Slashdot Mirror
DOJ Wary Of Breaking Up Microsoft
Tava passed along a
Washington Post article
in which unnamed "people familiar with the discussions" in the Justice Department suggest the government is worried about overplaying its hand. If these rumors are correct, we won't be seeing any bold strokes taken against Microsoft - and apparently, breaking up the company would be considered very bold, whether into identical "BabyBills" or distinct companies for OS and apps. The DoJ's recommendations to JudgeJackson are due by the end of the month.
(Oh, and a point of English for the folks at the Post: the opposite of "leaningtoward" is not "leaningagainst.")
Twenty years ago, AT&T was broken up into Baby Bells, now we're back to "medium sized" AT&T's
(Bell South, Bell Atlantic, Pacific Bell.. etc..)
Some sort of controls placed on Microsoft would be better, such as not forcing OEM's to bundle only Windows, giving refunds back to customers who don't want Windows, and a revamp of their outrageous licensing policies.
Either way, Opensource will triumph over closed source because we're faster and better.
It's like the small, fast mammal (Open Source) running around the huge lumbering dinosaur (Microsoft).
.. and that dinosaur has just looked up into the sky and realized it's beginning to snow.
Fialar
Americans!!! Wake up - I think your justice system is for sale!!!
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
What the hell is that thing to the right of his head???.. I just have to know.. benn nuggin me a long time... :)
Thats the .GOV for ya'. Spend millions to do nothing in the end. Why don't they make Bill just release all source code for Windows and that crappy Exchange mail server. Just having everyone review his poorly written/documented code would embarass M$ enough for me.
Interesting. Is the government backing away from splitting the company based on the prescedent it would set? Or are they hoping that by not angling for a split up M$'s might be willing to take its lumps and not appeal.
The following statement is true. The preceding statement is false.
A /. author correcting someone's grammar!
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
Here, in Microsoft, we have a convicted "criminal organization" that is a monopoly in the world, let alone in the US, and the government seems all of a sudden loosing it's nerve.
I've heard some rumours that the US government is actively studying the impact of completely abandoning Microsoft and going elsewhere, and Linux was definetly being considered.
Here in Canada, the same thing is happening. The governemnt has several pilot projects running Linux and there are currently several configurations being considered running the Federal Parlamentary networks as well as in the Bank of Canada and the Department of Defence.
Furthermore, we have no vested interest in keeping foreign companies that don't benefit our economy as viable entities in Canada.
I suppose that's why we call you anonymous posters Cowards....
I think I smell the Bill-fucking-Gates, his money, and the odor of political manipulation.
Don't mind me, but I'm very suspicious of this. It seems a bit quick for the DOJ, which was gung-ho to draw-and-quarter the Gates-man to switch sides and say, "He's not that bad...just slap his wrist."
But what can I say, it's only Washington D.C., it's nice to visit but you don't want to live there.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
like the top ten Baby Gates and Bill Gates similarities
so back to the top ten ten petty gripes microsoft has with the Justice Department
There's some other things they should do too of course...
Now I know that MS hatred is rampant on /. , but what people forget is what MS has done for computing as a whole. Many of you out there owe a lot to MS, even if you aren't willing to admit to it because it would mean that you aren't quite such an 31337 h4X0r as you'd like everyone to think.
Without MS making the PC available to use for the average person, the PC industry would still be a languishing backwater populated by a few well-off enthusiasts rather than the huge user base it has today. Without MS, many of you would never have been able to get into computing in the first place, and you would never have found Linux, if it even existed, and would never have found the joys of open source.
MS have done a lot of good for computing, and despite their somewhat bad behaviour, breaking them up will be a huge blow to the PC industry. The fact that MS have been able to introduce standards has made the job of developers much easier and given rise to a vast number of applications which people use in their daily lives, such as Office and DevStudio. Without the control that a unified MS presents this stability will be shattered, and the PC platform as a whole will suffer for it.
It shows Bill trying out a new MS SideWinder input device. The similarity with Locutus of Borg (from Star Trek - Best of Both Worlds) is completely coincidental (honest).
Gamma Testing - Where testing is extended to the full user community (AKA Shipping the Program)
I think that there's gonna be problems no matter what they decide to do. Had they figured this out back in 96 there wouldn't be as many problems as there is going on today.
MS obviously thinks that they're immune to whatever the DOJ has planned for them. They've tightly integrated even more stuff into Windows than before, even in the midst of the legal battle.
They've also hired a political guy to rally to the other political guys and get them to do what MS wants. They think that they have money and are more powerful than the government.
Breaking up MS will cause some problems, namely because unlike AT&T, there isn't any real obvious way of doing the breakup. The different parts of MS compete against each other even today (from what I heard... which is why WebTV isn't obligated to use Windows as their platform) and even being part of the same company.
I think MS should go the way of IBM. IBM has to publish specs for whatever they do, if people could make their own platforms & file formats TRULY compatible with the Microsoft ones, the world would be a much better place.
As it is, what MS publishes now, only are sorta kinda like the real deal, and anything compatible that people want to create, they have to do a lot of guesswork, and even then there still are problems.
Another thing that the DOJ could do would be to make MS sell a version of their OS without all the little wingdings and dingdongs. No IE, no media player, etc. No links to service providers, and especially no hard-to-get-rid-of link to MSN. Sell it for $30, and then sell your everything-plus-the-kitchen sink version for the $99 "upgrade" cost.
If a "Micrsoft Standard" dominates some sector, the it should be FORCED to be opened, with complete documentation. This includes file formats as well as protocols.
2. No exclusionary contracts.
We should also study why the 1995 consent decree failed, because it was supposed to stop this, and didn't.
3. No gag orders in the license.
If a product is #$%^, the knowledge needs to flow in order to allow the market to correct.
The foundation of capitalism is the free market.
The foundation of the free market is the informed consumer who can choose. Restraining either the information or the choice is bad for the free market, and turns the economic system into something other than capitalism. It both proves and disproves Karl Marx, because it leads to the fate he describes, but I assert that it's no longer capitalism.
My suggested remedies apply to Microsoft at the moment, but they are equally applicable to any business. Consider the market dominance AOL is achieving, yet at the same time their wire protocols are closed. They are now big enough that this may need to change.
But then again, there'd be other changes, as well, if I were IN CHARGE.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I have a question about these so-called state lawsuits and/or class-action lawsuits. Are any of these lawsuits for the benefit of anybody besides the lawyers and/or possibly the state's coffers?
I mean, ok, there are smoe very anti-MS sentiments here at Slashdot, and then there are some who are not zealously anti-MS. And many people would like to see MS being eaten alive by the sharks. But seriously, how may we be served by these lawsuits except to be treated to a spectacle and (possibly) see a (again possibly) former glorious company limping into the future?
This is just like the big tobacco suits. While I applaud the original intent, I fear that all the sharks circling out there readying to pounce and to fatten their own wallet will do the public disservice.
Or am I completely wrong?
If the Justice department screws this up due to lack of backbone, the European Union could get involved. Until now they have been holding back, as is par for the course, as they generally have a much poorer opinion of unilateral action.
The EU is still completely within their rights to go after MS, but the question remains if the justice dept. doesn't have enough backbone to go after MS, does the EU?
matt
IMHO the only way to deal with this situation is a break up. In that M$ constitutes about 95% of the os's on pc's and that figure only drops to about 85% when you include Mac's, a regulatory solution would ammount to government regulation of practically the entire software industry. And I don't think anybody wishes that. Too intrusive and too expensive. A break up would be much more cost effective for taxpayers and would be the only way to really ensure M$ was held to the proposed remediation. The feds have put too much into this to let it slip away. The Washington Post is a M$ bootlick anyway, and we should expect this type of unsupported rhetoric from it. I have no doubt that Joel Klein want's a break up and is pushing very hard for it. Those who live in the greater Washington DC metropolitan area have been awash in television ads for M$, showing Bill Gates in his golf sweater doing his best easy going Arnold Palmer impersonations he can muster. This is just part of the M$ campain to win the hearts and minds of influental people in the DC area. It is clear that the Washington Post is a minion of the dark side and we should disregard anything it decides to publish on the subject. If you remember the article about the negotionations, there was no truth there either, just unsupported rhetoric and unfounded conjecture. This is obviously not journalism, but simply a bit of the current ad campain discuised to look like journalism.
