Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Quickies
Yesterday, the court decided to break up Microsoft. Here's a little list of resources and places on the web where you can learn more about it. Microsoft has requested that the ruling be set aside until an appellate court hears its case, read about that on CNN. ZDNet has a big thing on it here, as well as new words from Judge Jackson. The Financial Times site, FT.com, has news and a Ballmer interview here. Here's something from the Washington Post, talking about the possibility of an out-of-court settlement. Enjoy.
...have done it again. Check out today's Brunching Shuttlecocks feature, Microsoft: The Verdict. Funny, funny stuff.
--
As Apple expands outward into new products and services (do NOT use the 'i' word, do NOT use the 'i' word... ;) ), they begin trying out techniques and mechanisms that lock people into their stuff or force upgrades. I just got the latest 'MacAddict' today- one of the main articles is "How To Create an 'iDisk' without OS9". The iDisk is a sort of networked storage for iMacs and the like, on Apple's servers. They're within their rights to do whatever with it- hell, at one point the usage agreement literally said all intellectual property hosted there became Apple's property! Big stink, and they backed down and revised it. But in theory you're still supposed to be using OS9 for this stuff.
If they had the lock on OSes and software, this type of behavior would be a serious problem. As it is- the main problem seems to be that, for the moment, there _are_ no mainstream consumer OSes that are genuinely enlightened- MS are evil and built to stay that way, and Apple are.. mercurial. There are many good things about them, and many bad things about them- and of course they are under MS's thumb, still.
I do like the idea of OSX and am likely to switch my powermac to that at some point- I am just wary of what conditions will go along with it. I don't mind that there's no guarantee it'll work with an upgraded 9500- that's my problem, I take responsibility. I will have serious reservations over any of the following 'features': automatic updating, connecting to Apple servers to check on stuff like copy-protection, MS middleware built into the system, obligatory idiot-ware. Any of that stuff made _permanent_ would be a dealbreaker for me- I'd be willing to learn what to disable and remove (that's the key to getting Macs rock-stable anyhow! *g*) but I would have major problems if I'm denied a choice in the matter.
What I want is Darwin, solid and _simple_, with Quartz and whatever they're up to with a GUI- and NO TIE-INS! I don't want Appleworks bundled- latest version sucks anyhow. I don't want AOL built into the system- or even AIM. And I don't want IE built into the system- I'd sooner use an antique version of Netscape.
Maybe the iCab folks will be doing a version of their browser for OSX, eventually. I could get very enthusiastic about that- when iCab works I tend to love it. Had some bad luck with betas...
no one 'round here understands my potato.
guess I'm just a fudboy.
looking for that real tomato.
-=b
This link SF Chronicle: Workers Take In Stride has an image of several Bay Area Microsoft employees sitting round an ...
...Apple Macintosh Powerbook!
:-)
For all of you monkeys that said MS could not appeal the restrictions that take place in 90 days, here's an article on Techweb on how MS is appealing Jackson's refusal to stay the restrictions. Enjoy.
ÕÕ
Like everyone else who has replied so far, I disagree with your perception of Microsoft, but damn I admire what you wrote. You have stood up to the angry mob, and done it in a fair and even handed manner. This has got to be the most courageous and articulate post I've ever seen on Slashdot. Microsoft doesn't deserve you.
As a worker bee whose company currently has an 'E' appended to the stock symbol, I can tell you that the reason for this is that we haven't released our first-quarter earnings yet (and here it is, almost the end of the second quarter). Until we have released our earnings for the first quarter, we'll have an 'E' on the end of our symbol.
Minesweeper existed on character screens long before MicroSoft was even formed.
Nothing is 'worth' as much as that, man.
Sell your stock. No normal company warrants the 'valuation' an unregulated monopoly gets. He's right- it's all over.
Judge Jackson was not appointed by Clinton. He was appointed by Ronald Reagan.
The cake is a pie
I defy to show me any lawyer who doesn't do this!
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
he could have ruled that MicroSoft by walking through the doors to the courtroom agreed to abide by the decision of the judge and to accept it as final; no appeal. Now that would have been justice, a Walk-Through agreement!
"Open code, in other words, can be a check on state power." -Lawrence Lessig
Here's what I would suggest:
begin 644
---
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
... this is soemthing only a die hard devo would get.
Gotta love Devo's first album
http://saveie6.com/
I am certain much of slashdot would kill to work at Microsoft
... when I found out it was with Microsoft I let them phone interview me twice just to see what it was like and told them "naaah, changed my mind, later maybe" when they offered to fly me there for the final interview/official offer.
... called that one right, I must say ;)
Speak for yourself, loser. Few months ago I agreed to submit my resume for a "Macintosh streaming media job in Seattle" I figured obviously must be with Real
Stock price was $107 at the time
You just invalidated your argument, in terms of demonstrating Microsoft's guilt.
Couldn't the government point to much more stable operating systems...
They did point to them; their conclusions were that Linux is pretty much a server OS at this point, Be OS isn't viable because application support is limited and Be doesn't market it as a replacement to Windows, and Mac OS doesn't run on Intel-compatible hardware. If Microsoft had viable competition, they wouldn't be a monopoly!
One could point out that MSFT uses all (or nearly all) of it's resources to make their products user friendly...
And you're saying that's harmful?
How about the many recent Outlook exploits?
As has been pointed out before, the only reason those viruses target Windows and Outlook is that there's a lot of people running that software, not because it's inherently insecure in and of itself. Sure, Outlook launches VB scripts automatically, which is inexcusable, but that has nothing to do with Windows whatsoever, and nobody's ever accused Outlook of having a monopoly, to my knowledge.
What about the upgrade cycle?
Upgrades were addressed in the Final Judgement. Microsoft isn't required to release free upgrades, but they can no longer force people to upgrade if they don't want to. See section 3.i.
And then there's the harm to non-consumers. Ie, the MSFT tax. Buying a computer from almost any dealer necessitates the installation (and hence purchase) of windows.
The Final Judgement also dealt with that. See sections 3.a.ii and 3.f.
Do yourself a favor and read the court documents before complaining about the conclusions that were drawn from them. And by the way, FWIW, I agree with you completely.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
My users are nurses... they've got important work to do and right now.
They'd rather have a green screen than a blue screen.
Text is text. Books are books even without fancy pictures. People with real work to do need certain information. A lot of it can be done more simply and efficiently with plain text, one thing at a time, no crashes :)
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
And that was pretty much the last shot at someone developing another OS.
I mean, what's happened since? DR-DOS? hmmm..
So Micro$oft's cornering, and ultimate monopoly, of the PC OS market was pretty well founded some time ago, when a *lot* of people weren't really watching, and by the time anyone really spoke out about the monopoly it was *way* too late for the marketplace to do anything.
Which is why the government had to step in, too late and with too little.
But Micro$oft is not the best, or the most popular, or any of that.
For a *real* long time, Micro$soft has been simply the only show in town.
And that's spelled MONOPOLY
t_t_b
--
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
I just realized that all of this anti-trust crap consists of the immoral destruction of a profitable company. I guess it just took me a while.
If the issue at hand is that Microsoft is using unfair buisness practices to hurt other buisnesses, then why can't those other buisnesses bring trial against Microsoft? If Microsoft is hurting lots of other companies, why can't those companies get together and go for a really *big* settlement? If people hate mircosoft, stop using thier product!
No, those companies would rather go whine to the government, who, since the government is incapable of wielding a surgical instrument smaller than a multi-megaton nuke, will shrug it's shoulders, ascede to demand, and blow the company in two. We have the biggest, most powerful, most profitable software company in the world right here in the USA, and we are going to rip it in half? (no guarantee that we'll get two functioning halves - we might put a couple hundred thousand people out of work.)
Yes, Microsoft makes crappy products. Yes, they have illegally applied pressure to other companies. Yes, Microsoft's buisness practices have often made me ill. (I still lament the vaporware-caused death of Turbo Basic.) But does this radical measure really even help those who have been hurt? Is Borland getting a check? No. It's a vindictive, impractical, useless move.
Maybe I'm becoming conservative. But I don't think it's moral or fair to harm or destroy one company because it hurt other companies. Damages? Hell, yes. I'd love to see Borland get a billion dollars so they can resume some neat products that died. But destroying a company because they destroyed other companies just leaves us short companies. And jobs.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
> [
Is it just me, or does my bullshit detector go off the scale whenever I see multibillion dollar companies using apostrophes in press release?
