's DOS you're thinking of there, and wasn't that problem due to the original IBM/Intel 16bit real mode X86 architecture. Fixed by the 386 and 32bit protected mode OSes.
NTFS FAT Once converted to NTFS, it cannot go back
Why would you want to? That's a security measure.
Office suites
Backward compatability issues for '97 and '95. Expectation that corporations will shell out US$400/license every 3 years. (This is the backlash that brought about fixes to some above mentioned problems in backward compatability)
Yup, very braindead! (or extreme arrogance)
ODBC (this should be self explanatory--good idea, great innovation but dropped so that SQL Server would not have competition.)
Huh? Since when has ODBC been dropped?
And the hits just keep on coming: NetBEUI, the Registry (don't get me started on this), drive letters, and other obvious lack of planning failures at MS.
Didn't Netbeui and drive letters come from IBM originally?
I reckon the major problems with wintel, were the poorly concieved x86 arch, and the lack of guts to boot out legacy stuff when required. The whole MS monopoly is the reason they didn't have to change the outdated crap they started with.
This infuriates me to no end. :)
Besides being an inane comment, it's been shown that this clearly isn't the solution. Declan wrote about this:
http://www.wired.com/news/p olitics/0,1283,35368,00.html
Steve
hey Jon, see if you can get Rob to make the default background color of your posts yellow.
-------- "All I want in life's a little bit of love to take the pain away" --Spiritualized
Today my teacher went off on how wonderful Bill Gates is, and it occoured to me that (gasp!) she may be right. I mean, he is someone who rose from a HS dropout to found an evil software company that makes consumers *unwilling* betatesters and ships buggy, crashy products. Still, he's nice enough to _give away_ large amounts of money to people who need it.
A Random Thought: If consumers are Beta-Testers, to whom does the *final* product ship?
io hymen hymnaee io
io hymen hymnaee
If it's all Microsoft's fault for not playing nice, then you'd think Corel could at least make Word Perfect import Word documents perfectly even if Word doesn't do the same in reverse. No one seems truly devoted to compatibility across platforms. I have a heck of a time just getting a Mac to spit out a document as ASCII (don't give me this 'Plain Text' garbage!).
Actually, their non-OS/non-application software tends to be quite well-made (I'm thinking of Age of Empires and their multimedia/"infotainment" line)
Sure, Microsoft isn't dominating the wireless, open source, and supercomputer markets, but Microsoft is still the largest player in the OS and Word Processing markets. They do not dominate those other new areas because it is not their focus. Besides, Microsoft is not going away any time soon even though we may hope so.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
Not really, petty criminals get put in jail. The real criminals get knighthoods, elected president etc. Depends on the country your in.
...that all they have to do to get away from the AntiTrust violation is to remove their IE browser from Windows, or add the Netscape browser. This could seriously fsck things up for the idiot-user, but that's about all. Windows ain't going NOWHERE._ ____
_______________________________________
___
I'm an exhibit on the mounted animal nature trail.
Open Source is nothing more than a neat dream.
There are four "computer literate" people in my family (not to mention various friends): one still in college for a chemical engineering degree, one is a unigraphics operator/system administrator, one working as a network administrator, and myself, an out of work would-be programmer.
We have all tried install Linux on our machines and so far, none of us has been able to get it to install and function properly (i.e. constant locking up, couldn't mount HD, applications not working).
Although we may not even be in the top 75% of "computer savvy" /. readers, we're not exactly beginners either.
So basically, my point is this: If people like myself can't seem to figure out what the hell were doing wrong, what hope is there for someone who is having a hard time learning to use the internet with their new AOL account? Maybe I should have posted this in Ask /., but I would be interested in some of your opinions regarding this.
Shut up brain or I'll stab you with a Q-Tip. - Homer Simpson
If this so called "Microsoft-less world" does come to pass, I have to wonder how it is going to affect the IT industry? Are we going to be seeing more people running linux? Or is everyone going to find a new standard and clump to that? I think that a world without Microsoft is something that won't happen for a long time, and if it ever does, it will sure be interesting. -stuckpixel-
Well now, when the angry mob is still kicking, who
will take the lead and guide people to stop
faceless companies stealing any more democracy
from people? Only thing to do is to make it EASY
enough so everyone interested can participate. And it has to be easier than those existing, since so little has been done. And I am pretty sure there
is those who are interested and those who can wake
other people. So loudmouths, anyone care for some
action?
(Unfortunately I am not American so I have to do
my part at my country, but as always, what America
does first lot's of other western countries
follow, and that is why I am concerned.)
The Ruling Only Limits Linux | grep for capitol letters=TROLL. I think he got you. That and my machine shows that he submitted the post from a Debian box.
---
Now is the time to have Bill pay off the Federal deficit, or at least a good chunk of it.
What is next? Will you start a movement in order to change the time to BL (Before Linusmas) and AL ?
What I see here is an attempt to kiss Linus's butt the way thousands of journalists kiss Bill's. Not that I have anything against Linus and Linux, but it's just not the way it should be (IMHO)!
Besides the crap, you forget a lot of things. First of all, the BSD that was long before Linux. Second, M$ Era is not finished yet. Third, if it would not be the AntiTrust lawsuit brought against MS, Compaqs and Dells of the world would be still prohibited from installing Linux et al on their desktops and notebooks (and would be pretty cautious not to install it on their servers). Whatever Red Hat and VA Linux could do, it would not be possible to make Linux that successful without the support of big guys. The lawsuit itself made MS more careful and less restrictive. Fourth, MS IS dominating the Internet with IE. Fifth, the innovation in computer area is usually done by one of three ways:
1) In the garage (Apple, Dell, HP, MS, Yahoo, Amazon).
2) An idea is created while working for a big company (in it's labs), in military or in a university. Then the inventor leaves with the idea in order to pursue it in a startup (SUN, Cisco - from universities; Compaq, Be, Sequent, 3Com - from big companies).
3) Idea is born like in 2), but the company is able to develop a product itself (C, UNIX, Java, C++) and possibly promote it.
Open Source is not about innovation, it's about leveling the field.
Prostitution is the oldest profession; journalistics is the second oldest one.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
Monopolies are natural. They happen all the time. A fledgling company can't make a product that suits everyone. They have to pick their market. As it turned out, Intel became the dominant architecture and DOS/Windows became the dominant OS. Because they were dominant, all the other software companies focused on writing for that platform. That's where the money was to be made. Because MS had the dominate OS and a good word processor, they couldn't help but become a monopoly. Now they are losing their monopoly, just as the others. Even Intel is feeling the pressure. It happens. It was only a matter of time, DOJ or no DOJ.
Actually, it could have been a lot worse. Imagine if by some miracle that Apple became the monopoly back then. Not only would we have bought our programs and OS from them, but our boxes as well. I remember how expensive they were, I had an Apple IIe and later a PowerMac.
I don't understand some of the hatred of MS that I have seen, either. My personal gripes are their buggy OS's they've made in the past (memories of that night I tried to type a term paper and NT server kept crashing still stirs up rage) and that damn office assistant. Even so, MacOS is just as buggy (haven't used OS X enough to know) and it was only in the past few years that UNIX/Linux became friendly enough for the average person to load and maintain on a desktop and have half decent applications like StarOffice to use with it, let alone games. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people that jump on the "I hate MS" bandwagon do it just because they think it's cool rather than having valid reasons. The only people MS have hurt are those in the companies that it used it's monopolistic powers against unlawfully, for which they are about to pay.
One way that the judgement could go that would help lead us into a post-Microsoft world is for the judge to order Microsoft to endow $1B to an independent organization that would partially fund the development of competing products. The rational behind the decision is laid out in the parent article and the intention would be to smooth the startup phase for competitors in order to offset Microsoft's current illegal domination.
*RANT ON*
Not again...how often do I see this here? MS isn't going to give out any money! It's just not realistic, yet folks keep on mentioning it as if they or others will somehow win the MS lottery.
*RANT OFF*
OK, I'm better now...
While your idea is atractive on some levels, it isn't appropriate for an anti-trust case, and could even be dangerous.
It reminds me of the tobacco companies being forced to pay for anti-smoking campaigns targeted at teens.
In that case, the tobacco companies did what they promised, but in such a way as to make smoking seem "forbidden" or "adult" -- two things that are attractive to teens wanting to leap into adulthood. Sure, it's an odd psychological twist that most adults see right through, but they aren't the audience -- insecure teens are.
Now, imagine MS funding a bunch of open source projects that just happen to have a heavy MS slant...or donating tools that don't work well with other operating systems? Target those tools at people who think Windows=Computer and who don't know how to deal with slight variations, and you have a similar situation.
It's not too hard to immagine that they would want some -- or all -- the decision making power over who manages that $1 billion.
Like the tobacco companies, they can point to all the good they are doing when questioned on the details. Few non-technical people would be the wiser...after tall, when Bill Gates gave away all that money to charity, it made him good. Giving it away -- under force or willingly -- will also improve Microsoft's image.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Yes, Microsoft (MSFT on Nasdaq) has provided a wonderful opportunity for folks that enjoy taking a short position in a stock doomed to fall. You guys that are watching your Linux stocks ANDN, RHAT, LNUX etc trail off in value, might be better advised to take your money and short MSFT. I grumble that I personally missed the $15/share drop opportunity... I'd been joking about shorting MSFT for over a year... but nonetheless, I bought into SUNW and ORCL last year before the 100%+ gains... well probably just the next biggest fish in the pond, but they both show some friendliness to the open source ideal without embodying it fully, and also have been and continue to be in a good position to gain from MSFT loss. I think there may still be some people mistaken that MSFT stock has value, so it may stay artificially high for a couple years yet, and meanwhile you get about 90 days to cover a short position... For the novice, short means you start by SELLing at the current price, and hope to buy within 90 days after a price drop to 'cover your position'. Folks that have the guts to do this might have made a lot of money shorting MSFT on Monday. I'd love to hear from anyone that did it....
Does anyone else see a problem with that line of thinking? For crying out loud Katz, the whole reason there is an OS 'revolution' is that people took the 30-year-old-plus technology that is Unix and created Linux, which you herald as the inevitable (and I guess for the sake of this article, already present) successor to the Microsoft empire. And what about science? Gravity is a pretty old theory these days, let's scrap that, too!
Any law has flaws, but to disregard one because it's old is one of the silliest arguments I've ever heard. I think you've succummed to the attitude of: "now that everyone is working at the speed of light, everything that we knew before no longer applies." Rubbish.
I just read in a different article on Slashdot, something like, "We see farther because we stand on the backs of giants". I don't see why we aren't allowed to use our century-old giants to help us fight the good fight.
"Poor people don't need computers with internet access. Last time I looked they were more concerned with work, or where the next meal coming from. I won't even go into what this dropping $5 computers idea sounds like" . . .
...? .com's.
"face it, MS put out a damn good operating system and made it so ANYONE can use it. This is no way was hurting the consumers. This was actually helping consumers. Windows 95 made PCs enter the realm of the regular user. As a result, prices on PCs have fallen considerably in the past years. I bought my first Pentium machine for $1500, and it was not even top of the line at the time. Now I can get a top of the line PC for under $1000. More and more people have been buying computers because they are easy to use. This is way it should be."
Do you think about what you write
Since when have you become a spokesperson for poor people?
I am poor. I have a computer and an internet connection so do you think that all I think about is my next meal?. You have even stated in your previous posts that you were happy about the decreasing costs of pc's and now you are changing
your mind? It sounds like the thoughts in your own head are somewhat inconsistent.
Besides the issues at stake here are not about how
user friendly an OS is or who can afford them. The issue here is a free market, unimpeded by corporations that wield to much power and also by governments who have to much power.
Corporations are not people they are abstract legal entities that have no concern for humanity.
Corporations have no political boundaries they wield their power internationally without regard for the individual. So even if I have I have very little faith in our government, I am actually glad that they have chosen to expose the follies of a particularly large and powerful corporation. Which may also level out the playing field a bit for the average working stiff who might have a dream, some ingenuity, the desire to work hard and a little bit of capital.
And please don't fool yourself into believing that a corporation = an individual.It is just not the case, Corporations have priviledges the average law abiding citizen of any country in the world can not imagine. When was the last time you attempted to do business in another country as an individual? Just because Microsoft is being henpecked by the US gov. does not mean that you're right to work and trade freely will be affected because frankly you and I are nothing but peons to both the gov. and large corporations. By the way
Bill Gate's father has a very succesful law firm in Washington. Bill Gates attended Harvard and dropped out. Bill gates has not invented nor has he created anything but a a large legally contrived conglemerate which has an unfair advantage over the individual in the market place.
Free markets for individuals not for abstract unaccountable legal entities called Incs. LLP's,
and
Contrary to your opinion business is not like war.
Business relies upon the ability of humanity to create , grow
Warfare on the other hand is about killing,theft, rape and destruction, nothing is gained but all is lost.
Warfare should only be resorted to in extreme circumstances i.e.. you hit me, I ask you to stop, you hit me again, finally I hit you back.
Whereas business can be a healthy outlet for the competitive spirit of individuals and it is the outgrowth of everyones desire to help humanity progress. Ruthlessness does not make a winner in business.