Sence most of us know what good code runs like and what what bad code runs like most of us can identify bad code just by the results.
It's like knowing whats wrong with a car by the way an engen sounds. The person who wants you to believe the car is ok will clame it can not be done the person who wants to do the job right won't rely on the way the car sounds in the first place.
You can not fix the code or even come close by running it but having run the code one knows for certen something is wrong and just how much wrong of it is wrong. But you havn't a chance in hack of pinpointing what is wrong with out the code.
I don't actually exist.
Whatever the government ends up doing in this case, they should not force the removal of Internet Explorer from Windows. This would be a bad thing for a couple of reasons:
I am all for reigning in MS, but the government needs to be very careful about how they do it. If they mess it up it could be totally ineffective, or worse, set a bad precendent for the whole technology industry.
Eliminate Microsoft's copyright on operating systems they've brought to market. All of them, from DOS to Win 3.1 to Win 98 to NT to Win2K. Require them to publish the source code on an FTP server for a minimum of one year. Future operating systems would retain a MS copyright as usual.
With the code available, no doubt one or more companies would take the opportunity to run with it and develop new OS's compatible with legacy Windows products. Microsoft remains free to "innovate", whatever that means, and everyone else remains free to do so also. Maybe someone starts a GPL fork of the code. Maybe someone else starts a BSD-type fork of the code. Maybe someone wants to make a closed-source version.
The only thing they lose is their government-granted monopoly on the Windows source code which is what they abused in the first place. If you abuse it, you lose it. Simple and direct.
--
Michael Sims-michael at slashdot.org
Look -- why does Microsoft NOT want to be broken up?
One word: synergy.
However, synergy is the one thing they can't legally use when it comes to maintaining monopolies, however fairly they came by them.
So, without a breakup, we will be asking the company to fight an irresistable urge to use synergy a hammer to crack open new markets and as a bulwark to prevent entry of competition. They will skate as close to the edge as they think they can get away with, if not brazenly step over it, unless draconic and intrusive regulation is employed. That's a loss all around -- the taxpayers will pay for ongoing oversight and future lawsuits, the company will be hobbled by interfering and hostile lawyers poking their noses into every decision they make. And taking them to court.
There are two kinds of breakup scenarios, both of which are preferable from the stockholder's point of view to hyper-regulation.
The first is the breakup of the company into directly competing, homogeneous units. This is bad because most of the value in these competing units will quickly be destoryed, and one victor will eventually emerge, using synergy to crush all of its competitors -- probably the one who gets the most credibility, the one headed by Mr. Bill. This is obviously bad for competitors because maybe 2/3 of the value of their stock will just evaporate, but over the long term they will end up with a company just as powerful as the one they enjoy today, enjoying monopoly profits. A few years of compound interest growth and they're back on track.
I obviously don't support this scenario, since in the end it accomplishes nothing. A humungous fine would be faster, simpler, and Uncle Sam walks away with change in his pocket instead of pouring money into lawyers and beareaucrats to accomplish essentially the same thing.
The second breakup scenario is to break Microsoft into different companies based on product line. In this scenario, the stockholders continue to enjoy their OS and office suite monopolies, plus a very strong back office product line. No shareholder value goes away, except that which comes from the forbidden synergy. The companies are free to maintain their monopolies by dint of superior features and simple market share, but cannot erect extraneous barriers to entry such as secret APIS.
As far as this affecting open source, the status quo with a few provisos on opening and documenting APIs would be ideal. Right now, companies like IBM support open source becasue the barriers to entry into the software market posed by Microsoft power is too high -- better to destroy the market in software and remain unbeholden to Redmond. A defanged Microsoft would probably dampen their enthusiasm. This is another reason that MS stockholders should probably prefer the functional breakup, since it strengthens the existence of license based markets in software on which their profits depend.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Doesn't he still have the same amount of money as before?
Doesn't cutting Microsoft into several smaller companies give them even more room for growth and maneuverability? And are we supposed to believe that the companies are not going to communicate with each other throughout operations?
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icq:2057699
seumas.com
So we're not going to do anything?! Wrong answer. We need to break them up. Open Source their dominant industries, that means Windows, that means Exchange. Break up the company into four areas: Media (MSNBC, MSN Gaming Zone, etc) Software (Office and the Like) Internet (explorer, exchange, outlook etc) and Operating Systems (windoze). While it would be naive to assume that they not partner internally and secretly, at least try and prevent it through due diligence requirements. From there, let them grow and fight over bandwidth, processors, and development architectures. But please god, don't let them stand simply because they have a few well placed bought-out politicians.
So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.
Forcing them to fully open API's would be nice, but I think it would quickly be seen to be irrelevant once anyone can use or sell Linux as they wish with no threat of retribution from MS.
I am not sure about most of the people on /. , but I care about my financial security. Due to the fact that Microsoft's connection with the entire economy is very vague and precarious, I would be willing to cut MS some slack in the final stage of the proceedings in order to prevent my portfolio from losing ~50% of its value. Anyway, what MS did wrong happened long, long time ago. Now everyone needs to get over it, and let them compete against the likes of Linux. And we all know that they will need alot of help.
Biggy
Heh, the stock is already off 2 points today... ~7 points this week...
I think the puppet on the left shares my beliefs
No, I think the puppet on the right shares mine
Hey its the same guy holding both puppets
GO BACK TO SLEEP AMERICA, YOU GOVERNMENT IS IN CONTROL
This post is dedicated in loving memory of Bill Hicks
Looks like once again the DOJ is going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
[Insert pithy quote here]
The Congressional representatives from Washington (who reap alot of financial campaign benefit from Microsoft support, BTW) will use their political power to try to minimize damage to the "home team", so to say. So I'm not surprised that Of course attorneys are going to try NOT to hit Microsoft too hard -- there's way too much money and power on the table.
A structural breakup works because securities law forces each of the so called baby bills to maximize profit individually -- even at the expense of other M$ operations. While the gov't attorneys wonder if "breakup plans, such as dividing Microsoft into an operating-system company and a software applications company, might be ineffective in breaking the company's lock on the market for personal-computer operating systems.", I personally don't see any other way.
Anyway, I hope that Judge Jackson understands things well enough to see that unless a breakup is the remedy, M$ will attempt to go on with business as usual, like was mentioned in a C/NET Article on Monday -- bundling as usual in Windows ME (Millenium Edition's new name).
My hope is that the judge chooses the remedy, then implements it in a way that will minimize the risk of it being overturned.
IMHO This doesn't have to be a win-lose for anyone -- the M$ stockholders could benefit, each M$ division would be free to innovate, and yet the playing field for the rest of the world would still be more level than it is now.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
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This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
First of all, I have the distinct feeling that this was leaked out by Microsoft in order to help out their plummeting stock price. But let's assume it's true, and the government is being a wuss about this whole debacle.
Now, I'm no fan of governments, far from it. However, I'm also no fan of huge corporations. A couple centuries ago, some of the insanely rich people who ran our country realized that sometimes it's good to restrain other insanely rich people from becoming increasingly insanely rich. The reason, is that if those ambitious businessmen (read: greedy assholes) who were already insanely rich started proceeding in an unsporting way, they may keep the others from being as insanely rich as they are. Thus, we have the antitrust acts.
But here's the deal: The rich created the government, including the whole *concept* of government in the first place. No poor farmer in the middle of revolutionary America thought "Yes, let's overthrow the British aristocracy, and replace it with something a little more close to home." Jefferson, Washington, Franklin, Madison, etc., were the bourgoisie of the time, and thus imposed their ideas of a government on people who had just helped them revolt from the last one.
And so, Microsoft benefits greatly from the advantages of having a government around to do it's bidding. How? Well, there's the obvious IP laws. Who does MS go to when they find somebody who is pirating their software, en masse? The government. They also have other advantages that they get from the government, including the use of prison labor to package their software, and I'm quite sure that the cities of Redmond and Seattle, as well as the state of Washington, have gone to great lengths to accomodate them in any way they could (corporate welfare, repealing of land development laws, etc).
But now, the government feels squeamish about angering Microsoft? Why? Microsoft only exists because of the government, why are they scared?