Do these companies ever use "chatty" language riddled with apostrophes when speaking the "truth" (albeit bastardized) to their shareholders? Never. To their politicians? To their lobby groups? To their lawyers? Never, never, never.
The only time you'll see colloquialisms and apostrophes in press releases is when there's not even a grain of truth involved. It's a surefire sign that you're getting pure bullshit, as it were, as opposed to the normal, lower-grade bullshit that usually appears in press releases. It's a major red flag that says everything in the press release is a lie, that your argument doesn't have a leg to stand on, and the best your PR managers can do for you is to make you look "more human" by "talking down" to the peons in informal language.
When you or I do it on Slashdot, it's because we're speaking from the heart. When a PR flack does it, it's merely obvious that the sincerity is being faked. And poorly, at that.
We're not buying your act, Bill. Not for a fscking second. Use all the apostrophes you want. We see through your PR flacks.
I just want to remind you all that this trial did not try to prove that Microsoft's monopoly in the OS market is illegal or bad for consumers.
I wonder why Microsoft always said that their doing was actually beneficial for costumers. They missed the point just as you guys are missing it: Nobody in the trial actually debated that.
Being a monopoly is perfectly legal in the US. This case is about something different: It is illegal to use your monopoly in one market in order to establish a monopoly in another market. In this case, the court found Microsoft guilty of (among a few other things) using their monopoly in the OS market be built a monopoly in the browser market. For example, they illegally bundled the OS with a browser, making it impossible to buy the OS without their browser. Saying that this bunding was actually benefitting for consumers is just obfusication.
As owning a monopoly is not illegal, you should not complain that the court's decision to split up Microsoft does not actually take the OS monopoly away from them (or the OS company that will emerge from them). Instead, the decision deals with the bundling issue I mentioned.
From the ZDNet coverage you'll find this quote
I guess we could have saved all this bother and just asked Dick about it in the first place. He knew what to do without benefit of research, testimony, or even, it seems, a shred of knowledge about any of the issues involved.Sadly, all the regular people I talk to seem to feel the same way, simply because they don't know enough to make an informed decision. If only the LOVEBUG attachment would have forced each Outlook user to read a condensed version of the comments on /.
Dick Armey knows exactly how the high-tech economy should evolve...the first step in that evolution is DMCA.
Matt
You couldn't pay me enough to work at Microsoft. Just because you would doesn't mean everyone else would.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Lived in Calgary myself for almost 10 years and couldn't stand the Mississauga-style cookie-cutter, cul-de-sacs. Bland with a capital B(oring).
;-)
Travel, go to Boston, Paris, Bonn, London, San Francisco, Tokyo, Sydney. You'll leave too!
Bill Door
But... Death is cool... death may not be, but Death is. He tries so hard too...
Emacs is for experts. Pico is for beginners. VI is a disease.
I just got off my co-op from last term and I got to talking with others about network servers. Now, each of us were in places with high-demand networks running a mixed bag of NT, Unix, and (gasp) Linux (mostly Redhat... sigh). Now, we came to the consesus that follows:
:P
1) The NT server goes down. Eh. We tell the users the NT server is down and wait until it's fixed. Usually this prevents people from accessing some printers and most fileshares - an inconvenance at best. Some mail is held back too, but everyone expects it.. hell, even that stereotypoical secretary just goes about as a routine daily event.
2) The UNIX/Linux server goes down (umm.. they go down?).. Call the fscking police, call out the IT army it's a disaster! You have IT people fevourshly running around despartly trying to get it back up. There's paper flying, people don't know what to do. Everyone is paniking and the users are getting irritated. Calls are coming in by the thousands and all hell breaks loose.. Then the server goes up and slowly things go back to normal.
Now, just anyone reading this may simply assume that the Unix server is more high maintenance thant the NT server right? nope. In fact, one of the Unix servers this guy worked with had an uptime of 8 years... 8 FUCKING YEARS! Apparently a UPS blew out and they turned it off to be safe because no replacement was handy. Thats right.. the Unix server came down because of something that was unrelated to the OS..
Now the NT server died because it got overloaded... Overloaded? it provides auxillary finctions to the Unix server and the NT box is technically superior to the Unix box (more ram, faster processor, much newer version, etc). I simply don't get these MCSE zealots that think NT is even NEAR ready for the enterprise. It's NOWHERE NEAR as good as ANYTHING ELSE. I'd rather base my network off a pair of TRS-80's than trust NT to add 1+1 and spit out an accurate result.
Bye bye MS.. You've hurt consumers with crappy products, bad support, and ruined competition. And Bill, don't let the door hit you on the way out
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
And you know what? I bet you the separate IE company wouldn't be solvent -- couldn't justify its' own expenses. Know what else? Microsoft should HAVE to deal with that.. Netscape did -- that's why Mozilla is Open Source now. That, my friends, would be justice
No that my friend, would be vengeful retribution. There is no justice in creating a company destined to fail simply to satisfy people's thirst for revenge.
A web browser on it's own cannot support itself because people now expect them to be free. The money to be made from browser development is from creating development tools and you refuse them even that so unless MSIE walks away with MSDN (visual C++/Basic/J++/XML technologies) then splitting of the browser will be and exercise in destruction that will hurt everybody, consumers the most.
PS: Even if they open sourced it it would still cost a great deal to maintain. AOL has kept on average 100 developers working on Mozilla at any one time while the average regular contributers hovers in the 30s. Besides the MSIE code base is probably convuloted enough that releasing the source would matter to very few people who are not heavily into COM/COM+/DCOM which basically counts out most of the slashdot crowd (except maybe the GNOME folk since they are so heavily into components).
PPS: Just my $0.02, gotta get back to coding....
Microsoft has had plenty of opportunity to settle out of court already, and, as far as I can see, it hasn't even considered it. The reports coming back from Bill (BTW did anyone see what Bill said on CNN last night?) seem to say that Microsoft still thinks that it hasn't broken any laws. I don't know if this is just selective reading (if I don't know about the law, I'm not breaking it!) or if they still think they can somehow convince (or dare I say bribe?) their way out of it, but it's seems obvious that they're not going to submit to anything willingly within the near future.
And in reference to the department of this story, I'd say it's already about as boring as Napster. One more story about this and I think I'll have reached my tolerance limit. Ya, so sucks to you.
I don't quite understand all the fervor I see here. Do you honestly believe that this will open the marketplace to another Operating System any time soon? This does little to address the reasons that Microsoft had a monopoly to begin with.
Microsoft may have bullied illegally into the browser market, but nobody here is screaming, "Yay! We can all get a new browser!" You all seem to be celebrating the death of Windows, admittedly a flawed OS. This won't kill Windows. This probably won't even kill Internet Explorer, at least not for a long time.
Ask yourself: Why is Microsoft so huge? Every other post on Slashdot puts Windows down. Is it the best OS out there? Nope. Second best? Third? Nope. How did it get so big? The easy answer is that Bill FORCED everyone to have it! Yeah! But that's not true. Microsoft is huge not because Windows is the best, but because Windows is popular.
Popularity has a whole different set of rules from competence. If you want to see the difference, look at your workplace politics, and then pick up a copy of "Entertainment Weekly" or some similar magazine. If one of your coworkers goes to jail for drugs, abuses his spouse, and gets divorced six times, he's a loser and nobody wants anything to with him. But if he's a movie star, then it's almost expected and it's okay. Windows works the same way. It's unstable, it's secretive, and it's bloated, which should all be cardinal sins for an OS. But it runs all the cool games, all the neat office tools, and all the multimedia stuff you could want. Plus, you don't need a degree, or even significant experience, to install it correctly. You can't seriously expect people to forget that overnight because it's revealed to be incompetent AND a bully, especially when they already knew it was incompetent and didn't care.
Microsoft Windows will continue to sell as long as it is the best OS for what the majority of computer users use it for: light office work and games. Money talks, majority rules, pick your cliche. It doesn't matter what Windows can't do, because it's the Hollywood OS. Until another OS comes along that can do all this better AND as easily (or nearly so), I don't think anything will change.