How popular was the bully at your school? How long do people put up with ruthless fools before retaliating? Ruthlessness is a destructive attitude propegated by unthinking and unfeeling legal entities/social constructs called corporations. However, the average World citizen ,
I tend to think looks with kindness and compassion towards other humans.The idea that business is like warfare is an ancient mental artifact rooted in outdated economic/political philosophies that
hold that there is not enough of anything for all of us. Of course there is more than enough of everything that most humans need for all of us., it is just that some of our fellows think that it is allright to hoard more than their fare share.
So it is alright to have another social construct\legal entity referee- sort of like a footballgame Which can be a healthy and good thing if practiced judiciously.
Besides if you really believe what you are saying then it would be alright for just about anyone to come over to your home with a gun - plant their flag in your living room and call it their living room. Is this business? No it's war. Is it acceptable - I don't think so.
However the government sure has done alot for the car companies - umm let me see Chrysler - government bail out.
Humm, GM - The US Governments main military vehicle supplier can you say subsidies?
This is not an argument for more government participation. I just want to clear some things up about how are government treats corporationsas oppsed to average citizens like you and I.
Next time you need to be bailed out just ask our government to help you. After you are bailed out the taxpayers that you employ bail lay them off and set up shop in another country. It is our governments duty and priviledge -(meaning it can be taken away by the mass consent of it's citizens), to play the referee at times.
But in fact, at least for once, the government actually intervened on behalf of the nameless, facless citizenry, taking on the poster child for the post-industrial, ethic-less, trampling economy. For a little while, at least, humans retain some control of their inventions, technological andeconomic. For the first time in a long time, a signal has been sent that the ability to make a fast buck does not necessarily justify any behavior whatsoever.
Does this mean we're "safe"? Have we clawed our way out of the trap of the 21st century? Has human dignity and the individual triumphed over the cold, unfathomable corporate forces? No. Not at all. We've won, as Katz says, a symbolic victory. A statement has been made.
Lately we need all the victories we can get, symbolic or otherwise. And remember (as I like to quote Cosmo from Sneakers), "It's about what we see and hear and think." It's about the information and the perception. In the end, it's about the symbols people use to navigate through their lives. So a symbolic victory is nothing to sneeze at.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
...but seriously: Apparently most people have not stopped to notice that the entire gross worth, on paper even(so as to make it a very exaggerated estimate) is but a bit of change forgotten under a couch cushion somepace when you compare it to the amounts of money the US federal government throws around routinely. In addition to this, I can choose whether or not to buy MS stuff, or take part in it or deal with it whatsoever. Granted, this might make my life difficult (deny me jobs, whatever) but so it has always been with making choices and balancing the pros and cons of them. Everything has benefits and drawbacks of some sort. On the other hand, if I don't volunteer to hand over a good sized chunk of my income, I get marched off to jail. Even if I don't use or intend to use the stuff that money buys, I can't opt out. The amount of money anyone thinks Microsoft has "extorted" or "taxed" from them is paltry compared to the amount that is literally extorted and taxed from you by the IRS.
Keep things in perspective here. The government that you applaud for dealing heavy-handedly against your foes can just as easily enslave you, and if it's powerful enough to do things for you that you cannot do yourself; it is more powrful than you. This being the case, what safeguard do you have against it turning against you someday? None at all.
Their isn't they're or there; just as a burrow isn't a burro... know your ass from a hole in the ground
Idiot. Concern for preventing a totalitarian nanny state ala Singapore is not equivalent to being supportive of or being a terrorist. Why would there be any point in commiting or endorsing the exact same activities I myself am against? If I don't want my life controlled, why would I control someone else's, much less take their lives?
Their isn't they're or there; just as a burrow isn't a burro... know your ass from a hole in the ground
hmm seems like you people waste alot of time argueing about MS & Linux ? Why waste time ?
- Development of Operating Systems
- Memory usage
- MS-DOS used 640k ram.
- Windows 98 could only use 640k ram and needed advanced memory shuttling to use the upper memory
- NTFS <-> FAT
- Once converted to NTFS, it cannot go back
- Once NTFS crashed (this has been fixed, but not by MS), the data was gone.
- I can go on here with examples of MS spending more money on marketing than innovating. Both of these listed are short sighted approaches.
- Office suites
- Backward compatability issues for '97 and '95.
- Expectation that corporations will shell out US$400/license every 3 years. (This is the backlash that brought about fixes to some above mentioned problems in backward compatability)
- ODBC (this should be self explanatory--good idea, great innovation but dropped so that SQL Server would not have competition.)
- There are not quite as many examples here, but there are more
- Internet -- the bone of contention
- IE--wonderful concept, works great, slows down the OS (why? i haven't figured out the innovation here other than forcing hardware upgrade == more OEM)
- CraptiveX - no one was thinking when this came down the pipe
- No well known ports with any MS OS (without purchase). Reason: MS-DOS is not multi-tasking, so can't be done reliably. '95 and '98 are kinda multi-tasking, still can't be done.
- And the hits just keep on coming: NetBEUI, the Registry (don't get me started on this), drive letters, and other obvious lack of planning failures at MS.
This is a really abbreviated list of my major gripes w/MS short-sightedness. Wasn't it Mr. Gates who could see no use for more than 640k? Rather than innovate and solve these problems, they marketted and sold them.As for a monopoly, I guess. But their monopoly does not impact me in anyway I can see.
I do not use MS on home PCs--too expensive ($100 for MSOffice sans Access, $100 for OS, $400 for each development tool (except perl) compared to $0 for Linux, $0 for StarOffice (home use only), $0 for Sybase (you can't beat that price), and $0 for each developement tool I use (Fortran (f2c), C, C++ ($1200 worth), and Perl))
I can choose to work in fields where MS is not used
I build my own PCs so that I can have the peripherals I would like to pay for and do not pay the Microsoft tax nor for components that are of little use to me (like IDE controllers)
In short, Microsoft's monopoly does not affect me because I have cost effective remedies--better software for less. Admittedly, most people who own computers do not know what C is. However, unlike the monopolies of AT&T and Standard Oil, I do have alternatives that are cost effective. These guys had monopolies--there were no (not a few, but zero) choices in geographical markets. The reason why I point this out, Microsoft, while only being sued by a handful of states, was found guilty of a world wide dominance. I still don't see it.
For those who think you will save money from this ruling, why is it that Apple or SUN cannot make headway into the market:
Inferior hardware? (nope)
Inferior operating system? (according to reasoning I have put forth, maybe in Apple's case but by the reasoning of the court, nope)
Prohibitive price? (yep)
Lesson: to get the good stuff, you gotta pay more. The Sun workstation is something I would like to own. The apple would be good to have as a notebook. They just cost too damn much. I am not entitled to them, so I don't have them.
I just don't see a monopoly.. though I know by decree there is one. Could someone explain to me how a company with (just) less than 1/3 of the enterprise server install base has a monopoly? What I don't want to see is this ruling coming back to haunt me in the future. Once gov't starts regulating, real innovation is stifled.
We think of computers as boxes and monitors. What about the 68k chip on a mobile phone? That was a computer 15 years ago. In fifteen years, who knows how the interface will be and what we will be interfacing with?
Microsoft's short-sightedness have led those of us to consider, choose, implement, purchase, etc. alternatives because we have a vision of a computer beyond text-processing and tracking check books. Until the "country bumpkins" realize that the space shuttle doesn't have the computing capacity of their DSS satellite descrambler, they will need to be spoon fed. To spoon feed means to not look for innovation in technology but to look for innovation in marketing--which Microsoft has done in spades.
No free help from me, tho! Amen!
10 to 1 odds says that Katz though nano-tech was a computer technology. Knunov
Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
I agree that we have entered (and for a few years now) the post-MS world. But post-MS doesn't mean good by any means.
There are still many issues with copyright laws (talk about an old instituion, more than 200 years old) that need to be solved. What was done with the Open-Source movement probably needs to be done with all information available on the net. Why do we need to buy books to pay publishers and their printing presses when we can distribute books, music, multimedia in general for free on the internet? Why do artists make $1 of their CDs when I buy them for $15? Shouldn't I just be paying them $1?
It's up to us to shatter the old institutions and introduce the Commercial model of the next century, but we should stop thinking just software, think everything!
Good Christ. OK. I'll add my $0.02 here as well. Here goes.
I am a SysAdmin for a large financial company, supporting (with about 9 others) 1500 Windows 95 clients and about 40 NT Servers. Does this suck? You bet it does. Between fscking with client machines running Novell Netware, Office, Lotus Notes (a piece of bloated crap if I ever saw - and yes, that's including the other bloatware champ, Outlook), and other miscellaneous crap) and messing with restarting apps on NT, or rebooting NT for no good reason, my days are generally very busy.
But. Insofar as installing Win95/98/NT/2000 compared to Linux/Be/pick your darned OS, I agree with one important thing that someone said earlier: If you've done it over 500 times, it gets easier!! I've done 95 and NT so much that I can do it without video (OK, maybe not, but almost). Linux? Sucked bad the first time. I had *no* friggin' idea what the hell I was doing. But guess what? The web had howto's, readmes, and a boatload of other resources -- and a damned friendly user community that was readily available to espouse advice and help.
Now, I've installed Linux more than a few times (I think I'm up to 20?). So -- I'm not as experienced as some of the rest of you who've done it 100/200/1000000+ times, but I'm learning. With practice, I bet I could do it damned fast too!
My point? Several, I think.
One: Routine does not mean easy. Sure, a brainsurgeon can do...well, whatever they do. I haven't done it. Granted, by mucking around, I likely won't get chance #2, but that's what cadavers are for.
Two: Practice Makes Perfect, right? Well, same with Windows, same with Linux, same with Be. Hell, I think Be has like, what, 3 config options? (Sorry, I don't remember, I just remember that *I* thought it was easy.) That's another point. You and I and Bob the MSCE+I may think Windows is easy, and I'm sure Eric and Gary think Linux is a cakewalk.
**This is getting longwinded, I'll wrap up** Three: Why can't we be friends? OK, yes that's corny, but by shouting about who's better, etc., why not each camp learn more (or something) about the other? IDE drive space is pretty cheap - why not use a 1GB partition for Win98 (if you own it), and Linux, and Be, and BSD, and whatever else you want! If you *don't* want, that's your prerogative (sp?). But please - if you've not got the knowledge, please refrain from screaming your vitriolic self-righteous self-serving ignorance.
Whew.
Davitt J. Potter
djpotter@nospam.crosswinds.net
"If there's hope, it lies in the proles..."
All that has been decided is that M$ is a monopoly. I have yet to hear what will happen now that M$ is a monopoly. If the Justice Dept. goes along similar grounds, and redoes the AT&T thing, then we will have many many many more probs IMHO. To say M$ is a monopoly is to say rain is wet. However, M$ has one thing going for them that the entire group of linux programmers does not. USER-ABILITY. Most non programmers feel that M$ is "perfect" because it is easy to use. They have gotten used to "My Computer" and "C DRIVE (C:)" and "CD-ROM (D:)" to be willing to change. Most home users dont know what it means to login, and 95% of gamers, believe it or not, dont want to play quake. Our problem, as Open Source Developers, is to make our os's as desirable as windows. Then this development with the legal system will be worthwhile. Until then, just imagine, M$-Corporate (office, winnt), M$-Home (win9x, games), and M$-Affiliated (hardware, misc.). If you think M$ (pro-end_user) software is buggy and limited, try having the same software, written by three different groups, who have no "real" reason to work for one another or to share end gains. If M$-Corporate was to spin off and make a killing in the Enterprise market , and M$-Home was to die off to MacOS/Linux/FreeBSD, and M$-Affiliated was offered to be bought out by Logitech, do you think M$-Corporate would have a need to keep M$-Affiliated from being bought out, or M$-Home from going under?
well, i know i just wrought a convoluted path, so feel free to flame me, but also don't think "Yay, its over" or "i have hated M$ for 5 years" and also, try to think about the discussion when you "first post" because you may just get flamed and down rated....
2^3 * 31 * 647
Ok, how about JSIPS-N, or IPL, or GCCS-M, TAMPS, or JMCIS? Your analogy is flawed in that most if not all intelligence systems are unclassified and nothing special except buggy and boring to work with. You could open source them all day and it would not screw anybody. Might just up the level of some other country's software for military use but the damage to, say the USA would be nil. It's the data contained by those systems once they are operational that would be damaging if released. Don't mean to pick on your article, but the secret agent man mentality that the media displays intel stuff is overkill. The real world of intel is pretty boring and so is the software.
Venyce
remove all references to 007 to email me
Where? Here? NO!!!
The point is whether you like the term sheep or not, guys like Bill Gates and Co. use the mentallity against people. They use it to destroy competitors. People install office and say it's easy to install, and easy to use. Is it?
Installing it is not to hard, but installing most software is not hard, no matter the operating system. And saying it's easy to use, is crap too considering most people don't use 2% of the functions and wouldn't know how if asked, and given directions.