Well, here's my little conspiracy theory:
The insanely rich of our time (C. Wright Mills called them the Power Elite, but I prefer Marx and Bakunin's term, the Ruling Class) have two conflicting problems in Microsoft: First, Bill Gates is not a part of the ruling class, despite his wealth. The reasons are that he did not go to (and graduate from) the right schools, his parents are merely upper-upper-middle class, and his wealth is mostly stock value, not hard, concrete, built-off-the-labor-of-slaves-and-immigrants wealth like that of the DuPonts or the Vanderbilts. Because of this, and because Bill Gates has tried to enter into the ruling class, the DOJ case is a matter of showing Mr. Gates where his place is in the social darwinist jungle.
On the other hand, what we've found amongst the ruling class/power elite is an interesting progression of capitalism. It's nothing really new, globalisation, it's basically a mixture of laissez faire theory, colonialism, and a little bit of fascism mixed in for good measure. The basic idea is, however, that government intervention and interference is not a good thing. So what you have is a generation of the ruling class who hasn't read their history properly. They don't remember the causes of the great depression, or any of the various recessions. They simply read their Friedman or Rothbard and insist that those theories are implemented.
Remember, capitalism is highly unstable. Think what would happen if Microsoft were to continue growth unchecked, without fear of government intervention. They could grow to huge proportions, encompassing massive industries and markets. Then, when they're valued at about 3 trillion dollers, their stock value plummets. How would that affect the economy? Exactly. So, we have governments and certain restrictions to make sure that that doesn't happen (unstable economy == popular revolution, usually).
But now, like I said, we have a generation of the ruling class that hasn't learned from history. They're doing things like repealing the glass-steagall act. They're allowing the CBS/Viacom and AOL/Time-warner mergers to go through without so much as a peep. They may talk about "getting government off our backs", but in reality, they keep increasing our military, increasing the police force, and increasing corporate welfare. Why? Because when the second great depression hits from all this unchecked capitalism, they'll need a strong military and police force in order to preserve "peace".
Republican rhetoric about small government sounds well and good when you're listening to Rush Limbaugh, but the reality is that although personal welfare has been reduced and limited, schools are underfunded, and health care is expensively privatized, the government will still be doing it's best to break union strikes, beat down inner city rebellions, pepper spray peaceful protestors, as well as spreading this form of American "democracy" across the globe. And at the same time, they'll be cutting a check to GM in order to keep them from moving yet *another* plant down to Mexico so they can exploit cheap labor. And then GM will move down anyways.
So, what am I getting at? Well, basically, my point is that we should be worried. Worried, and angry, because the government would dare be scared at the prospect of breaking up Microsoft, when almost all of Microsoft's wealth has been acquired with the help of the government and government intervention.
What have we gotten ourselves into?
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
That's a bad analogy because you can take the radio you got with your ford out and replace it with something better. By having IE so deeply integrated with the OS, it is impossible to remove without breaking a few things. Would your ford break if you took the radio out and replaced it? I didn't think so. Sure you can use a different browser, but IE is still there. Would you like to have to drive around with two radios just because you couldn't take one out because the car company decided to tightly integrate it with the rest of the car? I didn't think so. If I don't want to use IE, I shouldn't have to have it taking up space on MY hard drive on MY computer.
Then again, they also published this editorial by Robert Samuelson, who trots out all the "Microsoft hasn't hurt anyone" nonsense typically spouted by people who believe that the words "Microsoft", "innovative", and "software" can truthfully be used in the same sentence.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Require Microsoft to publish complete documentation of all interfaces between software components, all communications protocols, and all file formats. This would block one of Microsoft's favorite tactics: secret and incompatible interfaces.
Require Microsoft to use its patents for defense only, in the field of software. (If they happen to own patents that apply to other fields, those other fields could be included in this requirement, or they could be exempt.) This would block the other tactic Microsoft mentioned in the Halloween documents: using patents to block development of free software.
Require Microsoft not to certify any hardware as working with Microsoft software, unless the hardware's complete specifications have been published, so that any programmer can implement software to support the same hardware.
I woke up this morning, I was feeling kind of high, it was me, Jesus Christ and Haile Salassie I.
You have a good example (the Pioneer/Ford thing), but it's totally different that the current case that the DOJ is involved in with Microsoft.
In your example, you speak of a third party company wanting to make an addition to a product. That's great. That's the way things should (and sometimes do) work.
However, this is hardly the case in the Microsoft trial. This is a company putting their own browser in with their own OS! Not a third party vendor improving a product. If MS and Netscape got together and decided to bundle Netscape with Windows, then it would be like your example.
In this case (to create another example similar to yours) what if Ford made Ford Radios (TM) and put them into all Fords? The people who purchased Fords could put in another radio, but not remove the one that came with the vehicle.
So, in short 2 companies who wish to work with each other to build a better product is wonderful, but a single company using it's power to force more of it's own products onto the consumer is pretty darn crummy.
Moshi-moshi. O'genki deska? Watashiwa genki desu. Bye, bye.... Ninja;)
You're not seriously trying to suggest that microsoft's documentation is better, or more likely to exist, are you?
:)
Once upon a time that was true. But it's been *several* years.
As just a single anecdote among many, a friend actually paid the one-problem support fee from ms while doing a school project. They just couldn't get one of the examples from the excel manual to work. The answer (that they paid for) turned out to be that microsoft had never implemented that feature, and that the example couldn't really be made to work.
I've found this to be roughly typical of attempts to use ms support and/or documentation.
The real tragedy is that 15-20 years ago microsoft's documentation was among the best available for microcomputers, if not the very best. (then again, they wrote good software then, too
I hope Microsoft is forced to retool Windows and add some more user-interface and safety features.
Then travesties like this wouldn't happen!
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Opening up the source for Office would allow a level playing field for the rest of the OS's. It's about the applications, and MS knows this. This is partially why people stay with this OS and put up with all the negatives. Most businesses in the US use MS Office as the standard way to transfer documents and such. Hit them where it hurts.
remove cap letters to email
Intellimouse and Natural Keyboard come from hardware vendors that pay MS to put the MS name on the label.
It can be argued about whether or not the start menu is innovative. The Mac interface always had a "files" sort of menu on the task bar.
The red squiggly line for spellchecking as you type they also bought from another company.
OLE, and DDE I'm not sure about but I bet they were also acquired/stolen.
What's left is Office Assistant. The annoying thing everyone turns off the first time they start up their Microsoft Office. Boy the world is such a better place now that we have that talking paperclip.
I AM NOT A LAWYER
That said...
Actually, I like the suggestion that MS be barred from pre-announcing products. That would get rid of a lot of the FUD. Much of the trade press tends to "review" pre-beta MS software and run the review as a cover story...
Also, it has been bandied about before that if GeorgeW gets elected that he would drop the MS thing. At this point, MS cannot afford to let the matter drop. They have been found guilty of anti-trust violations, and those findings of law can currently be used in civil litigation (and don't believe that that isn't coming!). MS MUST appeal this decision...
Personally, I think they had it coming, but...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Right now the republicans would like to cast the current situation in the stockmarket as the results of a democrat witch hunt of Microsoft.
There is political worrys that a Microsoft breakup COULD sereously hurt the United States economy.
That fear is not unfounded.
What is missing here is exactly HOW one company became such a central figure in the United States economy.
Clearly if you crush any given company it would hurt that company but not send shockwaves accrost the stock market effecting all others in the same market. If anything the market should RISE not DIP with the loss of a major compeditor.
But companys are so tied into Microsoft now (as they must be to survive) that if Microsoft falls they are injured.
Normally companys can (and often do) switch computers and operating systems every few years. Some upgrade once a year and some even once every 6 months.
(This whole upgrade madness is what spawned Unix in the first place)
So this should signal a buyup of Macs, Linux based systems and Sun Sparcs.
Easyer said than done.
Microsoft has put an effort into making sure the only upgrade path a given company has is to the next version of Microsofts product line.
This is why the market is in such a panic. EVERYONE is tied into Microsoft becouse of tricks and traps. They can not easly back out. Many of them now see this and don't know what to do.
Harsh action against Microsoft at this time is warented however. Even if it means companys will be hurt when they must take drastic mesures to get databanks ported from Microsofts product line to a standard format that can then be used on a *nix or Mac system.