I'd like to add that Microsoft is right to claim innovation. Innovation is not invention. Look it up. Innovation is ABOUT stealing others' ideas and using them in a "better" way. And in this business, "better" = "more popular" because that means more money, and money is what business is all about. If MS was able to steal bits and pieces of other companies and make more money than the idea's originator had, then that is, by business definitions, innovation.
This isn't meant to be a particularly pro-Microsoft message. I just don't see why anyone thinks this will change the fact that Microsoft is so ubiquitous.
Comments are welcomed.
I hate to say it, but I really doubt the breakup will do much good. Sure, we'll have an applications company and an OS company, but where's the competition? Internet Explorer will continue to evolve on its current path, getting further and further away from standards-based HTML and more toward proprietary extensions, XML and ActiveFillInTheBlank (which, of course, all require the MS development kits to compile.) By adding all these "features" to IE and their other internet software, they are, in essence, trying to take control of the internet. Sure, you can use sendmail, Apache, Mozilla and whatever, but you'll miss out on so much unless you use Microsoft's Microsoft-enhanced products (here's where the proprietary Kerberos extensions come in.)
Splitting up the company into divisions won't solve anything; the baby Bills will continue acting the way they always have. And in 3 years, when the injunction expires, what's to prevent a merger? Judge Jackson should have ordered Microsoft split into 3 or 4 identical companies with equal access to all the source code. Then we'd have to see some innovation in order for any of those companies to survive!
Of course, my personal feeling on the matter is that Microsoft should be left intact, but Bill Gates should be found personally guilty and executed.
----------
Something cleverI've heard that Microsoft planned to move their company to Canada if the case should end with MS being split into two companies.
Is there anybody who can confirm this rumor?
> friendly in some way. The fact of the matter is, is that Bill doesn't want to look like
> the 'richest person in the world', he wants to look like your next door neighbor, somebody
> who you wouldn't dare of commiting such business atrocities.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who's noticed MSFT's use of informal language in press releases as a manipulative tactic.
Fsck your PR reps with a copy of Win2K sideways, Bill. We know exactly how your PR campain works, and we see straight through it.
Ok, so the decision has been made. Will this be going straight to the Supreme Court? And how long do you think it will really be before any tangible difference happens?
------
James Hromadka
"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." -- John Ashcroft
Point out that the reasons for needing free and open access to the Windows API's are intuitively obvious to the most casual observer.
Anyone NOT knowing what an API is, is simple unqualified to comment.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
Judge: "Hmm... this company deserves a (Score: -1, Monopoly)!"
Sorry, couldn't resist...
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
One thing that's nice about it is it pops up almost instantly (most of it is already running before you click on the icon). The bad thing is if IE crashes, it often takes the system down with it.
The legalities of it is that you can't remove IE from the operating system. People are stuck with it whether they want it or not. Thus, they force people to have IE and all of its bugs/instability problems.
Looking for a computer support specialist for your small business? Check out
Exactly, now all of a sudden Microsoft has to find a way to sell software in Third world countries (as opposed to having it "borrowed"), and they hit on the obvious idea. Hey, let's rent the stuff! That will force everyone to pay, and it will give us the chance to lock up our users documents so tight they will never get them out of our grasp.
If someone complains we will point to the license they clicked through and show them how not only do they not own the software they have been renting, but they don't even own the content that they have created with the software.
Woohoo, we'll be rich!
In fact, it's already started. It is already impossible to get a copy of Windows with the new PC you buy. You might get a recover disk, but if you upgrade the hardware you don't have an installable version of the OS.
Tell me, how is that good for consumers?
Same sentiment. Different finger.
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
> Microsoft has decided to change their stock ticker symbol to BSOD
That's for the new OS company. The applications company is going to use VRUS.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Wish I had points now to moderate you up but I'll do the next best thing by quoting you:
Like everyone else who has replied so far, I disagree with your perception of Microsoft, but damn I admire what you wrote. You have stood up to the angry mob, and done it in a fair and even handed manner. This has got to be the most courageous and articulate post I've ever seen on Slashdot. Microsoft doesn't deserve you.
Well said.
Actually, just like a lot of responders I see here, I used to be paranoid about the possibility of Microsoft trolls coming onto Slashdot en masse and polluting it - team moderation on Microsoft threads, that kind of thing - but I now see it an entirely different way. My belief is that a goodly portion of the Microsoft employees that do come onto Slashdot (yes, they do, lots do) are actually learning to think the way we do: first to stop loathing us, then to respect us, then... who knows, maybe even become like us. There really is no desciple quite so zealous as a convert.
--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Please do not belittle the importance of the American Revolution by equating it to the Microsoft case. Microsoft, more than likely, would have been brought down by market forces and the eventual dominance of open-source.
Take it from me, a professional developer with 5 years of experience in creating software solutions for Windows 95, 98, and NT that developers are looking for any excuse they can to use open-source. An API to a developer is like a toolbox to a mechanic. Tools with a hard-to-use and non-intuitive interface do not help a auto-mechanic any more than they help a software developer. Unless your company has beaucoup bucks to shell out for the MSDN Universal Subscription, which is a far cry from the level of documentation one receives with Linux, FreeBSD, or any of the other open-source operating systems of note, it is very difficult to write good, dependable code for your customers. I don't approve of the anti-competitive actions Microsoft took, but I fear my government more than I fear a company led by a man with the foresight to predict that no user would ever need more than 64K of RAM.
======
"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
Productivity is down, morale is down, the only thing that isn't hurt is the fact that (in our opinions) we are still making the best software and are well-positioned to advance the state of computing in the next few years.
Exactly, Microsoft may be down, but it still has monopolies in three different mass-consumer markets: desktop operating systems, office-productivity applications, and web browsers. Maintaining these monopolies will be vastly profitable for all the forseeable future, even without attempting to leverage them illegally.
So, when does Bill Gates' perjury trial start?
How is Microsoft "destroying competition"? They may have a marketing department, but who's going to say that competition is dead? Macs haven't died out despite going head-to-head with Windows for years, and smart people are switching to Linux in droves. Not all of Microsoft's programs are the best- can you say "Pocket PC"?- and you can easily find free programs elsewhere that do the same thing as what Microsoft sells. I don't agree with Microsoft much, but I also don't see how breaking it up into two companies that won't compete with each other helps. And what happened to the plan to rip off an internet division as a third company? Sounds like the DOJ had some kind of a case, though- did they present it in Powerpoint?
This is a perfect example of why the M$ case elicits such spirited defense of the company in the general public. Apart from those of us here or who check out other tech-savvy newssites, most people don't have the faintest clue exactly what all the fuss is about. They use Office at work, surf with Explorer, send their emails (and get viruses) with Outlook Express, and are told by their IT folks that M$ is the best. To them, Mac users are fanatics who use toy computers, Linux users are geeks, and there are no other OSes. That is, if they even know about Linux at all. Due to years of brainwashing by marketing types and IT know-it-alls, the average consumer thinks it's Windows (Office, etc.) or nothing.
We are kind of sheltered here and somehow expect the public at large to understand the issues in the same way that we do. I'm sure we all know people who fit the preceeding description and they just don't get it! Never will, either. That's unfortunate.
By making the split so that Applications (Office) and Browsers (MSIE) are still in the same group, they'll still be able to do this to consumers who rely on Microsoft applications.
Not only that, but they will be able to continue to play the one-two game with browsers and servers, hooking them together will all kinds of proprietary and polluted protocols. The remedies do a little bit to interfere with this strategem, but not enough. The inevitable result of this weakness will be yet another legal go around when it becomes obvious that the new Microsoft Apps monopoly needs to be further dismantled.
--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Cringely's argument is interesting, but wrong.
He assumes that the DoJ antitrust case intended to show that Microsoft has a monopoly and that its monopoly has harmed consumers, so is illegal. He argues that the DoJ failed to establish that the Microsoft monopoly harmed consumers (and goes on to offer an argument that it did, in fact.) From this he concludes that the case might well be reversed on appeal.
The DoJ theory of this case was rather different than Cringely supposes. True, it's illegal to have a monopoly if it harms consumers. But, it's also illegal to use the power of ones monopoly to extend it to other adjacent markets! _This_ is the legal hook the DoJ hung its hat on.