Bill says it's easy. Bill's paid allies says it's easy and so does his paid off publications. And before you know it, everyone says it's easy. Baaaah!!!
Same goes for linux being hard. Damn near every publications says it's hard and for geeks, hackers and hobbiests. What do most people think? Just that, it's hard and not for normal people. Baaaah!
Nothing wrong with sheep. Nobody gets pissed when Jesus calls people sheep. My point is, "human nature" is used against people by companies all the time. I'm wondering what, if anything can minimize this in the future.
Venyce
remove all references to 007 to email me
Can you say "Baaaaah!!!
But there is a lot of truth to what you say. People don't give two shits about the finer points of linux, open source etc etc. But the answer to wanting to use office, education apps etc should not be "Load Windows"
But with the sheep like mentality of the computer using masses, how are we ever to avoid having companies like M$ around to act as the sheppard?
Venyce
remove all references to 007 to email me
For those of you who've spent years battling and cursing the rapacious, insatiable Jon Katz, there has to be a belated satisfaction in seeing a whole online technical community repeatedly belittle a megalomaniacal self-server. For everybody else, it's hard to see what, if anything, will change as a result of this surreal conflict between a man who often invokes the 18th-century writings of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Payne and 21st-century socio-cultural realities. Truth is, we already live in a post-Katz World.
I found out it coincide with the disapearrance of the cute yellow butterfly, which used to be their logo. And I think it's tied: a mascotte is the soul of a project/corporation/etc. When the mascotte disapear, it's because the guys behind the organization start to think they're serious, important and influent and that trivia has no more place left. They begin to see things in a quasi military-like fashion; became agressive, dangerous and arrogant (as militaries).
On the other hand, funny symbols like Tux, the Gnu or the Gimp are signs of project made with the knowledge that they're not serious. That may not be the best word to choose, but what I mean is that someone who use a smiling penguin as symbols is not someone who want t portary himself as a kind of Emperor Palpatine with severe face and grave megalomania.
Yes, I think mascottes are an organization's soul.
sigmentation fault
The majority of people don't need to have the expertise to install linux. Everyone I know comes to me for answers and if I tell them to install something they will (Speaking strickly of the non-tech folks I deal with), the people who make the software, install and fix computers are the people who make the choices around here. And it's pretty clear where things are heading.
"You end up talking to yourself a lot, which gets terribly boring because half the time you know what you're going to sa
post MS thinking is the power of denial MS is dying slow but Katz blessed ruling is a greater foe to open-source than MS
protecting people for making stupid decisions like paying for microsoft products... they can learn on there own (and should) ,the monopoly with guns, well
As hard to say it , But we should protect microsoft, sure they smell bad but the Government
if they stick nose in software
it will be like
Gov't schools=suck
Gov't medical care=suck
Gov't "social security"=slave labor
etc etc etc
people voluntered for Bill Gate's junk
they can unvolunter
try that with the Gov't Don't be afraid
the article seemed like the Gov't in software is acceptable its not
Jon Katz might be a cannabal
it is sad to watch the Gov't beat on a dying giant
worse to see others just stand by like Katz
this is where we should shine not hide
microsoft still has the market. it isnt even CLOSE to being post-microsoft. my gosh. ok. lets see. Windows 95 etc. takes up id say 99% of the mainstream market. and Linux, well, I'm an IT person and the basic user I have to say isn't al that bright and just wow even Windows is hard for some people. I don't mean to trash comptuer users, but Windows IS THE operating system. Macintoshes aren't computers, so I won't even mention them. But back to what I was saying. Microsoft has a HUGE monopoly and NEEDS to be taken down. Needs. I thought we all know that but I guess the author of this article (no offence) sees it differently.
42
I sure wouldn't want to lose $80 billion. That would kind of suck.
Hurqalya
Some of us have always been post-microsoft. Learned to program on a mainframe in 1979, first computers were a C-64 and a Timex Sinclair 1000 --still have it -- and then on to an Amiga running System V and later an intel box for Linux. I run Windows for a few applications --Lightwave, photoshop, lightscape, others nto yet ported to linux-- but development and pleasure is on non-ms OS's.
You are so correct. Closed Minds.... is Microsoft all that bad? Seriously, what is it about MS that makes them an evil empire? Is it that all these code junkies are upset that they can't have the source code? Maybe they are mad because DOS is no longer a common OS and they are dying to use a command prompt so they turned to Linux. Whatever te case is, they need to stop being hippocrits all the time and start being human. - Black Helmet Man
"Join me on the nail side of the thumb!"
The issue is though, is that Linux can run on that system but in a cheesy command prompt. Where as that is more than enough for Win95 to run. Granted it is unstable, but you put two computers down infront of a new user. One running Linux and the other Win95, and I will bet 9 times out of 10, the new user will choose Win95. Granted X can run on 100 Mhz, but not without the "ca-chug ca-chug" factor getting in the way. Generic users want 'pretty desktops' not a command prompt. - Black Helmet Man
"Join me on the nail side of the thumb!"
IMHO, I think MAC computers are the best built with the best support and frankly, anything that is closed architecture has the best compatibility. The parts for MAC are made for MAC. I will always be a PC user, because that is what I grew up on. It seems so stupid of all these Linux users to bash windows, when Linux has its own issues. It is like I have always said, "don't fight a war in another country when you have one going on in your own." I have never said Wondows was perfect for everyone, I am just saying that it is perfect for mom and dad and those computer illiterate people out there. - Black Helmet Man
"Join me on the nail side of the thumb!"
Great point. Linux rules, but not for everyone. Win can be a good alternative at home and for not so computer-literate users. However, it is really scarry when large companies (like the one I work for) roll out NT, hog the local network and generally create more problems and annoyances than good, instead of hiring some good computer people and using REAL OS.
Linux, please.
Does it bug anyone else that Katz can't do basic math? (Granted he gets it right the second time he mentions it, but still... please PROOFREAD!)
</RANT>
Be ot or bot ne ot, taht is the nestquoi.
Microsoft are not a good representant of what capitalism is meant to be. They represent what capitalism can degenerate into if unchecked. Daniel Actually, M$ more closely represents what capitalism can degenerate into if left unchampioned.
Metamuscle.com - News in the Iro
Yesterday I tried to call the attention of the comunity to the lack of the support EFF is getting in fighting the DeCSS case. It seems it was not important for the Slashdot reviewers as it seems unimportant for the OpenSource community ... But the fact is that a lot of people is saying with all the words that we are a bunch of selfish and uncooperative guys... Is it true? Or do we need to listen again to the voice of a judge saying "Guilty" but this time ruling against the EFF?
Are we alone on this fight? http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,34808-2, 00.html
There! In that block right there! Get the mass driver!
--
The gravitational constant of protein has been changed[...] Also, rabbit carcasses no longer weigh as much a
Oh, sh*t, you mean the Microso~1 age is over. And I missed it? I'm always last to know. I have been sitting here happily using my Mac (from APPL, who really brought the computer to the masses), trying to read up on Linux and BSD (who really runs the web), and all this time I was supposed to beleive M$ was the "innovator" of the industry?
Reality does not happen until you analyze the dots. -Don DeLillo (Underworld)
The Microsoft 'age' will not have ended until
they are actually prevented from using scare tactics (and contractual bullying) to steer vendors from innovating.
Did you read the actual findings? The advantage here is not that Microsoft has been labeled as 'the bad guy', but more importantly, that they will probably now be prevented from pushing around the smaller companies (and larger hardware companies), who previously had little choice but to 'cooperate with MS'.
This so called "software company" doesn't seem content to stay just a "software company, however. Note the X-Box. Granted, they aren't actually designing any of the hardware, but it's just "One small step for Microsoft" away.
In a sense, the fact that you "cannot see it" is the very reason it impacts you. According to the Conclusions of Law, "there are currently no products . . . that . . . users could substitute for [Windows] without incurring substantial costs" and Microsoft has "the ability to price substantially above the competetive level." If Microsoft had not engaged in "a series of exclusionary, anticompetetive, and predatory acts to maintain its monopoly power," PC users (including you) would have had more choice and, as a result of competition among OS makers, lower prices (whether directly through retail purchases, or indirectly in the price of OEM systems benefitting from lower licensing costs). As it stands, many users don't see the impact of Microsoft's actions because they've never had a choice.
I dont belive that there will ever be a post-Microsoft world. Microsoft is the snake in the paradise. It will always be there, maybe in the shadows, maybe in broad daylight. But we can never get rid of it.
Who knows under which bush it will lure. Waiting for the right time strike another blow at the sane world.
Laws do have their flaws, our legal system would be totally different if everything worked perfectly. Since we are humans, though, we make mistakes. We do learn from these mistakes. Most of the time.
The Sherman Antitrust Act is a very old act brought to being to stop certain huge companies from gouging people left and right. Steel and oil companies were running the whole show in the marketplace at the time, and were charging outrageous prices for their goods. They were determined to be monopolies and they were broken up. In the end, consumers benefitted because the competition made prices go down.
Now, back to the present.
MS has been accused of being a monopoly. I fail to see how this even applies to them. Linux is still out there, as are Novell, Unix, BeOS, and tons of other choices for what to use. The fact of the matter is that MS made a product that everyone can use, and made PCs more accessible for the masses. They are charging roughly the same price as competeing OSes in their particular market. Win98 is still the same price as Apple OS9. NT is roughly the same price as getting Unix or Novell. If they were a monopoly, they would be selling Windows as the ONLY operating system out there, and there would be NO other OSes. They would also be selling the OS for about $700 a pop, and would just sit back and rake in the profits.
The Sherman law was made to help the consumers in the case of a company that was using its dominance to screw people over. MS has only been helping consumers, by making computers and the internet more accessable to everyone. They have also been a major factor in the prices of PCs becoming cheaper and cheaper, because more and more people are buying them.
I am not saying the Sherman laws should be repealed, I think they need to be reworked, be brought more up to date.
Linux MIGHT stand a chance if the following things happened -
Linux is not easy to install, period. There are a lot of free apps available for it, but they are not always good. When you do get one of these apps, you have to figure out how to decompress the tarballs, and then figure out which method to get it complied and installed. If you are lucky, you will get it in an RPM, but those are few and far between. Then you run into trouble, and go looking for help on the web, and you get a bunch of assholes who say "If you don't know, go look it up," which is what you were doing in the first place! And I will not even get started on the process to update your kernel!
Face it, MS has the market because they made something easy to use, and something everyone is familiar with. My tech calls are real nice since I know everyone is using MS Windows. I can only imagine the problems involved with everyone using a different distribution of Linux. My job would be a living hell.
Poor people don't need computers with internet access. Last time I looked they were more concerned with work, or where the next meal is coming from. I won't even go into what this dropping $5 computers idea sounds like . . .
What an ass . . . You don't know me, and you have no idea the sheer volume of work that I do. I work in a place with 400 PCs, like I stated before, with only 3 people in the IS department. I handle everything from simple computer crashes to network wide data line drops and router blowouts. If you only knew the amount of stuff I did, you would quickly recind that statement and shove it.
While I may not be a big fan of MS, I have to realize that it is because of them that I have a job in the IT industry on this very day. I work in a large healthcare office that currently uses over 400 PCs and 6 servers. The 400 PCs run either Win95 or Win98 (with one or two 3.1xs in there) and the servers run a mixture of NT4, NT3.51, Netware, Linux Debian, or UNIX. I was hired because of my familiarity with Microsoft products (OSs, apps, etc.) as well as my ability to use the other systems mentioned above.
.
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Enough about me, on to my thoughts on this matter . .
Todays litigious society is always ready to jump on someone for some slight, whether real or imagined. You just look at someone wrong on the wrong day, and you could face a lawsuit amounting to millions of dollars. When this happens, there are always several other people who are ready to jump in on it, to get their piece of the proverbial pie.
Face it, MS put out a damn good operating system and made it so ANYONE can use it. This is no way was hurting the consumers. This was actually helping consumers. Windows 95 made PCs enter the realm of the regular user. As a result, prices on PCs have fallen considerably in the past years. I bought my first Pentium machine for $1500, and it was not even top of the line at the time. Now I can get a top of the line PC for under $1000. More and more people have been buying computers because they are easy to use. This is way it should be.
Windows crashes all the time . .
Yeah, it does crash regularly. There are times on my home PC that I am ready to toss it out the window. But, in the 400 PCs that line my offices, it is rare when I get crashes. All problems are reported to me and I am aware of what goes on. Overall, the 400 PCs here crash far less often than my home PC.
On the same note, I have claimed 2gigs of my hard drive on my laptop for RedHat 6.1. I like Linux, it has a lot of good features and a lot of potential, but I am still regularly upset with it, because I cannot get sound to load, or I cannot figure out how to get it on the network. My Windows PC I have up and running on the network, sharing files and queueing print jobs, in roughly 45 minutes. I have been TRYING to get Linux to do everything I want it to do for a month or so.
Microsoft illegally tied the IE browser to their operating system, thereby shutting Netscape out of the market.
Question, what browser are you using right now? If you are in Windows, you might be using IE or Netscape. If you are in Linux, you are using Netscape. Those of you using Netscape are probably happy with the browser, but many people do not feel the same, and that is for a reason.