However in the short term this is an election year and the Democrats don't want to go to battle with "The vice presedent who crashed the economy" while the republicans would love to make Microsoft into an innocent victom.
It may also mean for political reasons a soft landing is needed. Otherwise we may see a republican presedent doing what he thinks is best for the economy and that would be "Restore Microsoft".... a bad bad situation...
I don't actually exist.
>In an about-face, Rep. J.C. Watts (R-Okla.), >chairman of the House Republican Conference and >the No. 4 person in House GOP leadership, moved >from criticizing the Justice Department's >victory as a crushing blow to the "new economy" >to commending the Justice Department's win in >federal court.
As most folks from around here know, J.C. is no stranger to about faces. This is, after all, the man who pledged to only serve two terms and now says "I don't recall if I ever said that or not."
:)
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DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
Folks,
I think the DoJ may NOT recommend a breakup for these reasons:
1. The horrid AT&T breakup experience. That breakup caused years and years of confusion by customers who needed integrated voice and data communications services (because they had to go to multiple vendors), and didn't really settle down until only a few years ago.
2. Lawrence Lessig--the legal advisor for the DoJ side--has said that he's not in favor of a breakup.
3. One Albert Gore, Jr. may NOT want to provide easy ammunition for one George W. Bush, especially during the Presidential debates.
4. The ultimate solution--namely separating system sales from operating system sales--may be the easiest and best solution for everyone involved.
Gawd, the DoJ spends over US$40 million dollars for a solution (separating OS and system sales) I suggested two years ago! They could have saved themselves a ton of money if the DoJ had pursued this course.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
last week: bill gates meets bill clinton at the white house.
this week: justice department leaning against MS breakup.
so the microsoft timeline is:
4 years of setup
2 weeks of takedown
+$100 million of campaign finance for gore
+$? to clinton's wallet
0$ to competitors and consumers damaged.
reminds me of the tobacco takedown:
6 years of setup
4 months of takedown
hillary clinton's brother AND trent lott's brother BOTH signed as lead attorneys for $68 million apiece 2 months before settlement
$40 billion of tobacco money to lawyers, 0$ to smokers
steve case is a smart cookie - when the setup began on intel he paid up quick and fast. the longer the setup, the bigger the takedown.
oh well, it was nice while it lasted. i almost believed in it.
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
Have you seen the radios in Fords the Last couple years? Try putting your own radio in one of those without redesigning the dash. Go on I dare ya. 98 Lite works just fine for me.
Very interesting point. For the most part, I agree, but...
/., even this one (surprise) is populated with zealots, trolls, troglodytes... Tempers flair, we're just people after all. :)
You say that Franklin, Jefferson, et al were the local Ruling Class, and led the revolt of otherwise ignorant peasants.
By that same token, the likes of Torvalds, Cox, Barlow, Perens, Stallman... are the current local Ruling Class, leading us, the ignorant hackers, against the oppressive tyrant of Redmond.
Hmmm... But we follow the GNU/Linux dogma because it offers a choice. We are pretty well aware of the issues, and we CHOOSE to fight the good fight. It's not a matter of following him who shouts loudest. We follow grass-roots leaders, elected on merit not only of their words but of their works. They, the roots of out little revolution here, have done a lot with their own hands already. We simply believe in their work, and contribute - by informed choice.
This is not to say that we are not immune to the mob mentality or the forming of cults of personality. Any article on
The government is right to bide it's time, and step cautiously around the punishment for Microsoft. The Conclusions of Law have had a significant effect on the technology stocks. The economy has reacted violently to government muscle flexing. The consequences of the punishment must be considered with even more care than making sure that the punishment fits the crime.
Many of us would like to see M$ broken up into technology sectors: OS, Apps, Services, maybe Dev Tools.. What would be the effect? Is it not a good thing to have some stability of leadership?
I agree with the highly moderated poster who suggests forcing M$ to open it's standards (and APIs). Further I think there would need to be constraints on the changing of these - since M$ has often changed file formats to force mass upgrades to the new version of MS-Whatever.
It's (M$) not an easy problem to solve, and saying it's hard doesn't make it easier. Relating it to Mills or Smith or Charlemagne won't make a lick of difference. I, for one, am glad to finally see tax dollars at work, rather than fueling studies on wether blue marshmallows cause cancer.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Whether MS is broken up or not, the point should be to identify behaviour that inhibits open competition and try and figure out a systematic way of adding degrees of freedom to allow some diversity into the system.
1) Vertical integration - much like the big media companies are trying to dominate content, distribution, marketing, and venture capital stakes, I think some thought has to be given to whether a company should have control at every single stage. If you look at Red Hat vs Mandrake, they offer the same product through different channels and are branded differently. Improper tying of products from OS to applications to network services with no point of opportunity to switch/substitute creates a complex exclusionary network.
2) Eat the Young - the point about young startups taking the risk to create real innovative products is eliminated if big companies can cherry-pick one solution, then wipe out the value of its peers by bundling practices. Having the choice between a trade sale at fire prices or having the value of your market evaporated does not give much incentive to develope new ideas (not to mention being venture capitalists to constrain share growth upside). The financial firms have developed Chinese walls to solve this problem, perhaps something similar should be in place for large IP aggregators.
3) Truth in Advertising - probably a pipe dream in the land that invented hype and spin-doctoring but wouldn't it be consumer-friendly if there were basic product qualifiers such as expected time to failure, cost to repair/replace, man-hours to install, rate of learning curve, etc? We have engineering standards for cars to toys so why not set the minimum bar for software as well? If software is going to be treated as a disposable good, then people should at least understand how much they are going to pay in that time period.
Part of the problem is not the software creator, but just educating the public consumer as to what are the qualities of good software. Until people can see and appreciate the difference, they won't be able to separate flash from functionality.
LL
We have the best legislature money can buy, donchaknow...
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
--
Have you tried buying a Ford OEM-sized radio? It doesn't matter how screwy the dash is, someone makes a perfect fitting 3rd party stereo for it...
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
MS is found guilty of bundling. Government says, "Stop that!" Hardware makes say, "Uh, yeah, stop that!" MS says "Okay. ;-)"
Everyone says, "Hey, didn't we tell you to stop?" MS responds, "Yes, and we did." "Then why are you bundling IE?" asks the government. With a sly smile, MS responds, "Its not bundled, its integrated."
In unison, the entire industry shouts, "What's the difference?!" Unfazed, MS responds, "I don't know, you tell me." "Uh, well, um... we'll get back to you."
The government sues, "wins", then asks "Now what?" In the face of immanent breakup, MS responds by proclaiming, "The best is yet to come."
Meanwhile, in Redmond, the following conversation was taking place... "Have the marketing guys got it together yet?" "Yes, we're ready regardless of what happens. If they break us up, we release the source to everything but Win2k. It will only be a matter of days before the hackers exploit all the security holes and thousands of companies, and the government itself, will be faced with either replacing all their software, retraining their staff, and hiring competent admins, or upgrading to win2k. We estimate that 50% will upgrade in the first 2 months, another 20% in the next 6. We estimate a 25-30% loss." "And if the don't break us up?" "The slpashscreens have been removed from all our MS Office apps and the all references to Office have been replaced with Win2k Office. Our marketing guys should be ready to roll with the new campaign within a couple of hours after the announcement."
There have also been rumors of what sounds like laughing emanating from the MS's Redmond compound.
Furthermore, this wouldn't (or shouldn't) break things because all new browsers created from the sources should be HTML compatible, not IE compatible. With more usable browsers content providers (read: web admins) would be required to write according to HTML standards instead of supporting only one or two (IE & NS) browsers. There would simply be too many browsers to write own code for each.
I haven't found any confirmation about this though...
_________________________
_________________________
Spelling and grammar mistakes left as an exercise for the reader.
Sounds like a guy that doesn't need to be re-elected.