I'll agree with Cringely that the case might have been stronger, had the DoJ also proven the first proposition (that consumers have been harmed), but the second transgression is also oppressive for a company that has a monopoly. It might be the case that the DoJ felt a case on the "harm" standard was weak, a matter of "what if" opinion. In any event, they went after the second theory and proved it well enough to get Judge Jackson to agree with them roundly in his Findings of Fact.
Issues decided in a Findings of Fact can't be reargued on appeal. The appellate court (be it the Federal Appeals Court or the Supreme Court) can only address Matters of Law. In this case, the relevant Law issue is whether of not the Sherman Antitrust Act applies to sanction the conduct established by the Findings of Fact. It does, and therefore the ruling will be affirmed.
According to section 3.g of the Final Judgement, Microsoft can't bundle any Middleware Products to Windows unless they let you take it out, and unless they give discounts to OEMs who license Windows but remove the Middleware Product. Since Microsoft isn't likely to be happy with this, does this mean that NGWS will not be distributed as part of Windows at all?
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Redmond, WA - Microsoft in a recent all cash deal has purchased evil from Satan for $2.7 billion. "We've been after Satan for some time," said CEO Steve Ballmer. "Negotiations were tough but I think both Microsoft and the Prince of Darkness are happy with this deal."
Before the purchase, Microsoft already had 15% of the evil market, now that number is closer to 100%. The Department of Justice has voiced concerns over one corporation controlling so much evil, and has begun investigations into the deal.
"We feel that there are real opportunities with evil, and that when evil is integrated it into our next generation of Windows products consumers will appreciate evil on their desktop," said Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. "Businesses haven't been able to fully realize their evil potential. With evil integrated into Office 2001, corporations big and small will begin to see enhanced evil productivity."
"Evil is a real growing market," market strategist Frank Dresgan of Merrill Lynch said today. "Microsoft is a little late in the game, but even when they enter a market late they still tend to dominate. I think we'll see the same with evil."
"I've been dealing with Microsoft for some time," Lucifer said. "I've been at this evil thing for millions of years, and wanted a way out. I considered an IPO, but then Steve-O and Billy came along and told me about their "Evil Everywhere" plan and that was an offer I couldn't refuse."
Evil was founded by Satan close to the beginning of time. It has been growing steadily ever since, although most of the growth has come in the past five years with the development of the internet. Satan plans to retire to a small island in the Bahamas and write a column for the local newpaper.
Mircosfot
Mircosfot??????
[says out loud] Mircosfot...
Hmmm. Great name for one of the new companies!
======
"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
Excuse me? Was there a "breakup" of IBM and no one bothered to mention it either then or later?
You must be referring to the IBM Consent Decree where they didn't admit FUD or preemptive vapor "product" announcements (and a few other things) but promised never to do anything similar again.
IBM licensed DOS on a _non-exclusive_ basis from Bill Gates. This allowed Microsoft to also license DOS to other companies (Compaq, etc.) to run "IBM clone" PCs. This was IBM's big mistake because they literally _gave away_ the PC market!
I have seen a theory mentioned previously (can't remember where) that went something like this:
Could somebody comment on the
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
> If you've been watching TV lately, you'd notice that Bill is in the commercials.
One thing that has pissed me off for the past year or so is the incredible amount of free air time Bill has gotten because the trial is "news". Every time I turn the telly on that ape is spouting his FUDdish bullshit trying to scare the masses into thinking they are going to suffer if he loses this case. Richest man in the world, and he doesn't even have to pay to spread his propaganda!
> Yet, Bill still denies any wrongdoing. If you do something bad, and you admit to it, most people won't get angry, they'll just say "that's bad", no please don't do it again.
Yeah. What ever happened to the "youthful indiscretion" defense? He could learn a lot from watching Bubba Clinton and Bubba Bush.
He's as amateur at being a con man as he is at being a visionary.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Require Flash 4 to view....
How about:
MICROS~1 and MICROS~2
I'm not sure if that's impressive or scary.
Looking for a computer support specialist for your small business? Check out
IANAL also, but I've read much commentary, and suppositivly there isn't any presendence for doing it the other way. Apparently all other anti-trust trials have done the judgement phase the same way. But its still up to the Supreme Court to decide if such presedent is wrong.
you know, cigarette companies, gun makers, and pharmaceutical companies all get tax breaks (big ones anyway) on the land they own. and they can rip people off without being hold personally responsible because corporations are basically outside of the law.
Well see, owning the browsers is mindbogglingly profitable. See, m$ own the browser, there for m$ own HTML. Mickysoft got where they are by 'embracing and extending' open standards. First you take over the browsers, then you start introducing IE specific nomenclature in javascript and HTML tags. Then you deploy front page to automagically insert IE specific tags for people without them even KNOWING it. Then you make IIS to use IE specific functions. PRESTO, now you own the market for web servers. and *THAT* is where the money is folks.
Now granted, mickeysoft isnt the first to try this, netscape started it. Mickeysoft finished it. While I dont feel sorry for netscape (their browser sucks!!!!) I do hope m$ dies horribly and takes their miserable software with them.
------
Just on a curious note, exactly what do you have in karma? =)
I'm sorry. In my original post with respect to the American Revolution, I explained (albeit briefly) that I wasn't trying to compare or equate the American Revolution with MSFT vs DOJ in any way. I was merely offering an example of a situation where some short-term confusion/uncertainty/general badness may be necessary for the overall longer-term good of the people.
make world, not war
Yup, sorry, breakup was the wrong word. I was talking about the Consent Decree, as you call it. Whereas publically promoting FUD and vaporware were prohibited, I think the opening of the specs of the PC (ie, allowing IBM-clones) was the biggest factor in encouraging computer competition (and hence contributing to MSFT's dominance).
Looking at the plethora of PC companies today, as well as the increase of computing power and decreasing cost, I'd say it's certainly been a success for the consumer market.
An even better testimony is that IBM is still in business. And they've really taken on a good-guy status. In addition to standard business practices, they're doing useful research as well as helping open-source projects. Maybe if they're stripped of their mighty power for awhile, MSFT can do the same in time.
make world, not war
All you heard were rumors. There was no fact.
Secondly, simply moving their offices to Canada would be pointless. THey are a US registered company. You don't just 'up and move' like that. You cannot.
They can't just say 'now we are registered in XXX country/state'. Shareholders have stock in Microsoft, registered wherever it is registered.....
Yeah. The first place I ever saw Minesweeper was on a Tektronix 4051 Intelligent Graphics terminal (one of their static storage display CRTs with a 6502 and 8K BASIC inside). That was in 1979 and I suspect that Minesweeper was old even then.
--
"You've crossed my Line of Death!" "What? No! Where is it?" "Here in the fine print...."
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
It is very unlikely the Supreme Court will take this case. There is a huge evidentiary record that must be scrutinized, and that's a job for the Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court prefers cases in which the facts are clear and there is just a question of law to be settled. The Court of Appeals also has plenty of expertise in antitrust matters (most recently the Intergraph vs. Intel antitrust case--which Intel won on appeal).
Futhermore, this case was a consolidation of a federal lawsuit and a lawsuit from the states. The Expediating Act pertains only to federal cases. So if the Supreme Court takes the Microsoft case, the case would have to be broken in two and the states' lawsuit would still go to the Court of Appeals anyway. Why would the Supreme Court take it then? They would likely prefer to have the Appeals Court analyze it first.
Finally, the Court of Appeals has the authority to overturn any findings of fact made by the District Court. Judge Jackson's Findings of Fact are not irreversible.
So, stopping development of a very successful product in order to screw over another company is called what? Anyone?
Uh, 'New Economy Business Plan'?
Battle Cry of The New Economy: 'Yuh want fries widdat?'
======
"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
Let's see. We've got:
- THE BIG LIE
- committees making decisions for the masses
- a cult of personality
Market capitalism is not what comes to my mind.
I laughed til I cried, then I laughed some more.
let's see, divide by zero and we get: infinity.
and if we let P(n) be the power that one microsoft has if divided into n companies (which equals P(1)/n) we get inifinite comapnies with no power.
Me like.
stupid little geek joke. I'm studying for calc exam right now :)
> After he found them guilty, he skipped the hearing on the proposed remedies.