Netscape is an inferior product. Plain and simple. Microsoft (who had in the past included the deplorable older versions of IE) saw that they could make something better and did so. They in no way told people that they HAD to use IE. There was still the option to go download the Netscape browser. If Netscape really had a good browser, people would have still been buying it and using it.
The Sherman Antitrust laws are too old to apply to today's society. They way it stands, if you enter the market and have a tough time with it because a larger competitor has most of the market share, you can say they are making the marketplace unfair to you, and bring an Antitrust suit against them.
If you want to compete in this marketplace, make a product that is worth a damn. Netscape and the other people on the antitrust bandwagon have yet to put out anything that I qualify as worthwhile. Maybe if they put out a decent product, then maybe, just maybe, they might stand a chance to gain some market share.
Wow, this guy is the king of the pointless, droning, one-liners.
Do you have anything insightful to post, or are you just trolling for attention?
Once again, you have proven that you can post something without it being insightful. Your "smart quotes suck" statement really changed my mind about how things work, and I am about to make a sweeping change to my life.
You are not a good debater. Back yourself up.
NEVER? Doubtful . . .
And just so you know, most of those "countless dumbasses," as you so quaintly called them, are using Windows because their business runs better with it. Sure, my giant database here works under Novell, but it crashes repeatedly. But, under NT, it has only crashed twice in the past 7 months.
Just for that comment, I hope everyone sends you Word and Excel files.
You are one of those assholes on the Linux boards who responds with "look it up" when the person was looking for help in the first place, aren't you?
Windows 2000 is the beginning of the end ; its mediocre performance and its failure to establish a strong presence in the server market means that MS will never own the enterprise how long has Win2K been out? maybe a couple of months? a little early to judge it as a failure. like with most things the only thing that can say for sure if this trial has been good, bad, or indifferent, or whether or not Microsoft is about to decline, is time.
A pessimist thinks that the world is going to hell in a hand basket. A cynic thinks that the world is going to hell in
Essentially what this would imply is that the criteria is different for each person. Every computer user will, at some point in their lifetime, encounter a computer running a Microsoft operating system. Depending on their situation (home user, graphic artist, systems administrator) their experiences with MS will be different. Most people will become so entangled with the paradigm that they will literally become part of this "Microsoft World." Go to work, troubleshoot a Microsoft network, use Microsoft Outlook for work email, come home, use Microsoft Windows running Microsoft Word and Microsoft Media Player to listen to Microsoft Windows Media Format audio files, browse the web with Microsoft Internet Explorer, etc. Whenever you have trouble with these Microsoft products, you raise your fists to the sky and shout, "Damn you Bill Gates!" Or at least I do.
And these users will (or already have) at some point in their life come across something that will kick them in the head and encourage them to start experimenting with software outside the "Microsoft World." For some, it's Novell Netware. For some others, it was the first time they sat down and used a Macintosh. But for most of us techies, it was the first time we dragged the 386 out of the basement and installed Linux on it.
Consider all the computers users in the world to be a part of one of 3 major groups:
- Techies
- Users
- Idiots
Each of these groups can obviously be further subdivided, for example "Techies" could be "Mac Techies", "Hardware Techies", "Code (Jockeys) Techies", etc. "Idiots" could be divided up into "Media" and "Businessmen." You see my point.The Techies have been leaving their Microsoft World for the last 10 years. The advent of the new MacOS, the rebirth of Netware and similar products, and the creation of Linux. Please note these are just the crudest of examples, I'm sure there are a lot more that I'm not considering; it's besides the point. They've either left the paradigm, started leaving, or never got caught in the trap to begin with.
The Users have just recently started to leave the Microsoft World. Linux distributions are becoming less like BSD and more like Windows 95, making it easier (albeit not painless) for someone less technically oriented to get started. Macintosh computers are earning a name with their new PowerPC processors. And software companies are starting to support these operating systems more and more. Corel/WordPerfect is just the smallest example.
For the idiots in the world, it's a whole 'nother ball game. They see the computer industry as dollars and cents, profit and loss. They've seen Microsoft on-the-rise since 1979 and hear secondhand reports of Techies and Users bitching re: Microsoft. Naturally, not being technically oriented themselves, they'd make assumptions based on the above two items (stock and rumors) and take it to mean that Microsoft is a huge, bumbling monopoly with complete control over the entire market, and must be stopped! Which, of course, we all know isn't true, but they don't know that. They're idiots. These rumors started in 1985 and have been building in and upon themselves until now.
Which brings us to present day. The announcement that Microsoft is WRONG brings great triumph to all of us. 25% of us have already had our just-desserts, which is why we're sitting here saying to ourselves "Why the heck is everyone making such a big deal about it? I've got a Linux firewall for my ADSL line and there's a Mac upstairs connected to my LAN. Microsoft Shmicrosoft, if the company ceased to exist today I'd drop RedHat on my Pentium III and install WordPerfect 2000." But the other 75% are singing "Ding, dong, the witch is dead, the wicked witch of Redmond is dead..."
So this is why I say "Post-Microsoft world" is a state of mind. "There is no spoon." There is no monopoly. We've all just come to the realization at different times.
Alakaboo
With an attitude like that it's no wonder the free software movement is still behind in the race. You guys spend all your time fighting over inconsiquential rhetoric while the smart ones move in on you. Take a look at who needs a better education. Look in the mirror. Can we talk about heterogenous, non-platform specific solutions instead of playing mine is better than yours.
who is Linus Torvald. You might want to correct that Mr. Kat
Criminals get put in prison right? Isn't that how it works?
Then what "marketing genius" wrote Microsoft statements that were given to the press yestyerday?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
StarOffice does not keep my TOC and paragraph formatting correctly
Sure it does -- but since you wrote your file in Windows you used Truetype Monotype "Times New Roman" font that you don't have in Linux. StarOffice tries to show you it using whatever closest is available, and it happens to be X11 Adobe "Times" font that has slightly different character sizes and can't be scaled. Since Word format depends on particular font sizes, resulted text layout is off.
Solution: if you want to read Word files, install Windows fonts. I did, and I don't even have Windows -- I had to get fonts from Microsoft "typography" page and run their self-extracting archives under WINE.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
To be honest, MySQL lacks some of the functionality that Sybase (that MS SQL server is based on) provides. Of course, the same Sybase and Oracle work just fine on non-MS systems, and PostgreSQL, while being slower than everything else I have mentioned, provides most of the same functionality, but this is a different story.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Why do I see so many exact quotations of yesterday's MS statements in this post?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Multiply this company by the multitudes of companies in other industries, and you'll see we're a long way from breaking the shackles of Redmond.
But how relevant that company is? Who cares about all the sheeps, they will use whatever someone is going to sell them. I will rather leave worrying about those things to Sun, Red Hat and SGI.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
What application are you talking about? I never had Windows on any of my boxes, and I certainly don't feel the need to use it now, even though I have to run staroffice to read files that countless dumbasses recently started sending me in Word and Excel formats.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The normal authority on Internet Protocols is the IEEE, as they publish ?RFCs?
1. IETF. 2. "smart quotes" suck.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
You're assuming with very little justification that Microsoft's business is solid, and that their books are honest, not to mention that their basic business plan is viable.
- Microsoft's business is in a severe drought- the biggest product is only W2K, and there's a howling void of other product ready to do major tonnage. Furthermore, W2K is evoking a very wait-and-see attitude from many unlikely sources, even the Gartner Group.
- Based on Microsoft's approach to truth and veracity in fscking COURT, what gives anyone the idea that they are being truthful in their accounting?
- Their business plan is _only_ viable as long as they can continue growing by 30% a quarter. That's a fscking insanely cancerous rate- and they ARE ALREADY FAILING to maintain it, and W2K doesn't look like it wil help. People say "The stock will always be a good buy because it will always grow at X% per quarter!" Reality check- what percentages do they have in their markets? 90%, 95%, 97%? Where is the room to grow there? They've hit the ceiling.
I saw one guy, an analyst, talk sense about all this. His words? "Get out." In fact he said 'you should have gotten out _before_ Monday'. I find that hard to argue with. _Nothing_ lasts forever. This touching belief in Microsoft is cargo-cult thinking.That's not a fair evaluation of this at all. In the 200+ finding of facts, the browser issue was only a small part.
In the finding of facts, it was determined that:
A: Microsoft is a monopoly
B: Microsoft has, in the past, used it's monopoly position to destroy other products (eg, DR Dos, Word Perfect, GeoWorks, and most recently Netscape).
C: It is illegal to use a monopoly in one market to force your way into another market.
D: MS was a latecomer to the Internet game.
E: There are *MS documents* that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that top MS executives knew they must destroy Netscape in order to shoulder in and take over the Internet market. They planned to destroy Netscape by replacing them with their own competing browser. MS understood that since it was the dominant platform, it would be trivial to use their monopoly to force Netscape out of busines.
See the sorite here? Microsoft has a history of using their superior position in one market to strongarm their way into another market. In most of the earlier cases, they did not have a monopoly yet, or were simply maintaining their current monopoly; this was the first case where they used their monopoly power to force their way into a market they did not dominate.
It's a very simple, and a very fair, law. *You cannot be a bully just because you are bigger than the other kids.* Pretty simple, huh?
Microsoft was bigger than the other kids. It was a bully. Now it has to see the principle.
Oh, and the "Multiple Document Interface" was not first implemented in MS Word. It's been around since the Altos days.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Actually, antitrust laws were developed in the 19th century, and this is still the 20th century.
New XFMail home page
/bin/tcsh: Try it; you'll like it.
You should read the proposed remedies in the DOJ's last settlement proposal. Fines aren't on the list and are very unlikely in this case, simply because they wouldn't do anything to prevent future abuses of power.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
APIs need to be defined by a 100% independent organisation. Not like the SQL group, which is so dependent on the goodwishes of companies, it deliberately under-specifies to leave companies space to make proprietary extensions, thus defeating the whole point of open specs, whilst being able to wave the open spec flag at the same time.
There need to be 100% vendor-independent file and disk formats, which are rich enough that data can be translated to and from such formats with zero (or near-zero, for really bizare extensions) loss of information. If there's no cost, in terms of what can be done, then inventing new formats becomes an expensive luxury. After all, the whole point of proprietary formats is to lock the customer into a vendor. But if your format can be translated with zero loss into anyone else's, spending money on that side of things becomes frivolous. (That's why many proprietary network protocols died in the face of TCP/IP.)
The fact is, we =DO= live in a Microsoft-run world. Many "key" servers are NT, the space station will be NT (if it is ever finished), hardware and software manufacturers are forever trying to boost margins which means Windows, not choice.
Microsoft isn't dead. Deflated a little, but definitely not dead.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Actualy I am hoping that the Microsoft as a wipping boy issue will go away.
If it's not Microsoft It WILL be someone else, there is no such thing as a Benevolent Dictator, If it's not Microsoft who next? Why do we think that Microsoft will be replaced by somthing better, if it's closed source?
The more I work in the IT industry the more I realize Closed source is the problem. Now I never thought about myself as a Stallman want-to-be but damn it he is right!
Think about it this way, most of the time my job is to go around trying to find work arounds to closed source software, be it Windows or LINUX.
I never thought of myself as a developer but because I needed to fix something one way or another I have become one. Open source makes this possible (To fix things), Closed source has made me write hacky code to fix bugs or workarounds.
Or my least favorite thing to say "it's a bug, deal with it."
I prefer to fix things, not add another layer of kludge.
It's time to get off of the Microsoft crutch, and look at the real problem, the real enemy, closed source.
"Think of it as evolution in action."
Let's see, Microsoft has billions and has been investing in all sorts of other businesses at an average of millions of dollars a day. But they're going to vanish from the face of the earth in a puff of smoke? Don't hold your breath waiting for that one. We'll be post-Microsoft when we're post-money, but probably not before. If Bill Gates personal wealth falls by half he'll still have more than the rest of us put together.
On the other hand, the way the tech sector stocks are falling and the old line stuff is gaining, we may for the first time be hearing people bragging about *selling* Microsoft stock.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
You know how sometimes you post (Yeah, you. We all do it.) just because you know what you're saying is going to be moderated way up? You know a post about how much you love Linux and hate Microsoft?
Looks to me like Katz is karma-whoring. Ain't no point in preaching to the choir.
-Waldo
This week happens to be right before the annual spring meeting of the ABA Antitrust Section.
... so the bar can kind of chew on it at this spring meeting", which is, this weekend! (Apr. 5-7).
Long story - I had to dig out my old 'Wired' feature on "Oh, no, Mr. Bill!", The Fed's plan to reboot Microsoft - and they mentioned that, "Historically, the Supreme Court has timed its rare antitrust opinions right before this early spring antitrust powwow
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Actually, hardware is the one thing I think Microsoft gets right. The intellimouse and their joysticks seem pretty high quality.
Finkployd
Many of us already live in a Post-Katz Slashdot because aside from the occasional snide comment, we just ignore his endless ranting, raving and pointless pontification.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
What they mean is that users and developers can obtain the code to discover hidden APIs. It could possibly also mean that competitors could license and re-sell modified versions of Windows under "fair" conditions, meaning with some revenue for Microsoft.