As far as what the unwashed masses think about the case, it's obvious that most of the non-techies think IE is a great program, and that Windows 2000 is a fine os. They wouldn't know a fine os if it didn't crash on them.8)
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Based on the ruling, Microsoft was found guilty of anti-comptitve practices in the browser department, if the doj rules that they must break up I don't think they can do it on this ruling alone, what will most probable happen is that MS will have to give equal stance to all browsers, alternatively, they could open up the code for the offending browser (i.e 4.0) which was a pile of shit. They are more likely to aim low to solve the case quickly, a decision to break up would drag on for years, the likely benefit is a lot more browsers on shindows xx(insert current year), and in the end it will become an non-event
-I can only program my video,ahh, I am not a gook, but a joook -The World is a theatre of the absurd
As Mr. Gates kindly informs us that "government lawyers were technologically unsophisticated", ABC goes out and ask Ms. and Mr. Doe from Bellamy, WI, what should be done with Microsoft. We all know that Ms. and Mr Doe are fantastically sophisticated when it comes to technology. Even the mighty Linus seeks their opinions about every major kernel decision. That is really reassuring, to know they are aware of the problem with Microsoft and that they are considering the options for us.
> It is not the government's place to tell companies exactly what they can and cannot put in their software.
That's correct, unless the company under question is a monopoly. Then, different rules kick in.
Don't buy the Microsoft propoganda. Dealing with Microsoft's abuses will not mean the Government can regulate the rest of the software industry. Microsoft has a monopoly. The law doesn't allow monopolists to maintain thier monopolies through the use of their monopoly power. Microsoft did that. They must be at least be prevented from doing so again. At best, they will also be punished for their crimes.
Either way, the government isn't going to be able to regulate the rest of the industry. They're just taking care of the criminals, so the rest of the citizens can go about their own, legal business.
actually, there tend to be very big scandals (I'm reminded of one in LA a few years ago) in 'traditional' media at least (I'm thinking newspapers, I don't know about other ones) if the reporting crosses over into caring about the advertising. in theory, reporters don't know/care about advertising $$, and try to preserve their objectivity -- after all, that's what we're paying em for. no need to visit a site which is all empty MS (or linux) advocacy. I need information, and TRUE information. I need to be able to weigh it for myself -- but it's helpful to have a (supposedly somewhat) trusted other give their opinion...
obligatory vaguely on-topic part: free to innovate? they've always been free to innovate, but their business model doesn't seem to support it very well. I'm also not sure that a breakup is supportable, though it might benefit everyone in the long run.
Lea
So a "punishment that fits the crime" is: When Microsoft offers technical information to developers, it must offer them to all developers in a non-discriminatory fashion. For example: Netscape should get information about the Internet Explorer APIs that are "integrated with" Windows, on the same terms as any other software company. A company that develops word-processing software should get information about the Microsoft Office APIs and file formats, on the same terms as a company that develops a bibliography plug-in.
A possible refinement of the above: For every case in which Microsoft both sells program X to the general public and sells technical information on program X to developers, it must offer an unrestricted license, under some non-negotiable terms, for all publishable technical information on program X, and not sell this information in any other fashion. For example, Microsoft might license a complete package of Windows 2000 API and file format information for $1 million per year. Several competing companies could buy this information and resell portions of it to third-party developers; they would offer partial information about the APIs and file formats based on the market value of the information, not based on how the third-party developers might threaten Microsoft's monopoly.
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
Well how often does this happen?
Twice this century?
about once every 40 years, the Government has to act now to keep all the other companies in line or the companies will start to think that putting your opponents out of business by whatever means necessary is an acceptable form of behaviour. We as consumers are only really in a position to hold companies in check by two methods. firstly by stopping buying their products and secondly by leaning on our reprasentatives.
the first approach only has limited milage at the moment. The vast majority of users are unaware of alternatives to Mictosoft existing so they aren't going to change. they are not going to be given the choice to change because unless the DOJ forces them to through the courts, MS are going to act as the courts say they have been.
The other option is to sit down and work out what the difference in votes is between the two parties in each state. That is the number of votes you need on a petition that says, We the undersigned will vote for any candidate who will act to enforce consumer rights in the MS vs DOJ case. Now the individual politician may see some income from letting MS get off but if this is how he makes his money, then a Four year break in his pay is not going to look good.
There is no point in saying that voting won't solve the problem.
Try open sourcing your politics, don't just accept on of the closed source parties on offer
Breaking up MSFT would just create lots of monopolies... That is not what we want/need. Forcing MSFT to open APIs of EVERY product will solve most problems. If I want to sell a product that adds a new file system.. no problem.. no license fees. If I want to integrate my widget with windows, again, no problem.
ICQ#2584116
-- d'arcy poirot
Keep their hands tied down until the market moves past them. Do you think that Linux would today be such big news had the OEM control not been loosened? I don't!
:-)
How long will it take? Not very. Just today there is an earnings warning, and their stock fell below 80. I also cannot wait for this tidbit about IBM not allowing Windows 2000 on the production network to get into wide circulation. (It is not the only, and won't be the last such memo circulated.)
Well it was their decision to "bet the farm" on a bloated OS, let us just hold them to it for a bit...
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Apply slashdot principles to the Supreme Court: have you moderated a decision today?
"The romance of Silicon Valley was about money - excuse me, about changing the world, one million dollars at a time."
Visit
For instance, a lot of the newer Hondas bundle other circuitry, like the remote door locks, directly into the radio. If you want to replace the radio, you've either got to give up that bundled functionality or keep the original radio (and stuff it somewhere else) so it can continue to provide that functionality.
A similar thing happens with Bose systems. They don't use standard signal levels between the radio and the speakers, so if you replace the radio, you either have to use an adapter to make it work or replace the speakers as well.
Hmmm...bundling unrelated technology...using non-standard and proprietary interfaces...strategies sound familiar, eh? :(
I had a similar problem. In my case it was due to the fact that I had moved my ethernet card from one slot to another while installing another card. All networking stopped (I hadn't noticed right away either since I was spending time with that other card).
The worst of it was that I got NO error messages. Windows booted up and allowed me to log in with its usual charm. I go to device manager and the devices are all enumerated nicely, with no errors or problems. The ethernet card passes all its diagnostic tests. But, I can't connect anywhere.
Several dozen reboots later and I decide to try swapping the ethernet card back to its old home as a final resort. Voila, it all magically starts working again.
The most infuriating thing is that I got NO error messages or even hints of problems from Windows to the effect that my network card was misconfigured. It all came up clean. I just had no networking.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
I've said this before, but it bears repeating: the best way to punish Microsoft is to force them to completely open their APIs and file formats for EVERYTHING, and levy stiff contempt of court fines if the APIs and file formats don't match the actual application or OS, if they failed to document an API, or documented a nonexistent API.
And by stiff i mean in the tens of millions for each occurrence. Maybe more.
---
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
"You can't tell us what to do", they seem to say, "that would stifle our freedom to innovate". To which we all say, bull----, M$ innovates as a secondary consideration to controlling and dominating the software markets.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
FYI, Neoplanet will not work without IE. Neoplanet is little more than a skin for IE.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I used to work for Microsoft. True, there is no unified Windows 2000 source tree, but the source trees for the major components are available on public shares. Anyone in the NT development group (NTDEV domain) can access these shares. They even have a web interface to grep the entire(??) source tree!
Of course, there is "too much" code to leak. You couldn't fit the code on a CD! It's not easy to secretly share, leak, or store that much code without being noticed. Consider that (according to a Scientific American I read last night), there are 4000 programmers working on Windows 2000. I am surprised that more people don't leak some code..
cpeterso
Must be a pretty cool trick, seeing that in the Ford Taruas, the heating/cooling/radio panel is intragrated, and the actualy radio is in the trunk.
Nobody makes replacement OEM radios for them..
I agree 100%. I thought I said that in my post. You bring up a good point, that Coke/Pepsi may well be about the worst abuser out there.
Arguments against Monopoly are easy, and it's fairly easy to construct legal litmus tests to 'find' them. (legally find, that is) I'm not sure how you legally 'find' a Duopoly. How about a Trioploy.
Aren't there Conspiracy and Racketeering laws, and shouldn't they apply to N>1_Opolies?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
hell yeah. open the APIs. Open APIs means plenty of middleware, like Netscape, like Java. Middleware means easy cross-platform development. (Look at the GIMP-based online photo-editing service http://www.onlinephotolab.com!!) Easy cross-platform development means that Joe User, who just wants to run (spreadsheet | video editor | database) can choose *any* OS they want. MS loses dominance, fades into one among many CHOICES, all you Open Source advocates get the satisfaction of winning a fair fight on a level playing field. That's pretty much what Judge Jackson concluded in his Findings of Fact.