No, he did have hearings, let both sides present their cases, surprised everyone by going in to a second round, and even let Microsoft get the last word in both times.
The fact the Microsoft foolishly wasted the hearings whingeing and trying to re-open questions about the FoF is no sweat off the judge's back.
Personally, I don't think Microsoft has a chance. Even if they scratch up a procedural error, the FoF is now part of the legal history of the USA, and they are going to get nailed for it.
Their only hope (that I can see) is that the current pro-business courts might decide that anti-trust actions are unconstitutional in general, and throw the whole thing out on that basis. It could happen, but Bill would not be wise to bank on it.
If he really wants to protect his baby, he should step aside and appoint a new visionary-in-chief whose visions involve the application of technology rather than the preservation of a monopoly. So far as I can see, they haven't done a darn thing since the Mac came out, that was not merely an attempt to preserve their lucrative market position. If the Baby Bills keep playing that game, they'll get hit again in a couple of years.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
How about POP3 and LDAP and IMAP and SMTP and other (standard) protocols?
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Very nice code, Kurt. I'd say it describes the situation PRECISELY.
MICROS~1 and MICROS~2
--
dinner: it's what's for beer
Umm. Judges ARE supposed to make judgements, you know.
MS has enabled the Web To BOOM, Sure, Netscape started it, but MS has pushed it bigger better faster more...
And this is a good thing??? I see what the web could be, and what it is.
Keep your 'bigger better faster more' for when you play your Bill Gates/Tonya Harding pr0n .mpeg....
======
"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
The place-Appeals Court. DOJ and MS lawyers are present.
DOJ "Your Honor we can end this right here and now. MS has agreed to drop all appeals and abide by the decision of the lower court and to other conditions as well."
MS "Your Honor we agreed to no such thing! what's going on here?"
DOJ "Your Honor a Walk-Through-the-Door agreement was clearly posted on the door to the entrance of this courtroom on a stickynote. By entering MS agreed to all terms and conditions thereof. They should have read it before entering."
MS "We object your Honor, there is no such precedent!"
DOJ "Clearly your Honor there is such precedent. Software companies have for years been enforcing ShrinkWrap and ClickThrough licenses. There is also the EULA."
MS After briefly confering with each other. "Your Honor wer're glad the DOJ mentioned the EULA. MS has recently added a provision in the license barring the DOJ from implimenting punative measures against MS. Therefore the Walk-Through-the-Door agreement is invalid."
DOJ "The DOJ will conceede that such a change in the MS license agreement under EULA would have been valid. But your Honor, all DOJ computers are now running Linux."
Judge "This court rules in favor of the DOJ Walk-Through-the-Door agreement. MS must abide by such terms thereof. Case closed!"
Later that week at the DOJ victory party. Steve Ballmer stands by the door holding a cup marked "Donations for DOJ Antitrust," Bill Gates is serving snacks on a tray to guests, Mr Nukem (Janet Reno's shoe shine boy) is shining shoes of all the guests. They really should have read the agreement before entering the court.
"Open code, in other words, can be a check on state power." -Lawrence Lessig
If we allow a company that repeatedly broke the law to carry on with business as usual, just for the sole purpose of not damaging our precious economy, then we're entering a very dangerous situation.
I agree with that. And it's that sort of arrogant contempt for the law that brought this on them in the first place. The Judge, after already having been lied to, was not amused when MSFT continued their conduct.
From that interview:
But he said he's convinced that the software giant continues even now to engage in the actions that brought it to trial. He cited as an example new evidence -- an e-mail from last year by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates that was introduced by the government late last month. In the e-mail, Gates suggested altering some of his dominant software in a way that would disadvantage users of the Palm line of handheld devices, which are made by a competitor.
The judge also said:
"Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus," he says, citing a Latin aphorism meaning, "Untrue in one thing, untrue in everything."
This was a clear reference to the blatant lying the MSFT witnesses engaged in. At the outset of the case Jackson had practically stated an intention of not being very harsh even if he did find MSFT had broken the law, but months and months of total lying and contempt for the authority of his court wore on him.
Even now Jackson appears willing to accept a reasonable settlement if the DoJ and MSFT come together on it, but he is pretty dismissive of the bogus "offers" MSFT has come up with so far.
In any case, I don't expect them to get off so easy this time, especially if the Supreme Court hears the case and they skip the DC Circuit Court. (4 out of 9 Supreme Court Justices have to agree for that to take effect, if Jackson agrees to it, which he certainly will.)
MickeySoft and MinneSoft.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
INAL, what I've read from legal scholars is that the finding of fact and the ruling were all structured to stand up during the expected appeals process. If you know so many ways that it can be overturned, start listing them.
IANAL, but I imagine the appeals will be based on procedural grounds rather than on the merits of the case. This may force the case to be relitigated, probably in Jackson's court. AFAICT the Findings of Fact are unassailable, and I fail to see how anyone can accept the Findings of Fact without accepting that MSFT violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
Jackson might lose points on the rather hasty remedies phase, when it was fairly clear he was impatient with the case and with MSFT and had already made up his mind. I think this will depend on whether it goes to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals or straight to the Supremes.
IMO it's going to end up with the Supremes anyway so it may as well be now rather than then.
Stock price was $107 at the time ... called that one right, I must say ;)
Heh. It's just as well not to end up a Microserf, but if I have any spare money lying around and the breakup goes through, I may just pick up a few shares of MSFT at the way-undervalued price it's sure to be at during the panic.
I bet splitup or no, the price will eventually rebound from that, making it worthwhile. In any case, it's not likely to drop much more after that.
IANASB.
> the Court of Appeals could choose to overturn the ruling simply because of these procedural errors
But has anyone pointed out any actual procedural errors? Sure, Judge PJ didn't have much patience with the MSBS, but did he actually skimp on procedure? Most observers have been saying that the judge has been exceptionally careful, and had the appeals process in mind every step of the way.
I know MS is whingeing because they were not allowed to open a reconsideration of the months-old FoF when they were supposed to be responding to the proposed remedies, but this hardly looks like a procedural error. Like the judge said, they had months and months to present whatever evidence they had.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
He isn't living in reality...
followed by:
Pretty clear to ME who is living in reality in this instance.
======
"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
And they are free to design such interfaces into windows... but if they are split, the OS division will HAVE to give the same access to those specs that they give to the MS Software company, lettin *anyone* who wants to get into the busines write apps with an *equal* chance as far as windows goes. THe OS will not favour a single app developer, as it does now.
When you've got say $20 billion in cash, you won't give up.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
They cannot afford the sheer level of staffing required to keep up with the patches, fixes, etc that problems like the recent outlook virii/trojan horses/worms have caused.
MS has just released a security patch that is to address the scripting vulnerabilities in Outlook (only Outlook 98, and Outlook 2000 patches available, no patches for older versions or Outlook Express that I can see).
According to the press release (written as a interview with Sr.VP Steven Sinofsky - You have to read it - it's really hilarious), it will provide "an unprecedented degree of security for computer users. With this update, Outlook will be a substantially more secure email application."
This was prompted because "virus writers have become very sophisticated and have made it very difficult for users to know if an email attachment is safe."
Also, the update "increases Outlook security protections by changing your Internet security setting within Outlook from 'Internet' to 'Restricted' zone. This disables most automatic scripting and ActiveX controls. Active scripting will also be disabled in the Restricted Zone by default."
WOW! What an innovation. Potentially hostile code will be disabled by default in the restricted zone! (Umm, what exactly is the point of the restricted zone if not to have active content disabled by default? Oh, I remember now, there might be "legitimate business scenarios where this is useful.")
Work for Change & GET PAID!
Now that I have your attention,
Bill Gates wants this breakup to happen. Bill used to be a programmer. Good programmers plan for unforseen things to be forseen.
MS is broken into two companies. Shareholders will get stock in both companies. In a nutshell, shares will double in value. Who stands to gain the most in such a scenario? Bill.
The CEO of Windows will be the CEO of the OS company. A new CEO will be chosen to run the application division. Bill is no longer CEO but Chief Scientist. He is now free to dabble in both companies.
If the company did not breakup, Bill would still be on top. If it did, he will still benefit. He cannot lose in this scenario. That is why after his last meeting with Pres. Clinton, he walked out smiling. He told Mr. Clinton the news: Either way, I win, you lose.