No matter what it means, as a rememdy, I think any opening of the Windows source code would be bad. The problem with Windows is not that the source code is closed, it is that Windows is unreliable, poorly specified, and uses non-standard APIs that some hackers at Microsoft dreamed up one night. Opening its source code would simply entrench it further and cause software vendors to start relying on even more obscure behaviors inside it.
The problem with Microsoft is their predatory release and licensing practices. They seem to release software too early, with incomplete specifications, and keep a bunch of APIs for their own internal uses. This is what gives them an edge over their competitors in terms of time to market and apparent functionality, and it also accounts for the low quality of their software.
This is no different from a manufacturer of physical devices cutting corners in product design and safety features. This allows them to cut costs and get to market faster, but at the expense of the consumer. Taken to its extreme, the savings accrued from such poor practices may well allow a manufacturer to dominate the market.
The solution I see is fairly simple, and quite analogous in both cases: the government needs to require specifications of software and create liabilities if the software doesn't comply. This is simply realizing that an order transaction in any form requires contractual agreements and the possibility of enforcement when there are violations, and in the case of software, contractual agreements are "specifications".
It's no coincidence that Microsoft has steadfastly resisted efforts to standardize or document their APIs. And their argument is correct: it would "slow down innovation" (i.e., their release cycle). But the point is that we don't want Microsoft (or any other company) to release software as fast as possible without any other considerations.
This solution, of course, is wholly unpalatable to software companies. You mean that we ought to be required to specify in advance what our software does and be held liable if it doesn't comply? How dare the government get involved in innovation and software practice in that way?
But this seems like a logical next step to me. The government (foremost, Republicans) has not at all been squeamish about imposing regulations on all sorts of formerly free-wheeling aspects of the computer industry and cyberspace: the enormous expansion of copyright law and fields of patentability, the criminalization of previously innocuous behavior on the Internet, content filtering, etc. Those kinds of regulations will have very uncertain consequences for innovation. In comparison, imposing some simple product safety and contractual requirements on the software industry seems like a small and logical step.
I think requiring companies to provide specifications of their software and make them contractually enforceable is generally a good idea for the software industry as a whole. Sun should be held to similar standards for Java, IBM for their software, etc.
But, right now, ideas along these lines would even be sufficient as remedies in the Microsoft case. For example, Microsoft could be required to create standards-quality specifications of the Win32, COM, and ActiveX APIs, as well as the VisualBasic programming language and the IE browser, and to be liable for compliance with their specifications. That, rather than opening the source code, would benefit the industry, level the playing field, and benefit Windows users. Yes, it would result in delays and lots of additional expenses to Microsoft, but that's, after all, the point: cutting corners in these areas is what has allowed Microsoft to dominate the market in the first place.
I intend to send the following letter to my MP and other members of the Canadian Government (I'm in the Great White North)ASAP, hopefully to implement a pre-emptive strike against Micro$oft's "rapacious and predatory" behaviour:
The Right Honourable Jean Crétien
Prime Minister of Canada
Dear Mr. Crétien,
I'm sure you are aware of the news that a District of Columbia Superiour Court Judge has found Microsoft Corporation guilty of anti-competative and predatory behaviour. Although this decision made in the United States has no legal binding in our great country, I feel it necessary to recommend that following legislation should be enacted in Canada in order to protect our burgeoning Information and Technology sector:
1. Modification or extension of a currently published "open" network protocols is illegal.
Any current, published standard Internet Protocols must remain unaltered in order to give all companies the ability to compete effectively on the Internet. The CRTC should be given a mandate to police and enforce any subversive use of a standard protocol modification.
2. Any company or person using these protocols must fully disclose to the public how their product makes use of the protocol, or it is an illegal product
Namely, any API (Application Programming Interface) that can potentially make use of basic connectivity on the Internet must be fully disclosed and published.
3. Any company or person who intends to establish a new Internet communications protocol must disclose the entire technical details of this new usage before it is allowed.
These steps will ensure that no one entity can "own" any part of the Internet, at least in Canada. Microsoft has shown in the past that they are not above using subversive tactics to head of competition (I know you are extremely busy, but please read "The Halloween Documents" at http://www.opensource.org/halloween/).
The normal authority on Internet Protocols is the IEEE, as they publish "RFCs" that describe and explain the intricacies of these protocols. Companies like Microsoft are in positions where they can "pollute" these protocols and turn them into proprietary standards, with which they can stifle innovation and essentially co-opt sections of the Internet.
I urge you to consider this pre-emptive measure in order to keep the Internet available to all as a resource to expand our economy, our vision and improve our world.
Kindest regards,
Ron Sokoloski, Network Analyst
Southam Information Technology Group
44 Frid Street, Hamilton, ON L8N 3G3
e-mail: -----
Desk: ------
Cell: -----
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Ouch, you were so close to the truth I could taste it. I think much of what you say is true, but you miss the important point that Microsoft IS in the Entertainment Industry. (I've got another post in this thread about this point, but it's a sharper point in response to your post.) You're completely correct that they don't own the Enterprise (or embedded controllers, or any of the really important computer applications these days). That's tough to do, and doesn't play to what Microsoft's strength has always been, namely keeping people entertained.
People actually like to play with their fonts and "get creative" with their PowerPoint presentations. The actual productivity gain in all of this has been minimal (actually, people like Thomas K. Landauer have argued that the gain has been, uh, a loss). But, boy, has it ever kept a lot of office workers busy and entertained.
Of course, Microsoft did really figure this out at some point, and their non-core investments reflect this fact: MSNBC, Hotmail, WebTV, MSN, etc. No hardware companies, no deep infrastructure, just stuff to keep people busy and happy. The future success of Microsoft will be in Keeping it Fun, and learning to completely let go of grungy stuff like webserver OSes that you can literally pick up for free these days.
Babar
Oh yes, I do know this very well. However, Paul Allen != Microsoft. Paul Allen is a way more complicated and interesting guy than the MS juggernaut.
Microsoft may have some inside traction on the Paul Allen investments, but MS and Paul Allen are distinct in a way that Ballmer or Gates and MS are clearly not. But, for that matter, cable TV is just the medium through which a lot of entertainment (including Microsoft's) will be delievered. So Paul Allen decides to leverage his Microsoft investment (and also his sports franchises) by buying cable companies; makes sense to me... :-)
Babar
First, I didn't say that MS didn't try to offer enterprise class software, only that they certainly aren't running away with that market. There's nothing like Oracle or even Sybase or Informix as competition to MS in the word-processing market, for example. As far as email goes, I'm way too familiar with Microsoft Exchange (since it's MU's email "solution", at least for the moment...)
Indeed, computers have gained most people an immense amount, more than most of them can imagine. And I'm not (seriously) suggesting that office software is completely useless. MS Word is a perfectly serviceable, if rather byzantine, text editor. But I am suggesting that much of its perceived value comes from the fact that people like to use it, not from the fact that people get much more done with it. Heck, I'm all in favor of entertainment, or else why would I be posting to slashdot?
Yes, but these are primarily means to produce entertainment, not obtain it. The reason why desktop publishing was such a huge success was that it really, really did replace an outmoded technology, and it lead to a better separation of concerns between mock-up/design and the raw, gritty details of printing and binding and such. Plus, you know desktop publishing software is there for more than entertainment value because real businesses whose main product is printed material rely on the software. I suspect (but I'm less sure) that desktop video will have a similar effect in the video production industry.
Now, there's a funny thing going on here: the market for producing books and videos isn't nearly as large as the market for playing (with) them, so we can predict from the "Microsoft is primarily an entertainment company" thesis that MS won't worry too much about those niches. Sure enough, they really haven't. There's no "real" MS equivalent to PageMaker or Quark. [MS Publisher is basically the family/entertainment toy version.] Now, web browsers, on the other hand...
Babar
Some of us have been post-Microsoft for over five years!
There is no way that the courts would make MS open the source code to Windows to the public, then not restrict its use. That would be like punishing the old AT&T by forcing them to give free phone service to everyone in the country. The point is to punish MS and promote competition, not put them out of business. Anyway, let's say that Judge Jackson says that they have to GPL Windows 2000. First off, the ruling is appealed until 2006 when the code is completely outdated. Second, how many people are going to be able to read the millions of lines of code and understand enough to constructively change anything. Bottom line: MS still has the user base and the money to do whatever they want.
-B
Where have you been? Microsoft has been trying to get into hardware for years. They just haven't done well (apart from the gaming things like the FF joysticks and intellimouse).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I know it's getting hippier to defend JonKatz whenever someone slams on him.
What I didn't get into was that Katz's whole idea was wrong. The so-called technological movements and evolutions aren't even technological movements and evolutions of the nineties.
open source - huh what? Can you see Katz grin to the zealots' clapping of their hands? How does "dominating open source" create a extremely profitable model? AFAIK, open source hasn't even been proven as a viable model of commerce yet. The fastest companies adopting open-source are hardware companies that open-source their driver, because they don't sell software as their main source of business.
nano-technology: your quote: nanotech, once it gets going, will need software in order to do anything worthwhile
Err, yeah. Now can you elaborate on how Microsoft creating software for nanotech will be a profitable and lucrative business?
AI is classically a matter of software + specialized hardware
I agree with your statement. But how is not dominating AI bad for Microsoft? Sorry.
SuperComps and handhelds are light-blinkers without an OS and proggies.
Can you explain how selling OSes for super computers will generate a lot of revenue? Please?
I'm not even going to touch genetic research with a 10 foot pole.
Katz's only valid points was hand-held and wireless computing - even wireless computing is better left to the hardware companies.
So, 1 out of 7 right isn't too bad?
And Katz missed the most important 2 techlogical evolutions that Microsoft didn't ride - Internet and e-commerce. Which lead me to the conclusion that Katz doesn't know what he's talking about.
As for you...
Apple.
Then once we get them out of the way, we're sort of stuck....Be?
Perhaps Jon is right and this ruling is nothing more that a morale victory albeit a large one. Nonetheless one cannot discount the value nor the power of morale.
You have to give MS their due. Windows did give the masses accessibility to computing, a factor which aided the growth of the Internet and the Internet did begat Linux.
Now if MS is prevented from exploiting their market share the prospect of consumer benefit from competition and innovation are extremely bright.
Predestination was doomed from the start.
Actually, I wish they would drop the whole thing just to save on the tax dollars. Unfortunately, this thing could drag on for years. The IBM case, which started in the 60's, was only settled in the past few years, and it still affects IBM today. But whatever happens, you are right, Bill Gates doesn't matter that much anymore.
And it is fun to watch him whine about it. :-)
And it is for this exact reason that Open Source is a Very Good Thing. M$ is the one spreading the special fuel problem and halting any attempts to standardize (via embrace, extend, and break-away). Why are the Office file formats not released as a standard?
The Open Source world is working very hard with the various standards. The software written in the Open Source world works with the standards, not against them.
Open sourced code is not a choice for the average user.
Yet. GNU/Linux is not the right choice yet. The various distros are working hard to bridge the deficiencies for the average end-user. The work is underway, but right now the incentive is only there (really) for the distro makers.
However if I could set up my mother's computer with all the settings and software, I would much rather support a Linux box for her than a Windows box. I would be able to easily upgrade things remotely, change system settings, and lock down those settings I don't want her changing. But, right now, the software applications she wants to use are stable and well documented on Windows. The Open Source software is still a ways back (for her purposes and technology level). I do spend many-an-hour on the phone with her trying to figure out why her Win98 box won't get on the 'Net, or why applications don't print, etc... with little support utilities to help me sort out the mess. I, myself, am very happy to have an all-Free system at home.
Once the software packages are there, I can easily see a world where you buy a Linux box which "knows" how to upgrade itself. It will contact an authorized knowledge-base, figure out which libs/packages/sources/etc. it needs and Do The Right Thing. M$ would love to have this, but Open Source will be there long before they will (we learned this [the first time] during the MS-DOS years...)
Many users just want to install and run, not to search for tar.gz files on the internet [...]
Don't view .tar.gz files as being a barrier. For example, RPM resolves many issues and rpmfind resolves more. There will be improvements to these systems and/or new systems that make upgrades and installations easier or automatic.
It's a simple matter of complex programming.
OK, now that we've had our fun, let's see what this really means:
...
... why do you need a 1GHz CPU? Just build [grin] Beowulf clusters ...
... besides, the future growth companies are all in Seattle proper, not the hinterlands.
1. Yes, the continuing drop in hardware prices means that the percentage cost of a system attributable to an OS provides downward pressure on OS pricing. With a DOJ victory, Linux should grab a larger share, as should other OS such as BeOS, at the expense of a transparently priced and watchguarded MSFT W2K. But only somewhat.
2. Net appliances are where the growth is. Transmeta and other devices will cause us to embrace Web Pads, PDAs, and so on. The future will be wild and wooly here, with design and function king, and pricing queen. This is the real growth area for Linux. And MSFT will lose most of this chunk.