This white paper on Netscape's Gecko (requires Acrobat Reader) is full of great quotes like this one
"The Internet appliance is about to arrive, in force. This is a simple, streamlined computer that handles only the Internet and e-mail, and does so very well. It may take the form of a desktop or laptop PC, or a box atop a TV, or a specialized phone, but it won't use Windows or any other obtrusive operating system. In an appliance, the operating system isn't king: it's just plumbing."
--Walt Mossberg,"Using a PC Got Harder, But A New Age Is Dawning," 28 October 99 Wall Street Journal
which seem designed to give Bill Gates the night sweats, and nicely explains why he perceived Netscape as such a threat.
Where on microsoft.com can I download a compiler for my MS os? What about an IDE
You can't. And you wouldn't want it, even if you could... a #define WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN in MSVC++ 6.0 can trim a "Hello World!" program to 150 KB (from 200 KB)... I can write it in assembler in 150 bytes. TextConv 0.1.0 compiles to 204 KB in MS or 70-something KB in Borland C++ 5.02. Also note that Borland can build for DOS (standard and overlay), Windows 3.x, and Win32 (95/98/possibly NT or 2000). MS builds only for Win32. So, although I got a 90 KB DOS executable from Borland, I cannot compare it to MS.
Back on the subject of MS downloads: where can I get Windows 95 B? I can't... they want to sell me a Win98 Upgrade for $80. <RANT>If I can't pay, I'm stuck on FAT16. About 100 MB of my drive is slack (assuming average slack of half a cluster). That would be only 2 MB under FAT32. I'm only in college, so I'm stuck with a lame filesystem. Great customer support...</RANT>
~~~LXT~~~
Life is like a computer program: anything that can't happen, will.
I'm sorry, I just have to throw my $0.02 in.
Breakup of MS would be bad. Bad for the consumer, bad for the US economy, and bad for the world economy. Sometimes, dealing with the open source movement is like dealing with people who can't see the forest for the trees.
I used to loath MS. DOS and Win3.1 simply stank. They were terrible. As an "old Skool" Amiga user, I distained the MS OS, and hardware as inferior junk. Heck I even considered the Mac superior.
However, I will say this. It is undeniable that Microsoft has had a positive effect on Computing. It is thru almost their exclusive effort that every serious business puts a PC on almost every desk. Having used their development tools (Visual Studio, etc) I can say that that portion of their business and platform - ROCKS.
If you still want to use VI and GCC, feel free. And for all the people who say that their (MSs) docs suck. Have a look at MSDN. When I'm coding in Visual (C++, Basic, etc) good documentation for almost the entire OSes API is just clicks away.
I'm sorry if I sound like a MS booster - but quite frankly - qualitatively for out of the box experience, and end-user consistency, MS is wayyy ahead of Linux. Linux is great, I've got it at home running a mail server, web server, PHP, and MySQL. All of that software is FREE - which is why I use it. OTOH - installing IIS, and SQL Server on NT or W2K is easier than building, configuring, and installing apache, php, mysql, etc. Just my opinion, mind you.
I think the most important thing that needs to come out of this whole ruling is the following:
Full disclosure of APIs. No more hiding stuff, and playing dirty to keep it so Mircrosoft stuff works fine with Microsoft stuff, but has mysterious problems with everything else.
That's it. That's all. No huge government agency to oversee anything. The gov. should mandate the creation of a "peer council" - a non-govenment body, that is somewhat self organized. The council would consist of verious players throughout the software industry - RedHat, Sun, AOL, Oracle, Corel, and Microsoft. They would be responsible for peer review of the API specifications that are released. While these specs might not be public domain, and may even be reviewed under NDA by the council members - it would give everyone a chance to say - hey, you "forgot" to document this "feature".
Or something similar. I just think it's important that we keep government out of this, and let the APIs be reviewed by the people who are capable of doing it, and who can make a difference - and make sure that MS (and others) aren't introducing artificial barriers to making various products interwork.
I think a lot of people may not be aware that much of the Win16 API is actually standardized by ECMA (go on, go to ecma.ch and ask them for a current CD -- it's free).
.ocxen, for example, and replacing the HTML-rendering components with Mozilla code.
Therein lies the key to your successfully functioning open source Windows community. Since I don't believe there is much risk of Windows forking too badly (the code is too big and probably too byzantine for anyone to really understand, I'm sure), Microsoft in principle hasn't much to worry about as far as losing control. An open source windows would most likely fork no more than once, and that into the hands of people who feel that they can beat Microsoft at their own game without destroying crosscompatibility.
More likely Microsoft winds up getting hit hard on the distribution level -- there will be a Win2xxx kernel, and there will be the Official Microsoft Distribution (you know it's official 'cos it's got the hologram), and then you'll have half a dozen other Windowses out there, binary-compatible but featuring vastly different mixes of high-level features. I could see someone slicing and dicing Mozilla into
I think it's probably reasonable to assume either way that even if Windows/Open Source forks in twelve different directions, anyone who does not maintain binary compatibility as Microsoft has defined in the Win32 developer's library will be dead on arrival.
The problem is that even after all is said and done, Microsoft still must be left with the ability to support itself. It's a reasonable thing to believe that they should be whipped, stripped and hung on high, but at the end of the day there has to be enough left to earn a profit. This is a truly grotesque situation, but to go beyond that would be excessive intrusion by the government.
A breakup can't be done particularly obviously, and structural remedies won't work because MS will crap on them. They can keep Office and their multimedia stuff, but the following packages should be opened up:
-Windows 2000 itself (to prevent unnecessary/predatory OS tying)
-All network service packages (IIS, Exchange, and IE especially) (to prevent abuse of standards)
-All APIs
Anyone got a problem with that?
/Brian
http://www.winmag.com/reviews/systems/column/200 0/04/0411.htm
In yesterday's article on RReed someone posted a link to cnet which had at the bottom a link to this cnet item which states:
The story cited people close to the Microsoft case as saying the government is considering a proposal that would force Microsoft to grant royalty-free licenses to Internet Explorer, opening the programming code to customers and computer makers.
EOT
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Fast forward several hundred years, and Shakespeare plays are probably the cheapest things in a bookstore. Interesting...So does that mean that in hundreds of years Windows will be a "classic?" I hope not...
Y'know, I'm not really sure where I'm going with this.
--Colbey
There is nothing funnier than watch Linux people make fun of MSFT's stock price.
LNUX is 41.00 right now, off a 52-week high of 320.00 (almost 1/8 of its high!). It should be below its IPO price by next week, as it downward spiral continues.
RHAT is 28.63, off it 52-week high of 151 (less than 1/5 of its high)
CALD is 13.50 less than half of it 52-week high of 33 (and even below its IPO price of 14.00)
MSFT is 79.00, below its 52-week high of 119 - clearly it had dropped MUCH less than ANY of the Linux stocks in the past week.
This maybe a moot but it is a relavent question.
What does the currently law say are the possible penalities a judge could leavy in an anti-trust case like this?
I'm not a laywer but I'm wondering if it is even legal/constituional to try some of the solutions mentioned in here.
In addition to the above, MS's biggest innovation (along with Intel) is making the computer industry horizontally integrated. This is, by leaps and bounds, the single biggest computer-related innovation of the last 20 years.
Before MS and Intel marketed their products to OEM's who were able to establish a standard PC platform, the industry was vertically integrated. You either went to DEC, bought a VAX with a DEC-made processor, a DEC-made OS, DEC-made applications, DEC-made terminals, and even DEC-made printers. Or you went to IBM, or any of the other vertical players, and you got the same thing. MS changed that.
MS's innovation was to establish a standard platform, so you could use interchangeable parts. All vendors ahere to the same standard, and have a tremendous amount of choice about what kind of system you want to buy, what OS you want it, how makes the processor, etc.
This is the main reason why computing is so cheap to buy. In 1981, an IBM PC cost $5,000 (in 1980 dollars, which is about $9,000 in 2000 dollars). Now a machine substantially more powerful costs $400. All vendors sell the same thing creating so much competition that the price was driven down that much. This is undeniably a great thing for the industry, and for all consumers. If it wasn't for MS, Compaq would be selling PC's with their own OS, Dell would be also, and Gateway would, and they would also have their own value-added features and they would be incompatible. This is how the Unix (outside of Linux) and mainframe industries still are (and for that type of thing, it's fine, but for the mass-market consumers, it is not fine, because it is more expensive).