Bill was so delighted, he invited Al Gore to speak to a gathering of MS employees at Redmond. Heretofore, an unknown event. He also gave Al a large check and several more. This was to rub it in Clinton's face and to buy the possible future president.
But, you say, Bush is beating Gore in the polls? No problem, Bill has gotten to Bush already who has made a statement to the effect that the government should let private companies alone.
Bill wins if Bush wins because Bush will not take Bill's contribution to Gore out on him. Rather, he will have to stand by his previous statement.
The fight is over. In fact, it was over before it began. And Bill won.
It's always that way. Take the Internet for example.
"Step 1. The Internet is never going to amount to much."
"Step 2. Our Internet is going to be Better"
"Step 3. We Invented the Internet."
Repeat cycle for the next technology. In your example, the NetPC.
-John
happening here is Microsoft being punished in the wrong way. What Microsoft did was tell OEMs that they were going to up their licensing fees if they tried bundling anything other than MS Windows on their systems. This is leveraging the competition. It tells IBM and their like that they best not develop their own operating system because M$ will up the ante on licensing. This they ought to be cited and punished for because this is abuse of their psotion in the market. What IS happening is they are being punished for practicing capitalism and putting Netscape et al into a small sack which they tossed in a closet. My problem with the complaints against M$ is that M$ wrote the operating system and is under no obligation to let other people write software for it. The government hasn't busted down on Ford for not letting GM build car parts for them. Why should Borland and Netscape get special treatment? Here's a scenario. I want to start a company making a compiler for Solaris because I love the SPARC architecture and really enjoy using Solaris. My compiler and programming toolkit gets really popular and Sun changes around the internal mechanics of Solaris a little bit so my toolkit no longer works and then they use some hidden API code which their programmers conceived which allows apps compiled with their toolkit to run 3% faster than mine. Do I get to whine to the government that Sun changed the internals of their OS and made my toolkit less effective than theirs? Sun is evil! They have a monopoly on the operating system they wrote! All of the software produced by Microsoft is owned by Microsoft, they merely sell licenses for people like my parents or your parents to use that software. A similar license is given to development houses that build software to run on said operating system. The laws that defend the GPL also defend Microsoft's code. Microsoft has done plenty of unprofessional things in their history but you'd be hard pressed to find a company who hasn't. Breaking M$ up as punishment is a very bad idea because it is only going to harm the people who don't know better. Microsoft the application company can easily use the same leverage tactics that Microsoft the monolith can use. They'll offer MS Office and Works to OEMs at a discount but if the OEM wants to offer Wordperfect Office or Lotus MS the application company will just raise licensing fees causing the OEM to no longer offer the MS Office products. Since many people depend on Office file formats due to excessive saturation in the business and home market already and because people feel more familar with it, people will be lining up to buy Lite copies of Office directly from Microsoft. Either way they are getting the dollar from the consumers. The lack of threat not to offer Windows on manufactured PCs will not stop OEMs from bundling it as a matter of course. No other OS save Mac OS is mature enough to compete directly with Windows. If Linux matures in the next two years into a very usable OS OEMs would have migrated to it anyways and left Windows behind. Right now at this instant there is no real competition for Windows on business and home PCs. Whine all you want about the reasons for this but the fact remains that Windows will be dominating the desktop for a few more years. Apple is going to be doing alot more business and Redhat might see some good profit in the near future but for the most part things will stay the same. By the time Windows has less than a 50% market share in userspace the PC of today most likely won't exist. Stuff like WebTV and iOpener will be sitting on people's desks and take up space in their living rooms. Breaking up Microsoft is NOT going to cause some sort of glorious revolution. It is going to be alot more of the same. It's all a bunch of electronic pulses anyways, who the fuck cares.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Who would be surprised if the court is financed with M-Dollars? Every line in the media, where the 640k-os name appears, fungates only as advert! The same old trick is played on media users again and again: a collection of desktop wallpapers, cheap sounds and ever growing driver collection gets copyrighted, but nobody puts any (read/write)-protection onto it: because every copy acts only as advert and #@!*~
That's the weirdest thing about monopolies. They hurt themselves a lot. They just hurt everyone else so much more.
This has been a test of the Slashdot Broadcast Network . . .
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
that the judge wished the two sides would settle out of court and that they should realize to compromise. He felt that it could be decided to not break up MS, but that MS would have to realize that they did infact do something wrong.
IMHO, I like the idea of 2 or 3 seperate companies where all retain the rights to the same products, that way there would be immediate and direct competition on the same platform.
Wheeeee
If Mircosfot is forced to deal with the interum measures, I bet the starting beggin for an out of court settlement. I hope the do have to deal with them , then let the appeal process drag on for years. On the other hand, if M$ weasels out the interum measures, I hope it goes striaght to the Supreme Court for a quick resolution and breakup. I think it M$ is forced to eat the iterum measures, things will start changing fast. Including M$'s stock symbol! Can you say MSFTE?
"He who sacrifices beauty for efficiency gets what he deserves." - Bernard Mickey Wrangler a.k.a. the Woodpecker
I worry that this one is going to be knocked down by a higher court. A lot of legally knowledgable people I know say that Jackson migh have been a little to quick on the draw for this to stand. Any lawyer out there care to comment?
IANAL. Well, the way I understand it is Jackson's actually playing this pretty smart. Yes, he did frog-march Microsoft through the remedy phase, but what can happen? If the remedies don't stand up on appeal it just comes back into Jackson's court - he gets to fix it. This is nothing like the kind of problem he'd have if the conclusions of law didn't stand, and that's why he was so careful and thorough making those totally solid and bulletproof.
Personally, I think he's handled this case just brilliantly from end to end, and his most recent stroke of genius is to get the whole process ready for the Supreme Court's fall session - otherwise, Microsoft might have been able to delay the whole process by yet another year.
--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Microsoft is...eager to push some sort of pay-per-use revenue model
This sort of thing will never become mainstream in America. We want to own our cars (not ride the bus,) we want to own our DVDs (down with DivX!) and so on... we're a material people, that's all there is to it. This sort of thing won't catch until someone offers it for free.
That's the other thing... we Americans will pay out our asses for the illusion that we're getting something for free. -Erik
I don't believe that Microsoft will win in the appeal, and I don't think the Final Judgement is too severe at all (in fact it may not be severe enough). However, they are correct that they do have the right to appeal the decision.
To reiterate, I want them to fry, but I can wait a little while longer just so they can't whine and moan about it so much (and gain sympathy with the public and the legislature).
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
> I am certain much of slashdot would kill to work at Microsoft.
No, but I have considered applying, for the sheer joy of a chance to turn them down.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Are you forgetting that all DOS .. err WinDoze 9.X
users are running as ROOT ? SO push off until you
know what you are talking about.
Seriously, surely at some point it becomes obvious that they are pursuing a suicidal strategy? They are violating their fiduciary duty.
Finally.
Well, this is cause for celebration.
I was going to use the fact that it was Thursday as an excuse to drink ( not that I actually need one ), but this is soo much sweeter.
Prost!
Bitcoin pyramid: Join here: http://www.bitcoinpyramid.com/r/1427 it's FREE!
Er, dude, you don't have to be root to send e-mails or delete the user's files. Perhaps you should "push off" until you get that special clue module installed.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Oh, Cringeley again. Remember his previous article, where he claimed Judge Jackson was a wimp afraid to order Microsoft around?
Microsoft lost this the good old-fashioned way - the prosecutors at the Justice Department showed in court that Microsoft broke the law. There really isn't any question about this. Go back and read the court's findings of fact for a detailed list of Microsoft's illegal acts if you have any doubts about this. All the testimony and documents are on-line, too. As an example, read this memo from Bill Gates calling for incompatible extensions to HTML.
Uh, the fact that the law is against them, that the arguments you cite have _squat_ to do with the legal system, that they completely humiliated themselves in court and are damned lucky to not be facing lots of charges for perjury and obstruction of justice?
Maybe you should return to windows programming and leave law, justice and politics to those who are experts in them... furrfu... how surprised people like you have been with each successive step in the justice process... do you think it is so arbitrary? Face it- MS got _hammered_ and it is because they were and are fscking GUILTY and don't even bother to conceal it or change a note! Is that so hard to understand?