3. The market corrections you are seeing are reasonable. Tech was overvalued, old growth stocks were undervalued. Deal with it. Me, I'm picking up MSFT and CSCO at fire sale prices
4. IE will continue to have major market share until AOL [note - own shares] gets it's act in gear and pushes Netscape as the Browser of Net appliances and everything but Windows. Release the Windows version later, maybe three months later. Let IE rule it's dwindling universe, but provide Netscape free with AOL and don't support the extensions MSFT wants to pollute with their browser.
5. It's all about the bandwidth. Who cares about the processor, except geeks? I mean, really, get a grip
6. The 40% of MSFT shares held in Seattle are mostly held by Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and maybe 20 guys. The rest of us diversified. Don't worry about Seattle - we will use Redmond as a Museum of Unnatural History museum and a stockade for day traders
Will in Seattle
So Kraft sold Post to Microsoft? What are the product?
P-M Shredded Kerberos?
P-M Frosted Blue-Screen-of-Deaths?
P-M Toasted FUD-ios?
P-M Golden Honey-bloat?
Ummmmm,
George
Bill Gates' company hasn't dominated any of the significant technological movements and evolutions of the late 90s: open source, nano-technology, AI, genetic research, hand-held and wireless computing, supercomputers.
It has, however, made more customers happy than all those "significant" things combined. Maybe not you, and maybe not even MS-aligned me... but more people accomplish every day with Microsoft than any other single software company. It may not be fashionable to say that here, but it's certainly true enough.
This seems an absurdly weak prop for the assertion that we are now in some way "post-Microsoft". Seriously, the majority even of Slashdot readers can find a solid counterexample to this assertion just by walking around their building and counting MS products, in uses even a hardliner would have to admit were productive.
Come on, was there any reason to drag nanotech into a software-related article other than Hemos-points?
"Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer." - Linux Advocac
This is because people associate things like their favorite characters, shows and games with the Entertainment Trust and they associate all the annoyances they have come to expect from computers with M$. I remember that a politician (or political columnist, I forget which) made a point about Jack Valenti and his influence on the Hill. Lobbyists for other industries can do a lot with money and the like, but only Valenti can arrange for Clint Eastwood or Julia Roberts to show up at your fundraiser. People get blinded by the glamor of the Entertainment Industry and it keeps them from despising it the same way they do Micros~1.
In fact, if M$ was smart, they buy a film studio like AOL did and get some of the public relations magic that that can give them. Though they have been smart enough to co-opt popular culture (like my beloved Rolling Stones *sob*) to try to achieve the same result and manipulate people.
Of course, good luck to the U.S. government if they ever want to break up Sony...
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Funny, I thought the real fear and loathing didn't start until Win95 hit the streets, mainly because Win3.x was acknowledged by all to be a lame-o DOS shell that failed to measure up to its primary competition at the time, the Mac OS. When 95 landed, there was lots of carping from the Mac crowd (anybody remember the Win95 = Mac89 and "Been there, done that" campaigns?) but the fact was that 95 was the first serious competition to the Mac.
Personally, before that I had used Windows only briefly; now, I'm being forced to add it to the list of systems I support at work (i.e. Mac OS and the rare Linux call). My personal distaste started well into the 90s (actually with Word 6 for the Mac, but that's another story) and has only grown since....
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
They will creatively work their way around any decision that is made to break up microsoft or another form of punishment that is handed out to him like any naughty school boy would.
The world is not going to stop using windows yet. Linux or any of the other "alternative" OS's are not easy enough for the novice computer user to be able to grasp to accomplish the simple things that can be done with windows. Also when Linux does reach that point of userfreindlyness will the millions of dollars that are needed too advertise it be available so that people can find out and have the choice of a different Os.
www.burgatronics.net
Burgatronics
Do Not Read Burgatronics... It's Evil
First, just to get it out of my system:
Now let's get on with some real discussions on some substantive topics around Jackson's ruling. I think it is likely that Jackson will, during the remedies phase, come to the conclusion that breaking up Microsoft is the best remedy. Fining Microsoft is only going to lead to trouble - any fine that would have any real meaning would be in the tens of billions (as Microsoft, last I checked, was sitting on some $15b in cash). If the Feds do that, business leaders world-wide will scream at the excesses of the Federal government, and the Feds should just get out of an industry they don't understand (said business leaders being rightfully disturbed by the precedent of multi-billion-dollar extortion).
As for releasing the source to Windows, again, business leaders will scream (imagine if the Feds revoked all copyrights on everything produced by Time Warner - and I know some of you think that would be a good idea, but it ain't gonna happen). Furthermore, what would it really accomplish? Creation of Windows distribution companies a la Linux distro companies like Red Hat? Not likely - the Microsoft marketing machine is too good for that. Eventually, it might make Windows more secure and more stable, but in the meantime, virus writers would have the source at the same time as everyone else. Community security checks would be a long time in coming and many Windows users wouldn't upgrade (lots of them still use Windows 3.1 - this is not the Linux community.
Personally, I think it should be three equal "Nanosofts" (to coin a name :-), each with complete rights to the source code for Windows and Office (at least). Making an operating system company perpetuates the monopoly, and leads back in to arguments about what constitutes an operating system. But while this kind of stuff is fun to talk about, appeals mean this won't happen for years, if at all.
So instead, let's focus on what we should be doing to advance free softrware. Better products. Better usability. A real user-friendly Linux (or other open source OS). A product I can give to eveyone else here at the start-up I work at, all the people that are Hollywood content types and have enough trouble with a Macintosh.
So cheer a bit - it took a long time, but thar's the nature of law - it is reactionary. But after that, remember, Microsoft isn't going away, and neither are bad products.
Let's make more good ones.
-----
Klactovedestene!
1. This "the masses cannot comprehend" litany is as untrue as it is uninteresting. Fact is, if Linux was preloaded on machines the way windows is, it would be used by a great many more people. OEM support is what keeps Linux from the masses. (Something M$ spends a lot of time and $$ on)
2. Windows IS NOT EASY TO INTALL OR MAINTAIN, DAMMIT. I don't know where that line of crap came from. Granted, due to Point Number One, (above)more people know how to do it, but that does not constitute ease of use!
3. It is you who is in his own little world, my friend. And If you don't read slashdot, how did you post this?
--Jaybill
Microsoft hasn't impacted us? What planet are you living on?
No, it hasn't - has the widespread use of Windows and financial domination of Microsoft impacted the way you live your life? It certainly hasn't impacted mine. Mobile phones and EPOC have - they allow me to keep in touch with people wherever I am, UN*X etc have, I learnt to program, got my first taste of the net etc on them from '94ish up till now, and I'm still learning, DVD has, digital quality movies in my home, Mmmm, nice., MP3 has, I can store my CD collection in a relatively small amount of disk space (anything's relatively small when you have as much as I do) and listen to them as much as I like, in whatever order I like without having to be constantly switching them, and without them getting scratched, damaged etc...
The fact that a two-bit american company has, by the use of shady, even illegal business practices forced it's product onto 80-90% of the world's PCs has not impacted my life one iota, I pity those whose life it has impacted.
--
Listening for the sound of the coming rain...
It's not the stability of the OS that is the issue of the case.
It's not the fight between "openness" and "closedness" of the source code.
It's not the quality of the software that was offered by the competition.
The judge has now ruled that Microsoft was acting outside the law when Microsoft added an Internet web browser component to their operating system.
They were not deemed outside the law when Windows 2.1 included the "Multiple Document Interface" that was implemented first in Microsoft Word. They weren't scoffed by a judge when Windows implemented TrueType font technology after Adobe Type Manager kept crashing the graphics layer of Windows 3.0. Nobody questioned the ethics of bundling a thousand generic "uni" drivers for printers, video and modem cards onto the Windows 3.1 installation disks, which meant that hardware could run without millions of calls to hardware manufacturers for updated drivers. Not a soul whispered 'contempt' when Windows 95 included the Rich Edit control, that simple thing (again from Word) that allowed *any* app writer to develop a program that understood italics and boldface.
But when Microsoft adds an HTML rendering control, and a URL underlining text style, to its operating system, it is deemed against the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.
Nevermind that all the Windows app writers outside of Utah commend the addition to the standard libraries of code features.
Let us, by extension, tell Ford that they must now de-package the Ford-made windshield component from their cars; we wish to bolster competition and let all the other mom and pop windshield manufacturers a chance at that market. After all, the windshield is hardly a requisite feature for an automobile? Tires, motor and seat, that's all you're allowed now, Ford.
[
I have flamed JonKatz a million times before, but is it unrealistic to think that if Katz isn't going to leave, may we at least have some other person "preaching to the choir" to see whether people genuinely dislike him, or if they just don't like the subject matter?
--
--
E2 IN2 IE?
(Alert: I'm not, nor do I claim to be, lord-high science guy. My knwoledge of AI and nano-tech is entirely limited to what I've read in science mags and web sites. Caveat Emptor)
I think Special K's big point is that MS sort of rested on their laurels-- especially considering that they had the stated aim of worldwide domination. (They did take a stab at the PDA thing, I guess, but it was a pretty pitiful stab, wasn't it?) If you want your OS on every desktop in the world, then you have to be ready to put your proggies onto whatever damn thing people decide they're going to work on.
Much Love,
"S"HM
*****
(I refuse to spellcheck out of contempt for your belief system)
What I think Katz was getting at with this comment (have we wasted enough time on this sentence, yet?) was that a whole lot of nifty tech developments have occured, and MS doesn't seem to have made an attempt to develop products for these burgeoning markets. What you seem to be saying is that SINCE SupComp OS and progs wouldn't be super-profitiable right now, THEN why should MS bother with R & D in that direction. How many people owned personal computers when MS started? And yet, that's the tack they took and where they made their killing.
(Alert: I lost half my brain-mass in a car accident which left my skull a dented, bloody mess. Please forgive my being a blathering moron.Caveat Emptor)
Much Love,
"S"HM
*****
(I refuse to spellcheck out of contempt for your belief system)
Microsoft has something which nobody else really has - top of mind within the majority of computer based decision makers. The products install easily, link easily, are instictivly usable, and tend to product the results that those decision makers will accept. Please notice, I am not saying MS products are better, because it's not about that. It's more a case of what Microsoft reinforces, an environment of BUSINESS security, BUSINESS support and BUSINESS aims. Example, MS doesn't accept the term BUG, but they ain't that stupid .. they know they're there. The difference? Marketing, marketing and marketing. If a mantra is said time after time after time after time, it will begin to be believed at *some* level, with a subset of those people having the opposite responce. Examples? Only McDonalds ... Always Coka-Cola ...
Watch for these sort of terms in 6 weeks/months.
MS is essentually (in this focus) a marketing company with a computing base .. a monopolostic technical company, spear-headed by product and spin doctors (and maybe not in that order). Do you think they'll be taking this lying down? Do you think all their current power (and there is a damn lot of it), money, resources and codeset won't see them through into a bright new redesigned future? The only thing I'm hoping for is the guy who thought up the "Think Inside The Box" slogan for Office2K is incharge of their post-court public image ... but somehow I doubt that.
I'm not a stock analyist (don't even play with online stock), but if MS is split, doesn't that mean a rather large reward for the stockholders?
(donning fireproof suit)
Ancient Wiccan Tradition : An It Harm None, Party Like Wyld Thang
One of the things that I've noticed over the last couple of years is that living under M$'s wing gives one a great way to avoid responsibility. If something wasn't working the way it was desired to (or was intended) you could blame Microsoft, and Maaaaaaaaybe it'd be addressed in a later patch^H^H^H^H^Hservice pack, but the eyes (and blame) weren't necessarily on you.
In the "post-M$" world (and of course there is no such thing - M$ will continue on in some for, at least for the foreseeable future), the stakes may well be a little higher for admins or admin posers (the ones who don't actually have to keep things running or clean up the messes, but somehow get to make all the decisions and delegate responsibilities to others :-).
It will be an interesting year. I wonder if some of the more vocal supporters of M$ throughout the litigation to date will turn on them as things are tarnished further, or if there will be this "grass roots" drive to prevent too much in the way of intervention of M$'s dealings.
Katz is off on a couple things. Microsoft is still waging it's powers. It's just more subvert. Before they'd go to IBM and say you take Netscape off your image or you won't get any Windows 95.
Now, it's "Gee, the generic Java code you compiled under our development platform only works under windows? How did that happen?" or "Hmm, why don't you save your self the trouble and just use DCOM objects and ActiveX."
The jist of Jacksons decision is that Microsoft was willing to shoot itself in the foot in the short term in order to maintain a windows centric delevopment enviroment. Java has become one of those commie pink-o Computer Science languages. Most Comp Sci programs teach it. In fact many are replacing (rolls eyes) ADA with Java in the course.
So why start kicking sand at the other kids (Sun, Netscape, IBM) in the sandbox? Well, eventually someone is going to get a Network Computer working at a price consumers will gobble up.
Exactly what is Microsoft asking for when it says "we want the freedom to inovate"? Are they asking for freedom to come up with inovative technology? Or are they asking for freedom to come up with inovative ideas to crush the compedition with monopoly powers?
It's sad, but it's true. What can the DoJ possibly do to M$?