Point 1: aggreeing wholeheartedly - however, there's a flaw in your analogy - nowadays, you can consider radio a crucial part of the car itself, without which you won't know about accidents, road conditions, weather, etc. - thus a radio is legitimate to be a part of the car itself. But IE? Ha.
Point 2: Ok, so I'm allowed to use my browser. You must be one of those who have more than 40 Gb of hard disk. For me, it matters if something I don't use clobber up MY space. It is totally ridiculous that I CANNOT REMOVE IT.
That said, if they provide:
1. A way to uninstall
2. Freedom for hardware vendors to change default install setting,
Then I wouldn't have any problem with the bundling.
I don't know why you guys don't just lay back, relax some, and Feel Good.
After I saw Bill in his Just-Folks Sweater-- just like the one worn by the friendly spokesman for the 125% home equity loans that zAP Credit Card Debt dead-- I said to myself:
"Yes, Bill, I Feel Good about your small computer company that should have the freedom to innovate 25 years ago and Be the technology Winner that represents America and Working Families (TM) that is the Envy of the World and of other Wimps Without Money.
I agree with Bill. Let's all pull together and Feel Good and approve Elian Gonzales' father the political asylum that he desperately needs for Working Families that Save for a Better Future with the Freedom to Innovate and avoid Excessive Government Regulatory Burdens and Costly Bureaucracy of ThatDamnJanetReno that killed children in Waco.
Look how they have messed with the (all stand) Private Marketplace already and it's depressed the NASDAQ this week. Didn't I tell ya?
I think Bill is misunderstood. He needs Paul Harvey to help him express his important role to the American People. Even though I can't see Paul on the radio, his gravely voice is sooo comfortable that it is even more comfortable than the sweater that Bill wears on his TV commercial.
I sure know that Paul has helped me to Feel Good about the Supermarket to the Genetically-Engineered World of my Good Neighbored small town Just-Folks Walmart Store, powered by clean burning Nuclear Ethanol that reduces America's dependence on Furrin Oil.
Feel Good America!
[My apologies--I just lost it.]
"Provided by the management for your protection."
As for the "make the API public" point, I have a small modification for it - it is:
MS can still keep some API undocumented - however, their hands must be bound not to make use of those API.
So, you cannot use something you did not document.
One other point:
What will prevent the company to take away those undocumented API and integrating with the application themselves?
MS Office 2005 will be touted as "using only published API" but its own code may be entering the kernel mode to perform the undocumented OS stuffs previously existed as "undocumented OS API"
Now they are just a part of the application.
Thus in the end we'll have buggier, more bloated applications from MS that effectively still uses those undocumented OS stuffs that others don't know.
So an additional requirement is that their application must not enter the kernel mode...
No, what he's saying is that Apple had this BEFORE Microsoft (see MacOS 6.x, i believe). Innovation requires novelty, which in this case, was not there.
OLE, and DDE I'm not sure about but I bet they were also acquired/stolen.
My what an open-minded statement here. You don't know anything about these yet you still come out with a statement like this. If you don't have anything useful to say then don't bother saying it - you're just wasting my time with this kind of bigoted crap.
OLE was designed by IBM, and the copyright went back to them in 1997, I believe. MS reinvented OLE as COM, then ActiveX/DCOM.
Let's face it, you're just an emotional pro-MS troll.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Speaking of the Economist, they recently had an article about M$'s tactic of "embrace, extend and extinguish" with regards to open standards: this time Kerberos.
Probably nothing new to readers here, but it is nice to know that at least some of the press isn't totally clueless about M$'s tactics.
Shut up brain or I'll stab you with a Q-Tip. - Homer Simpson
they've always been free to innovate, but their business model doesn't seem to support it very well.
Good point
(BTW, the word is "precedent".) You missed the point. The ability to cut off huge parts of a company's market to force compliance with an edict is de jure not an "imposition", but de facto might as well be. In the end, the effect is indistinguishable.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
All the OS company and the Web apps company have to do is buy full-disclosure source access license agreements from each other. They can let any company in the world buy one too, on the open market--for one hundred and fifty billion dollars. It's a high price, to be sure, but if you can raise it, you have full access. Remember that Microsoft is presently worth over half a trillion dollars. The only other company with nearly that much market cap is Cisco.
If we cut MS into two quarter-trillion dollar companies, then Company A licenses something to Company B for price X, and B licenses something back to A for the same price, and both companies' books are in balance. Price X is in both companies' accounts payable and accounts receiveable, and the money goes around in a circle, payable over X/min(annual_revenue_of_A, annual_revenue_of_B) years. Hell, they can even charge each other interest on the outstanding balance.
And with a good enough set of lawyers, you fend off another company seeking equally favorable terms for years.
--
This is not my sandwich.
- Their file formats APIs, and protocols are intellectual property, which they can't be forced to disclose. Just like Novell doesn't have to disclose the intellectual property known as NDS, even though they essentially have a monopoly on it (not being open source *grin*).
- Licenses are in accordance with law, which is why M$ is pushing UCITA so hard -- to prevent reverse engineering even when it offers inter-operability (which is legal under the DCMA). So if M$ contracts are in conjunction with the law, the judge can't force them to change those either.
- Microsoft protocols? They change every protocol they can so that no-one else's software (which uses the protocol correctly prior to the change) no longer interoperates with WinXX.
Now then, my final point: if the cost for Windows goes up, the cost for IE goes up, and the cost of the apps goes up, consumers still have other choices -- perhaps not as powerful, but choices nonetheless. Heck, if I want an airplane that cruises at 200 MPH, I have to pay more than for a lowly Cessna too. If the costs go too high, folks buy Beos, Smartsuite, Netscape, etc., so the competition has more money to innovate, and their apps quickly catch M$ in quality, etc. So consumers make choices and the consumer market gives profitability to the companies whose software offers the best bang for the buck.Hard to call that "damaging to the consumer" if you ask me.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
We are bombarded by the ever so catchy-enough-to-get-stuck-in-your-head, but otherwise mesmorisingly moronic, timeless and lifeless tune "Breaking up is hard to do?"
The roller wheel has been used on cad systems for many years and aircraft controls for 5 decades.
Excel was designed and written for the Mac. As far as I know its the only thing they ever designed. It would not supprise me a bit if excel wasn't deisgned by MS but by some group inside or close to Apple.
The Register made it clear that what is at stake is IBM's status as an early adopter. One would assume that Microsoft will pretty much have to resolve the issues that IBM has, and then the rollout will go on.
But for now it is banned from their production network.
Regards,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
If the judge has the power to split MS, MS can be given the option of either opening them or being split up. As DGregory says I think MS should go the way of IBM. IBM has to publish specs for whatever they do, if people could make their own platforms & file formats TRULY compatible with the Microsoft ones, the world would be a much better place.
2 Licenses are in accordance with law, which is why M$ is pushing UCITA so hard -- to prevent reverse engineering even when it offers inter-operability (which is legal under the DCMA). So if M$ contracts are in conjunction with the law, the judge can't force them to change those either.
The same argument as above applies.
3 Microsoft protocols? They change every protocol they can so that no-one else's software (which uses the protocol correctly prior to the change) no longer interoperates with WinXX.
Likewise, the judge can give MS the option of letting an independent body control protocols, or face being split up.
4 if the cost for Windows goes up, the cost for IE goes up, and the cost of the apps goes up, consumers still have other choices -
If consumer have other choices but choose MS products, then MS is not a monopoly. So there is no case for break-up. (It is, in fact, evident that MS does have monopoly power, but making a monologist charge a higher price does not help consumers.)
It slices!
It dices!
It splits!
It can break up a major oil monopoly in just decades. It can break up TPC (the phone company) in just years. It's almost immune to bribes, corruption and interference from congresscritters!
How much would you pay for this wonderful device?
The government has paid billions.
Other have bought it for hundreds of millions.
It can now be your for the low, low price of $70,000,000. Yes, that's less than you lost on your last M$FT stock drop.
Buy yours today!