"I should go free, because the law is wrong, and I will not admit I did anything wrong!" furrfu- tell it to the judge- oh wait, they did, and that is precisely why they are being hammered, because they were given lots of chances to negotiate something milder and scorned all of them...
I worry that this one is going to be knocked down by a higher court. A lot of legally knowledgable people I know say that Jackson migh have been a little to quick on the draw for this to stand. Any lawyer out there care to comment?
One thing that does amaze me is the number of people who believe that Microsoft broke the law, but think they should not be punished becaus "It will hurt the industry", or it "Stifle innovation", or "Make my life more complicated". If they broke the law, they broke the law. It should not matter whether punishing them will cause some IT shops to gasp have to diversify. It should not matter that they are a dominant industry player (In fact they got to that position by breaking the law.. how much \farther are they willing to go to stay there?)I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
According to Bob Cringely Microsoft might have deliberately messed up the original trial (they weren't exactly s**t-hot) in order to crush the thing on appeal (they're holding things back). Why? So that the US DOJ thinks they've dealt with MS once and for all, thereby ignoring all the other things that MS get up to. Cringely mentions the Hardware Design Guide as a method of enforcing PC obsolescence.
If you're in the mood for some linx on how bad ms actually is, well here's some great ones: http://www.lies.com/dec97/121897.html http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-1999-11/lw -11-vcontrol_3.html http://members.aol.com/machcu/msproducts.html http://www.ncworldmag.com/ncw-06-1998/ncw-06-lastt en.html http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2123 471,00.html And everybody's favorite: the one, the only, Microsoft Linux Myths Page! http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/nts/news/msnw/Li nuxMyths.asp I can't believe ms actually tried to make this page of fake reasons on why nt is better (nt sucks).
Which is worse, hindering one company's innovation, or allowing that company to squash several innovative companies?
The whole reason for the trial is that several innovative products from other companies never made it to market because MS didn't like them. Who gave microsoft the right to decide what products we see and don't see? "Competition is the heart of free enterprise." (Thomas Jefforson I think. I can't remember right now.) If Microsoft was a branch of the US Government people would be screaming bloody murder.
I think another interesting perspective is that of the great Robert X. Cringely, in the latest edition of the Pulpit. All is spelled out here.
Put simply, he believes that Microsoft lost the trial on purpose: in order to be illegal, a monopoly must be harmful to its consumers, and the DoJ failed to dig up enough evidence to that (such as the "Windows Certified" scam), choosing instead to focus on the damage done to other companies (particularly Netscape). So Microsoft is pretty damned sure it will get Judge Jackson's ruling overturned on the appeals court, all will be back to normal, and at best it'll take a few years for the DoJ to find a new strategy to take them down; in the meantime, Microsoft will be "innovating" a few billion dollars more out of the consumers' pockets.
That's all his opinion, of course. But it looks right on the money. And it does account for the incredible stupidity that the MS lawyers have shown in court...
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
The whole Microsoft/DOJ thing is more like a 60s Dracula film where the protaganist tracks down the vampire, kill it only to find it comes back to life and kills him instead. Maybe we could cast Larry Ellison as Van Helsing, Scott McNeally as Johnathan Harker and James Barksdale as Dr. Seward. How about Steve Balmer as Renfield? Does anyone really think that the appellate court or even the supreme court will drive a stake into Mircosoft's heart? The courts in this country pretty much come down on the side of intellectual property rights ALL the time. IMHO, the DOJ was never able to really show that intellecutal property right in the software industry are very different from those in other intellectual disciplines. Why should it? Th whole thing was instigated by M$ competitors who would probably engage in the same kind of activities if they had a chance. Thus, the DOJ will probably lose in the appallate court and maybe even the supreme court. Unless,of course,at least five of the justices have tried to install Windows on their PCs at home! ;)
With $20 billion in cash, they're going to fight this all the way.
Of course, their conduct during the trial also goes to show that all the money in the world will not help you if you've got blinders on.
About the only way Windows can lose its market dominance is if the Microsoft applications such as IE, Office, are ported to other operating systems (linux, Beos, etc.) Which would be possible if they are two different divisions, would never happen otherwise. Microsoft has some good software, but their operating system isn't it. But it'll be wrapped up in court for years anyways...
http://a.r.tv.com/cnet.1d/Images/News/Ent/2000/04/ 0424SteveBallmer.jpg
All he is missing is the little sailor's hat.
UPS Sucks
No, they want someone to sell them computers with preinstalled Windows but without a backup CD, so they can't reinstall! They want OS licensing which means they have to buy a new copy of Windows if they upgrade the network card! God bless innovation and may he strike down the government heathen who dare to suggest that Microsoft's actions are the actions of a monopolist!
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
>they merely sell licenses for people like my >parents or your parents to use that software And you are, like, 10 years old? That would explain the weird logic you use. I can't even go into it. Read the rest of the thread, try to understand it, and we'll talk then
A lot of ISVs would disagree with you there. Ask Intuit for example. Where's the Linux version of Quicken?
Sorry Raffy..
;) when talking about Micros~1 "innovations".
I'll start using tags and wink smileys
Irony. Context. We shouldn't NEED smileys.
-
air and light and time and space
Well, i'll put aside all the things i have to say about Micro$oft, that would take too long for my share time, so i'll just reply to some topics i found accross some posts.
... ... yes, i thing this is fair. But of course there is a major difference: I'm in the country of Human Rights, not in the country of Money. Here when someone do something damaging to other people he gets what he deserves, not what the economy requires.
... Yes, you're right: ethic is not money valuable at short term.
About the break-up:
I really want to mention that here, in Europe, when we break-up a company in 2 (two) it's intended to strenght it up.
Yes, you read well, that would not be the case if Micro$oft would have been split into:
- the OS
- the IE
- Word
- Eccess
- VB and so on
Abusive, no, just fair: without that, the 2 companies are still in situtations of monopoly, by breaking it up the way i said, that (almost) prevents the situation to come back as it would involved too many money to reclaim the monopoly and that would be too harsh to support for all those companies. Though one have to consider that Bill Gate$ is very rich, enough to do that with it's own money the first time anyway.
What is interesting to consider is the differences of judgement between countries:
Here for a similar case, the owner of the companies had to sell them back to different persons, he gone to jail for 6 monthes, he was forbidden to be 'the representative of a portion of the population' (translate by: don't get along with politic or we'll break you further) for 5 years, and he wasn't allowed to do any business stuff for 2 years except from being an employee, but not in anything related to it's previous work
Will it change things for Linux:
Well i don't think so as they will keep the direction they use currently: Micro$oft will still lead in the US as long as the US government isn't losing money with it, and Linux will keep growing in Europe each day more because we don't want the Micro$oft Monopoly to slow down our economy any more.
Linux is too hard to learn so M$ will remain first:
I love people stating that 'i have learned Linux but i don't think the average user will'. Why the average Joe can't read in the US ? Can't he spoke with friends ? Or is having friends the problem ? Maybe he can't write ? Or worse: he's not smart enough to use a keyboard and a mouse with more than 2 buttons ? He's that dumb ? Then i'm pretty happy not being an average Joe !
Maybe all that wouldn't ever happened with a bit of ethic ?
point. But the government's case will be put in a worse position than before, with one strike against them. The point I was trying to make is that if Jackson attempted to bypass the appeals court, they'll view that unfavourably.
Actually, in terms of pardons, the President can only pardon Federal crimes. He's the chief executive of the Federal government, not of all the state governments. That's why you see George W. pardoning Texas inmates, and not Clinton.
Paula Jones case was a state case, not federal (I believe) meaning that the next president can't pardon him.
It doesn't work properly, it crashes all the time, and there's no way to find out why. That's the reason for all the anti-MS stuff here.
Interesting point: are stability & user friendliness mutually exclusive? You imply that Windows has it and the others don't, while the others have stability and Windows doesn't, implying that it's an either/or proposition. Do you really believe that?
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
There was a story about it on Slashdot a few days ago; you can probably dig it up on the archives. Put shortly, British Columbia has apparently offered Microsoft some benefits if they were to move up there; of course, any such deal would be very beneficial to BC as well, at least in the short term.
However, I doubt it'll ever happen. Microsoft and the US coexist in some kind of weird-ass symbiosis; AFAICT, neither can survive without the other.