Besides, as has been stated quite a few times, M$ has more than enough money to drag this through appeals for years, and by that time Bill will have reinvented M$ enough that it's not the same company. And also, the industry will not be the same, so nothing will matter.
I hate to say it, it turns my stomach, but this looks to be too little, too late.
This is my
This is my
--An Oldie, but a Goodie!
Agreed, to a point. Are you stating that is is ok to be a monopoly, you just can't leverage it? or are you stating that it is monopolistic to be successfull in many facets of a particular industry?
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
Just kidding actually, I like the AMD Intel reference, but hey are branching out into areas that are grey also. Let's remember that aside from the true blue connentation that monopoly laws were created to keep competition alive and robust, and to make things better for the average joe, A huge part of the influence on anti-monopoly laws was aimed squarely at the railroad barons and their companies by the government because the government was afraid they had too much power over the economy. The laws were put in place to protect the governments interests as well, not just the little guy.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
Thanks Rick, I agree, but only to a point. There is a very grey line on leveraging business and product strenghts against your competitors and partners weaknesses. In M$'s case, obviously the courts feel they have gone too far, however in the appeal they will be able to make a case that they were just using good marketing and sound business ethics to leverage their corporate strengths to gain the upper hand over their competition. Fairly simple approach, and quite logical. I make widget x with capital I receive from my shareholders, they in turn want me to do whatever I can to sell widget x to consumers and not have widget y purchesed by the other company. That is the reason they invest. In my view, I'm not defending M$, however they acted exactly as any other successfull company would have, including the ones that you and I work for. The name of the game is to increase marketshare and improve profits for your shareholders, they did just that, now they are being penalized for being successfull.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
Essentially this is the same track M$ took, with the one exception that they strong armed folks like Dell and Compaq to use their products exclusively, which BTW I really don't see a problem with. If Dell and Compaq and the like didn't want to sign, they didn't have to. They made a choice to do business with M$ and then they cried "Unfair". To me they are just pissed the agreement they signed was more in Microsofts favor than theirs. Sour Grapes, they shouldn't have signed the contracts if they were opposed to the contratual relationships therein.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
(Yes, I am a high school student)
He, He, on /. all opinions are valid. I'm a PHB and no one seems to hold that against me.*Grin*
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
One way that the judgement could go that would help lead us into a post-Microsoft world is for the judge to order Microsoft to endow $1B to an independent organization that would partially fund the development of competing products. The rational behind the decision is laid out in the parent article and the intention would be to smooth the startup phase for competitors in order to offset Microsoft's current illegal domination.
But we can all see some "new" behemoths emerging... AOL/Time Warner/EMI/Whatever sure is on its way to become another monopolistic giant. Even RedHat (no flame intended) is growing so steadily I begin to wonder...
We have a proverb here in France : "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose" (the more things change, the more they stay the same). Once again this seems to be true.
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
I wonder if I'll get flamed for even breathing this, but didn't MS do a lot of good? I don't mean creating standards or making PCs more usable, but for the Linux/Open Source movement. Isn't Microsoft a major impetus for the work of many in the community? Weren't they the rebels fighting the Empire? How would this be affected by a crippled MS?
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
(theme song) "We all live... in a Microsoft world..."
Cut to Team Rocket members Billy and Kid Ballmer...
"Looks like Microsoft is blasting off again!"
Personally, I think Microsoft will end up just like the Baby Bells. Break it up and it the pieces will just grow into monsters of their own. Bill Gates has already seen this coming, and that's why he resigned the top spot... he knew it was a game of musical chairs, and he picked his chair before the music stopped.
Yesterday's stock price drop just means a bargain for long-term investors. A divided Microsoft is a Microsoft worth more than it was ever worth before!
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
First, buggy and incomplete support is worse than no support. The court can not make Microsoft make a quality Linux product if they don't want to.
Second, surprise! Microsoft already publishes its file formats. The problem with the file formats is that they are expressed in terms of OLE containers. You need to fully implement OLE on Linux before you can make use of the file formats.
Third, moving products around within MS will not accomplish anything if Ballmer and Gates are there to ensure that the entire team is pulling together to maintain the MS Monopoly.
Fourth, judges have real work to do. Their job is not to babysit Microsoft and no one judge can effectively babysit such a huge company without a huge staff. Regulation is a non-starter.
Breakup is the only viable solution.
Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor
Exactly. We still live in a business world where Word Perfect files get improperly converted with formatting problems in Word (or whatever format). To ensure what I see on my screen is exactly what you see on your screen we employ all sorts of alternative formats (PDFs, etc.) and file conversions.
For the portion of the world that shares documents, a common OS and common applications have been a Godsend, even if God himself turned out to be evil.
The point is that users do not want to worry about sharing files between OS types and flavors of software. They want everything to be seamless and consistent. Until our programs work that way, there is value in having a dominant OS and dominant suite of software applications.
Microsoft is so entrenched it will be years before its influence wanes. Hell, it will still be years before the hype around Internet-everywhere becomes a reality. Pundits still push the myth that everyone owns a cell phone. Sorry guys.
Microsoft makes the majority of it's profit creating applications and selling support, not by selling their OS, though they have a great advantage when it comes to building apps for their OS.
But MS has gotten a couple of wake-up calls recently. They're porting Outlook and Exchange to *nix as the U.S. Army was going to chose Lotus Notes as it runs on *nix and MS systems. They're seeing the growth of Apache far outpacing IIS, possibly in part due to Apache running on damn near anything. They're seeing Office take some hits as businesses re-trench and start using WordPerfect or Star Office, again on different platforms.
While MS may never totally give up cranking out an OS, that's not their focus in the next decade.
I disagree. We do live in a "Microsoft World," and will continue to do so unless someone (our government) does something about it. Most home PC users are at a novice level. They barely know how to use a word processor, use spreadsheets in the most basic ways, and routinly bring their machines to places like Best Buy for upgrades. What they do know, or more realistically THINK they know, is that Microsoft is that "Microsoft is the company that makes my computer work." Most users feel that there is safely in numbers, and MS has the most. Believe me, I see it every day "If MS says it's good, then it is." Contrary what many market analysts say, I don't see net appliances taking over the PC world. PCs took off in the home world because of the business world - and I don't see businesses shifting to NetPCs. As far as using applications on-line, I don't see that comming about in any bit of significance because no matter how hard the IT community tries; we can't convince Joe Public that the internet is as safe and secure as a hard drive. Most people use MS Windows because they want the latest software. Software vendors are going to write software for Windows first because so many people use it. It is a circle, that in present terms, will not be broken. Ask your self: IS Linux better? (It can prove to be) Is Mac OSX going to be better? (Probably) Is BeOS better? (yes and no). With all these viable alternatives, why is everyone still using Windows?
I am Slad.
Not to bang on you personally, but your post vividly brought to mind what might seem to be a totally unrelated activity: skydiving. I know a lot of skydivers, and they often look down their noses at the ground-pounders, the unenlightened who've never experienced the thrill of freefall, who've never even really though to look up and wonder what it might be like to fly their bodies in a three-dimensional world, without wings...
Of course, most people shit little brick turds at the thought of jumping out of an airplane, and simply think that the skydiver's attitude toward them is idiotic and pointlessly condescending, and that the skydiver's priorities are seriously out of whack.
Is my point clear, or do I need to get a bigger hammer?
---
---
Politics is about making compromises. Religion isn't. --Michael Horton
Microsoft has never faced more serious competition than it has today in every area.
A lot of this mess was started by the "Browser Wars. It's interesting that Netscape itself says that Internet Explorer is a better choice! Netscape's parent company, AOL, uses Internet Explorer as the default AOL browser. Why? It works better.
Microsoft truly innovates. Microsoft Excel is one of the finest pieces of software I've ever used. And, while I use Linux extensively in my work, I also use Windows 2000, which is working very well for me.
Now that Microsoft faces competition from Linux, Palm, set-top boxes (TiVo, game machines), etc, it's time to leave them alone.
The government, in addition to taking almost exactly half my income last year for taxes, now is further stealing money from me by reducing the value of Microsoft corporation. I, for one, am not gloating over this.
--- Speaking only for myself,
If you read some of the laws in the Torah, esp some of the ones about things like debt that most people don't pay much attention to and really think about them you will realize that many issue of the question "How do we treat our fellow people" have not changed in 4000 years or more.
The Cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
It is not a post-microsoft era. Reasons to follow:
In short, Microsoft isn't dead.. and even if they were broken up, categorically every single major brokerage has stated such a move would have a direct benefit on the stock-holders and bill gates would get richer. One need look no farther than the "post-AT&T" era to see how much your rates have increased... DESPITE free internet telephony tech being available.
I rest my case, your honor.
Of course we're talking about the software behemouth, but here's my take: once upon a time computer processing was limited to a corp/scholastic priesthood, then microprocessors embodied a 60ish "power to the people" type mentality, down w/ corporate domination, and suddenly hw hackers could, with some effort, own their own computer. Then commercial companies jumped in and you could buy a 'personal computer' to do with as you wish for the price of a good used car. Then, I think a turning point was reached in the early 90's when win3x for some reason make 'GPF's common on too many business desktops, and suddenly people HAD TO BE WinTel COMPUTER LITERATE to succeed or be hired. I.e., when it turned from "gee, I can own my own computer!" to "You mean I have to learn how to operate this damn thing just to get an office job??".
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
While Mr. Katz view is put very eloquently put, it is extremely blinkered. The Post-Microsoft Age came with Linux? No it didn't. The majority of companies and individuals still use and purchase Microsoft products everyday. A huge proportion of web servers are still running NT and IIS and new major site running this technology come along everyday. Though it embitters me to say so, Microsoft will be the major OS player for a long time yet to come.
Choice can be good, but again it depends on a lot of other factors:
You mention the ol' days of the home computer explosion. A lot of games were ported to as many different platforms as possible, if the company was willing to do so. I think it was either Hard Hat Mack or Miner2049er that was available on everything from the Vic20 (mine!) to the Atari 400 + 800, and 2600 game console, not to mention Apple ][, Colecovision, etc.
At which point the effort ($) put in by the developers returned a nice profit. Granted, not all those ports came out at the same time, but the first versions proved popular enough that they made more copies available.
Many games in the past were ported to multiple platforms: these days, I'm lucky if ANY games make it over to the Mac.
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I keep reading stuff like this, and Yet Do I Marvel. I guess it's human nature to assume that most of the (important) computers in the world are like the one on your desk. Also, that the computer on your desk is particularly important. I'll submit to you that this just isn't true.
Most of the important computers in the world are either things like embedded controllers, or very, very large information systems that do important things, like run the phone system, send bills, or write checks. In other words, all the systems that people were getting freaked out about when Y2K rolled around.
Microsoft's real market share of crucial computing is just not very big. I hate to break it to people out there, but the computing that most of us do on our desktop machines is just not very important in the big scheme of things. I mean, how could it be? Sending memos back and forth doesn't really accomplish much. A spreadsheet may seem important, but very few of them reach or endorse conclusions that were either unknown or unreachable by other means.
What personal computers are really about, more than anything, is keeping people entertained. Microsoft is not a technology company, but an entertainment outfit. The Web was not a threat to Microsoft because somebody would write a java word processor or something that would eat into MS Office revenues per se. The Web was a threat because people found it more entertaining than existing MS product offerings.
Look carefully at Microsoft's investments outside of operating systems and applications. You've got a TV network (MSNBC), an alleged content provider (MSN), freemail (hotmail), a bunch of stuff like Encarta, kid's toys, now a gaming box... In other words, entertainment. What you don't see is serious vertical market software, or infrastructure stuff.
Interestingly, Microsoft has tried to enter one other non-entertainment area: money and financial software. That, of course, makes sense because the real money is, well, where the money is. But everybody knows that, so the competition there is both fierce and skilled; for PC-based entertainment (like MS Word), it just hasn't been.
Funny thing about that, however: the phone company break-up really did lead to huge improvements in the variety, cost, and even quality of service. And the resulting baby bells and their competitors have grown at a rate much faster than Ma Bell ever did. And investors have done incredibly well. Yes, there are some problems here and there, but the anti-trust ruling in this case clearly did us all a lot of good. If the MS case ends up half as well, we should all be thrilled.
Babar
Before I begin my rant, look at my user history. I'm a big Linux supporter. I'm also a realist. With any change comes benefits and disadvantages.
In the mid 80s, when it came to PC hardware, IBM was the world leader. What they did, the world followed. When they introduced the 3.5" floppy in 1987, other manufacturers scrambled over themselves to include one in their "clones." 3.5" floppies were not new. HP 150s had them for a few years. But no one could break the 5.25" "standard."
Now that IBM is no longer dominant in the field, the hardware end has not progressed as smoothly. For example, we are still stuck with 3.5" floppies and plus we also now have a plethora of high-capacity "super disks, zips, clicks, etc..."
A fragmented OS world will cause additional support headaches, make no mistake about it. It will not be an easy transition.