Call 1-800-gvt-bribes to gets yours today (please have your credit card handy)
<small print>Licenses terms: This product may not be compatible with your problem. It is not guaranteed to function at all. This product requires you to have current licenses of W2K</small print>
i guess N>1_Opolies are called oligopoles or something like that
Actually Neoplanet can supposedly use netscape 6.0 or mozilla also, although I admit I have not tried either of these yet because they are reputed to be too buggy. I use up all of my patience with buggy code on my own :)
Corral M$ onto the x86 platform and let Windows die like CP/M.
Their apps can live or die on their own merits.
There's no need to spend a dime on this thing. No need for punitive damages. No complex verification procedures.
Nothing M$ can appeal. Its status quo. They're on nothing BUT the x86. Leave 'em there and corrall them.
Let the need for bigger, better, faster pass them by.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Somebodies always gonna be top dog
really? why? i dont see anyone the top dog, in the open source game. ie if you look at the big pic, know for the smaller parts...
and it seems that the internet doesnt need a top dog to watch it so that it keeps working.
IMHO the only reason we [humans] think that there should be top dog relavtionships is because we havent been useing our HEAD. ( damn was going to insert a link to rawilsons "the RICH Economy" but the page has gone 404.. )
nmarshall
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
nmarshall
The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
--Colonel Burr 1783
I agree with all the analysis here, especially as regards the interests of the stockholders. And we should include Microsoft employees, who might actually be the ones who would benefit most from any breakup. (Can you imagine writing code for a company whose lawyers get to tell you that "integration" has to mean something that violates every rule of modularity and encapsulation?)
However, there is a small group of people for whom a breakup is not in their best interests: the lawyers, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, the DoJ, and Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson.
The Microsoft lawyers who specialize in anti-trust have little to gain from a breakup, which would basically put them out of work. MS would not need them anymore, and who would choose them after the spectacular botch-job they did on this case? (But, hey, have a little sympathy. How would you like the job of coaching Bill before his testimony? It would probably be obvious to you how badly he was going to do. But how do you tell a guy who's worth $70 billion that he's screwing up?)
Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer would profit monetarily from a breakup. But that is probably not their greatest interest at this point. To them, a breakup would take The World's Biggest Toy(TM) away from them. (For those of you who have trouble with this point, just imagine what you could do with MS, its programming staff, and the $10 billion in cash they have lying around if you had control of the company.)
For the DoJ and the state attorneys general, a breakup would be a monumental roll of the dice. If it worked, fine. But, if the economy goes south (and from where we are almost any change would be for the worse), if the Baby Bills do poorly, if the tech sector suffers, the DoJ could get blamed. It doesn't matter that MS stock has often been overvalued (according Gates, at least). It doesn't matter that their growth potential has often been overestimated by Wall Street. It doesn't matter that there have been some aspects of their business practices that will prove difficult to sustain no matter what. The general population will believe it was DoJ's fault if MS or the economy tanks. Too big a risk.
And the judge runs all the same set of risks as the DoJ. He has carefully crafted this trial to make his decision appeal-proof. He's not about to set himself up to be overturned by adopting an extreme remedy.
In case you hadn't noticed, all of the people who have anything to do with deciding what the remedy will be just happen to be the only people in the world who wouldn't benefit from a breakup. So, don't expect it to happen.
Fortunately, there is one other small group who will benefit by non-structural remedies: Linux users.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
Um... Last I checked, Neoplanet just used the IE ActiveX control (the one built in to the operating system).
But more importantly, every _does_ have to use IE if they use Win98/NT/2000. Why? Because it's integrated into the Windows Explorer (which is always running), and it's got tendrils reaching into the kernel, networking, gdi, and user/windows DLLs. Even if I use Netscape to browse the web, IE is always still running. It's still eating memory and CPU. It can still bring down Netscape, or the entire OS.
Now, on my Mac system, IE was installed by default with OS 9.0. But when I'm running Netscape, or Mozilla, or iCab (my default browser), IE isn't running. All it's taking up is drive space. And I can remove it just by deleting a single folder, without affecting anything else.
The same thing goes for my linux boxes, of course, except that IE isn't even an option.
no
Are you sure you're not reminded of one in LA just a few months ago? The LA Times' Times Magazine did a big fluff feature on the Staples Center, and split the ad profits with the Staples Center, and allowed the ad execs to kill (or at least postpone) any stories in the magazine they didn't like.
There was a huge scandal which still wasn't yet resolved when the Chicago Tribune bought out the Times....
The only scandal I remember from a couple of years ago was when the bosses at the paper declared their intentions to "break down the walls" between advertising and "content," and the only result of that "scandal" (other than a lot of hand-wringing by pundits) was an increase in stock prices....
Anyway, back on topic computer magazines make a huge percentage of their profits from advertising (as opposed to magazine sales). So maybe what _you're_ paying for is objectivity, but the advertisers are paying just as much for just the opposite....
no
Many of the world's "industrialized democracies" have an explicit concept of a "permitted monopoly." In some industries, there may be a good reason for a monopoly--so the government decides that there will be one, awards it to someone, and regulates them differently than they regulate non-monopolistic companies.
America has no such concept. We still have de facto permitted monopolies, and we do come up with special rules for them, but it's much more capricious. I'm not sure which is better--probably each is better in some ways, worse in others--but it's an interesting distinction.
no
Start Menu: Apple Menu
Spell checking as you type: at least two third-party apps for Word for Macintosh
OLE/DDE/D&D: OpenDoc/Publish&Subscribe/D&D
DirectX: Um... What's new here, exactly? The Mac had a way to do full-screen drawing, DOS allowed you to write directly to the hardware, OpenGL allowed hardware 3D support, etc.
DCOM: Corba
ActiveDirectory: NDS and LDAP
Some of these are more borderline. The basic concepts behind the Intellimouse and the Natural Keyboard already existed, but only in specialized applications. So they deserve some credit there. Also, OLE's linking was much better than P&S's.
There are some much better examples of Microsoft innovation. First, two killer apps for the Macintosh: Word, which had a GUI and WYSIWYG layout at least as good as MacWrite's but was powerful enough to compete with the DOS standards WordStar and WordPerfect, and Excel, a spreadsheet nearly as good as Lotus with a much simpler learning curve (plus better printing support and other improvements).
And it wasn't just in the early days. Win95 and Office95's pervasive, consistent context menus finally made that second mouse button useful for consumer users. ODBC allowed middleware to be ported from Microsoft SQL Server to Oracle in a matter of days. The auto-install/self-repair features in Office98 and IE4.5/OE5.0 for MacOS is the first good implementation of that idea.
In other words, Microsoft has made some innovations. Not as many as some of their competitors, not as many as they'd like you to believe, but they have made some.
As far as "think of any feature Linux does not have," that's a little silly. While linux doesn't have any of those specific technologies, it has other technologies that provide the same benefits (OpenGL, GGI, SDL, Corba, LDAP, etc.).
no
- Are all those day traders Gates groupies?
- Is Gates manipulating the NASDAQ?
- Is, horror of horrors, NASDAQ responding rationally to a government attack on an industry leader?
- Are people afraid that Gates has purchased a Russian Sub and has it parked off the east coast ready to push the button if the DOJ does anything really nasty to his baby?
I don't know... you figure it out...Seastead this.
Great analogy. I think I'll go out and find out exactly how many different radioes I can get for my car (which isn't a Ford but who cares?). What I love is the whole
"It's essentially the same situation. A third party company was making a useful addition to a product which the product's maker decided to include as standard."
Last time I checked, there was only one Microsoft. The same Microsoft making Windows, Office, Visual Studio, and Internet Explorer. I, for the life of me, cannot figure out how in the hell Microsoft can be a third-party to itself. That just doesn't make sense to me. Then again, I am a Linux fan, so a lot that Microsoft does doesn't make sense to me.
"I used to be an agnostic, but now I'm not so sure..."
You do realize that NeoPlanet is only Internet Explorer with customizable chrome.
After blowing away IE, Neoplanet was crippled but my Netscape and Opera (and Perl's LWP::Agent for that matter) browsers were fine.
Then again, MSFT was *supposed* to be one of the pillars of the technology market, it's supposed to be a shining example of how high you can go with technology. It's hard too see it that way when they've lost %35 of there stock price, and more then $100billion dollars, they've had a rulling stateing the competed unfairly, and a black eye from a school prank (and what was thought to be a back door) in one of there more visable products...