Don't misinterpret what I am saying. Microsoft killed the browser market by leveraging their OS installed base to push it through. For those that remember, Microsoft was one of the last major players to discover the Internet and leaped to get into it (they even used Spyglass Mosaic to churn out IE in a hurry). They need to be bitch slapped, but if they dropped dead tomorrow, the industry would take a long time to settle.
Now is the best time for open source and standards movements to make a move. If it doesn't happen now and another closed-proprietary OS takes over, we will have lost our best chance...
Just don't go dancing in the streets yet. The loss of Microsoft dominance will hurt everyone in one way or another.
I'm a writer. I want to use a comfortable word processor.
My son is four. I want to get him some educational software that will help him learn to read.
I want to be able to browse the web and send email with pictures to my friends.
Obsession with particulars of hardware and software isn't part of this at all. These people aren't stupid; they have their lives and want a tool to help them get things done. Right now, Linux isn't a tool as much as it is a kit that you can spend weekends and evenings with until you've eventually built a ship in a bottle that you are happy with. Windows and Word and Outlook and Excel have gotten to the point where they *are* just tools. When I put on my geek hat, I dislike Bill Gates greatly. When I put on my other hats, I'm glad that I can fire up Word and be done with it.
JK's hit several nails full square on their heads with this piece, the plain fact of the matter is that to describe the [insert description of time here] before yesterday's ruling as the Microsoft Era is to give them kudos and credit they simply do not deserve.
To suggest we are leaving The Microsoft Era is to suggest that Microsoft have in some way impacted our lives up until now. Frankly, apart from giving us something to fight against, they haven't.
If I think back over the past decade or so, [technological] things that have impacted my life significantly have been mobile phones & mobile computing [of the Epoc variety], UN*X/GNU/Linux/Open Source, DVD, MP3.
If we are leaving a technological era, it is probably the Closed Source Era. Not just Microsoft, but producers of CS across the board. We are not however entering the Open Source era, we've been there for a very long time (eras can overlap can't they?), merely coming to a stage where it is going to predominate in the software market. Nor are we going to see the end of closed source software, there is a place for it (surely not I hear you cry, and if you knew who I work for, you'd shout it even louder), but frankly, there are some systems that have to be kept closed, even secretive by their nature. Imagine is a government, any government, opened the source for their [insert intellgence system of your choice] software, they'd be screwed yeah? That's my point.
If we're leaving a financial era, it's the one of having a single behemoth in the software market. If the decision is taken to break-up Microsoft, chances are that it will be broken into three companies: Operating Systems, Internet and Applications. Welcome to the wonderful world of having three Microsofts in the market place, who, by the very nature of the split, will not be competing with each other. Observe as their collective stock value outstrips anything any dotCom speculator considers feasible, but also be aware of the fact that the public now knows the truth, so notice how much less power they have than if Bill hd decided to split the company in such a way voluntarily, say, five years ago. Be thankful therefore that this case has happened, because if they had split the company down previously, you can bet this case would never have been brought, and the practices would have continued unchecked.
Yes, the government has done it as a show and nothing more, but although the reason may not be 'pure', the result is most certainly a Good Thing [TM]
--
Listening for the sound of the coming rain...
While lots of us are cheering the results of yesterday's court ruling, it almost seems to me that it is like the case of a bunch of kids who finally realize they can beat up the school yard bully when they gang up on him.
Microsoft is no longer a dominating factor in the new online community. Its still a factor, but it isn't the only one. There are going to be lots of other things that will concern me more. Things like the the DMCA.
Gonzo
Sounds like a profitable business plan to me. Isn't this what most businesses try to do in one form or another?
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, when the stars were young and the world was new, dragons roamed the earth and men feared them. And it came to be that one dragon did come to dominate the land and roam freely upon it, pillaging and burning as it went, yet those that never saw the beast's depredations called it admirable and came to worship it.
But there were those who saw the damage it wreaked, and the shear evil of the beast, and they banded together to try and destroy it. And slowly they were able to build strongholds against the monster, and on occasion inflict small cuts and scrapes and other indignities upon it, but they could only weaken it little and never slay it, and its depredations continued. And then a giant came down from the north and began battling the dragon, and the battle lasted long and was fought hard, and those banded against it gathered around to witness the terrible struggle.
And then, at last, the giant pinned the dragon, lashing and gnashing its teeth, to the ground and a cheer resounded amongst the gathered throng.
And that's when Jon Katz lept atop a nearby barrel and started to write the dragon's epitaph and loudly proclaim its death....
"But...", said the crowd.
"It's dead!" proclaimed Katz jubilantly.
"Um..." the crowd answered, pointing toward the beast as it trashed in the giant's precarious grip.
"Dead as a doornail! Dead as a tree stump! Dead!" crowed Katz.
"Er..." the crowd attempted to interject.
"It is _sooooooo_ dead....." Katz attempted to continue, interrupted by a loud *THWAP* as the lashing dragon's tail pulped the poor deluded man with an errant flick.
The crowd shrugged. "We _tried_ to tell you!"
The End
In short, Katz, rumours of Microsoft's demise are greatly exagerated, and you are quite premature in writing the company's epitaph. It still holds a monopoly on the desktop market, and there still isn't a clear path to breaking that monopoly. It has been struck a heavy blow by Judge Jackson's ruling, and the class-action lawsuit hounds are gathering to take their respective chunks of flesh, but the fight is far from over and only time will tell if Microsoft's dominance of the market will be more than temporarily staggered by this ruling. I regrettably can't write them off just yet.
-- WhiskeyJack
If the latter, I hate to disappoint you, but my grandma still don't know what Linux is, and she probably wouldn't care should someone explain to her either. And then, the same goes for about 10 zillion other grandmas, big stupid companies, tiny stupid companies and practically all other computer illiterates.
Conclusion: what you're talking about is far far away, as always.
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before. - Dwight D. Eisenhower
I was discussing this with a friend last night. If they are forced to open their source, with a license that is not crippling, then that means the likes of us get to have a go. We can make Windows do what we want.
So, like it or not, if MS open their source code, then Windows could become even more powerful. Think - their installed base, thousands working on their source code. The MCSE's could have to learn how to hack Windows itself. It could be that what is good for the goose is good for the gander, and Windows would become even more prevalent. Some would say this mattered, some would say it doesn't. There is the chance that it would actually get better. We can hope...
Was this headline made by the Katzbot? It is priceless. All I want now is the columbine slant on the whole thing. Remember, kids - everything is an 'age'!
thenerd.
The camels are coming. I'm in love.
Your fallacy seems to assume that Bill Gates is trying to build an empire of everything technological. However, Microsoft has remained to be a primarily software company ever since its inception, and I don't see why a software company needs to dominate nano-technology, supercomputers, or genetic research to be rake in cash from an operating system used in most personal computers in the world.
Actually, why on earth would a software company want to dominate in any of those mentioned fields?
Let me go sell my amazon stocks now, since I don't think they'll plan on doing anything nanotech with their books and DVDs anytime in the near future.
Yeah I agree,
What would be here without the threat of Microsoft? BUT.. I have heard many times that the greatest technological inventions come about because of war. I am not sure how true that is or not, but you go to RedHat and see the "Anti-Microsoft" die die die energy... Hasn't that fueled the community a bit? I would bet yes.
I don't hate Microsoft, they remind me what I don't want and make me appreciate what I have. I hope that the megapower doesn't get broken down.. Maybe it will keep the commuity-a-burnin for a few more years!
$.02
They will have the courts tied up for years with appeals and why Open Source advocates are rejoicing that the wicked witch is dead, Bill and Balmer and the gang are focusing on making more money with newer products and slick marketing. Unfortunately money is power and although the DOJ won this round but overall I don't believe it will really hurt Microsoft at all.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
tcd004
LostBrain
You're right, Jon, we already live in a post-microsoft world. But not in the way you seem to think.
On the one hand, the breakup of Microsoft is largely irrelevant. Microsoft's success in the world of operating systems has peaked. Windows 2000 is the beginning of the end ; its mediocre performance and its failure to establish a strong presence in the server market means that MS will never own the enterprise. And its challengers on the desktop are winning as well ; Microsoft is in retreat on all fronts. And because Microsoft is now a well-established company with stable stock value, a successful career at Microsoft no longer means retiring as a millionaire at age 30. They can't attract the talent they need to keep going. The justice department may well accelerate their decline, but they aren't the cause of it.
On the other hand, you talk of choices between operating systems, etc, etc, and how the world will be all wonderful and happy now that the great beast Microsoft has been slain. Guess again. There's a new sheriff in town, and this time it's got the law on its side and the courts in its pocket. And its name is... the Entertainment Industry. Yes, Microsoft dumbed down computing for the masses and in doing so they reduced the quality of the experience. But they didn't have the millions of dollars of lobbying power that the MPAA, RIAA, and other consortiums of faceless companies have to force their wares down our throats. While Microsoft may have bundled apps in order to kill their competition, the entertainment industry simply gets laws passed to kill theirs.
So we can all jump for joy and celebrate the fact that we can run any operating system we want on our machines. But we're really just kicking the dying giant, while the real enemy creeps up on us from all sides.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Go into almost any business nowadays and poll people on their OS's and applications. You'll find Microsoft still controls much of the business world. Macintosh and Linux are far behind. In fact, few businessmen even know about Linux.
I may be returning to the financial industry in a few months; I find out today. I'll be entering a pure Microsoft shop. My first order of business will be turning my personal machine into a dual-boot Linux-WinNT setup. I can do that because I know the alternative exists, and I have the expertise to make the alternative work. I've already told the DP manager I plan to implement a firewall and mail server using Linux. He has no Linux experience. All his PC experience concerns Microsoft OS's and applications. In this industry, he's not alone. Even worse, the DP vendors themselves have adopted wholesale Microsoft back-office and front-office applications - running on Microsoft OS's, of course.
Multiply this company by the multitudes of companies in other industries, and you'll see we're a long way from breaking the shackles of Redmond. And let's not even consider Aunt Minnie at home.
We have a long way to go before Microsoft truly doesn't matter. Hopefully, we'll arrive before this mess finally finishes at the Supreme Court. Then, we'll relish the triumph of knowing the marketplace settled the issue - helped along by the Slashdotters, of course. :-)
JA
http://www.johnalex.org/
No, we're not living in a post-Microsoft world yet:
Microsoft products still dominate the personal computing and standard software market:
Even if Microsoft is split up in Baby Bills, this won't automatically change MS Office's market share.
Even if the courts rule Microsoft's marketing methods illegal, this does not mean people will stop to buy Microsoft products.
Even if there are other operating systems that you can buy your PC with, you still need software for it.
At the moment, people buy Windows and Office because everyone else uses it too. And vendors write software and hardware drivers because everyone has it.
This won't change that soon only because Microsoft is punished in any way.
What we need are standardized APIs, data formats, etc. that are not tied to a certain software product. As long as eg Windows' API or Office's data formats remains proprietary, nothing will change from today's situation:
Well, let's see what the punishment for Microsoft will be...
Claus
I don't know about everyone else, but is becoming very frustrating to pick up the paper and see all of the doomsday articles about Microsoft. First of all, I am a long time Mac loyalist. I grew up throwing darts at pictures of Windows logos and Bill Gates. It made me upset that Microsoft had stomped out Apple from even competing in their level. It inspired me to use that frustration to learn how to program and one day create the tools and technologies that would level the playing field and make the power that Microsoft wields nevermore. This was true for people across the industry. Netscape, Sun, and even alternative OSes like BeOS and Linux fueled their drive on the fact that one day their technologies, their abstraction from the Windows world, would allow consumers to one day be free. This would not have been true if there was not an entity like Microsoft to fight against.
Humans love a fight. It is proven that the most patriotic times in this country and the most productive are when we are at a state of war. Many outlets of the computer industry were fueled in energy and enthusiasm to fight against the software behemouth Microsoft. Would Apple have dumped their entire code base, replacing it with the multi-processing, protected memory, BSD pumping Mach Kernel if Microsoft didn't threaten to the world that NT would be the replacement for UNIX and all other Oses? Would Linus and the elite group of hackers that gravitated to Linux have come home every night after a long day of work to work on the Linux kernel and its surrounding technologies if they weren't fueled by the lack of choices for a decent PC based server and development environment? Would the programmers from Apple and SGI have gotten together to break the status quo and put the speed, media power, and 64-bit database file system into the BeOS if they didn't think the media enthusiasts of the world needed something other than the dominating Windows OS? Would Netscape have open sourced their browser and tried to redesign it from the ground up when they saw they were loosing their ground to the powerful Internet Explorer? I think not. I contend that the alternative operating systems, cross platform applications, and the power driving today's businesses online would not have been if we didn't have the company that everyone loves to hate, Microsoft.
Programmers rallied around the little Microsoft of yesteryear because they were fighting against the giant IBM, breaking the status quo of the mainframe world into the PC world today. Because of this, we are living the benefits of a PC (or Mac) on every desktop. Now programmers are rallying around alternative OSes and Internet technologies that make cross-platform, networked applications a reality. They are trying to break the status quo of Windows everywhere. Think of what benefits this energetic generation of programmers will create! And thank Microsoft for fueling the flames in their hearts that help them to continue fighting towards freedom!