Besides, even if they did move up there, they'd have to keep an US subsidiary and would still be subject to US law. (Is there a corporate equivalent to extradiction, in case the court decides to really screw MS over?)
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
On the news updates portion of the front page at my page I did a couple of short pieces as a parody of the latest Microsoft situation. Check it out if you'd like...
--------
Oscarfish.com: tropical fish with attitude. Way t
Their new helping icon will be named Pucky, a hockey puck.
"It looks like yer writing a letter, eh?"
"Like the personal computer itself - there would not have been a PC phenomenon at all if IBM had not launched it. We owe them that debt," he said" I remember one small tiny little firm making personal computers, which are still considered to be more userfriendly. I also remember an obscure company called Xerox to be doing things with screens and keyboards in a basement lab. I even remember having played with specific ibm clones. that actually brought Ibm sales down gigantically. but maybe MY history needs rewriting too.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
I saw Bill on 60 minutes a couple of nights ago and had a good laugh. He said something like, "I had this naive notion that if you just went about your business, made the best product and sold a lot of it that people would just leave you alone." Poor, naive Bill. Now he says that the jealous competitors are just out to get him. Maybe, but M$ is a cutthroat pirate, and they could have given the "jealous competitors" less ammo. Besides, I find it hard to feel sorry for a poor, naive guy with about $100 Billion to his name.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Yeah, we are all happy that this giant bastard called Micro$oft is getting a spanking from the governtment. But is this really a solution? Do you really believe that the applications company is going to develop Office products for Linux? Or do you think that Windows 2000 service pack 23 is going to include advertising for Star Office or Lotus? I say fat chance to that...
-----
"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
Does anybody really think jailing or hanging murderers will bring back their victims? Does punishing rapists "unrape" their victims? Of course not. So why should a criminal MS be let off because their actions are not easily reversible?
Hari.
The recruiter treated him as if he 'didn't know his place' and that it was a privilege to even be considered for a Microsoft job.
After he returned, he refused all phone calls from anyone at Microsoft involved in recruting. He must have been worth calling, since they called a few times a week for about a month.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
I don't think 99.95 of the consumers who buy computers WANT windows. They want a computer. They go to the local Sears, Staples, Compusa, etc. and compare models and talk to the salesman. When they finally make their choice, it is not based on what OS the computer is running, since they all run Windows. They base it on processor speed, RAM, color of the case, etc. However, they don't compare OSes since most stores sell only one OS.
Hell, a large number of consumer's don't even know what an OS is! I run a local ISP. I ask every new user, what OS they are using. About 20% to 30% say HP, Compaq, Gateway, etc. They equate the OS with the manufacturor of the computer.
I feel like picking a fight with everyone who thinks they are right. - Rainmakers
He didn't say that bundling IE with windows was actually illegal. Since they're a Monopoly, it's sort of a grey area, but... whatever.
What *IS* illegal, is the fact that they threatened OEMs and forced them to NOT install Nutscrape on machines. They would have been left alone if they didn't do this kind of crap.
Anyway, I do agree with you about the integrated browser thing. It does make for a nice user interface for navigating your file system. KDE and Gnome are both doing this.
Ahhhggg, I'm sick of all this. Go Mozilla! Or Konqueror...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
>... United States law as if it were the rules of a game, devoid of moral responsibility, free to be stretched or broken at will ...
:-)
Kind of sums up the way the US Legal system seems to work nowadays
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Being a mac user this situation has long since been a dream of mine. Though things are a lot different once this is actually coming to trial. Years ago I was thinking, break up microsoft and let other OSes rule, primarily MacOS, but that was years ago. The marketplace has changed, the days of the Mac are gone, people are starting to buy $400 dollar computers and Simple web browser only computers.
I will still see it a Microsoft, they will still own the consumer OS market for years to come, they won't be as powerful, but they will still be kings for a while.
It's primarily because of how certain people will chose to use computers and their OSes for various computing purposes. While the consumers that know they don't need a 700 MHz machine to browse the web and send e-mail, scan pictures will pick up that $500 box at Best Buy and have fun.
The market we were fighting to keep Microsoft restricted in no longer exists.
...and I'm not sure we should trust this Kyle Sagan either.
Microsoft has decided to change their stock ticker symbol to BSOD to reflect their new focus on Windows 2000.
I interviewed once with Microsoft. The two people conducting the interviews were the most repulsive, egotistical bastards I had ever met in my life. Later on in the day, one of them got in a big argument with a friend of mine over the fscking word processor he used to create the resume! It was the first time the placement office at school received complaints about the conduct of business reps conducting interviews on campus (they got lots of them too).
I'm sorry, you couldn't pay me enough to work there.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Here is an "in denial" take on the Microsoft response.
Another article pointing this out is here.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
According to a recent article: "After the issue of a stay is decided, the Justice Department then likely would ask Jackson to fast-track Microsoft's appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, bypassing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, said Joel Klein, who heads Justice's antitrust division." ...which means that the appeals process might not be as long and drawn out as it could be. There isn't a lot of evidence that Microsoft has a monopoly (except for an operating system on a single type of 486 chip, to my knowledge) ...but they've violated the Sherman Anti-Trust laws in a number of other ways (they're bullies, I tell you!) ...that should be enough for the supreme court to rule against them, but maybe not enough for them to be broken up. Jackson's ruling was heavily influenced by Microsoft's practices on the stand: they basically lied in court, and the judge didn't look on them too favorably after that. I wonder if they'll be up to the same tricks in the supreme court?
Do something about world hunger. Click here
I doubt this really affects him..
Bitchslapped? Give Rob a bitchslap from bitchslapped.com.
The necessary post full of other links....
...but StarTribune say keep it
Salon article
"End of the tech world" piece from AnchorDesk
a "So What?" peice from E-Commerce Times
Forbes says sell the stock...
MS and hardware
And last, but certainly not least, Ballmer says if they're broken up, prices will rise.
Sometimes, it really baffles me that people get paid to write some of this stuff.
You've got to give them credit -- Microsoft just doesn't give up. Notice that throughout their entire history of legal battles, Microsoft has never *once* even hinted that they may have knowingly broken the law; all along they've played this as if they're innocent martyrs of a corrupt legal system. They're not stupid, and they're not naive. They're doing this because to admit even one iota of guilt makes it that much easier for their legal foes to build a case against them. The longer they play innocent, misrepresent the issues to a gullible public, and keep digging potholes in the path of the legal proceedings, the longer they can continue to do business as usual. They're manipulating United States law as if it were the rules of a game, devoid of moral responsibility, free to be stretched or broken at will as long as Microsoft knows they can cope with the consequences.
My concern, though, is that the two-company split ordered by the court won't do any good. So one company is still in charge of the destiny of Windows, and still has enormous power in the marketplace -- how long will it be before they begin to test the limits imposed on them and find loopholes to worm through, knowing that if they step over the line, the worst they might face is another long, drawn-out court battle until they're reined in again? And the applications company, do you really think they'll bother porting to the tiny Linux market? More likely, Microsoft Office will still have an unassailable dominant position on Windows, Windows will still have an unassailable position in the PC OS market, the Windows OS company will find a way to continue to rule the computer industry through intimidation, and nothing will have changed.
I still believe the right solution would have been to have multiple vendors (fragments of Microsoft, existing companies, or new companies) developing and marketing their own versions of Windows. Only then would Windows be subject to real competition and be forced to become leaner, cheaper, and better, and only then would customers have real choice over what operating system to run on their computer. (Remember that in the business world, Macintosh is still widely looked as as a home computer and a toy, and a lot of people still don't even know what Linux is.)
Perhaps you all recall how Bill decided to reorganize the company around "consumer" and "business" products, ending the division between the operating system and applications groups. This announcement was made not long after the DoJ filed suit against Microsoft, and talk of a breakup began murmuring around the net. The timing was too convenient to be a coincidence in my mind.
And now the judgement is in, and it is an order to split the company along its old lines of organization. I predict that MS will soon complain that the company isn't properly organized to divide the OSes from the Applications without hurting both too much. (But first they have to admit that they lost... they don't even seem to be doing that.)
I can see the fnords!
Sure, Judge PJ didn't have much patience with the MSBS, but did he actually skimp on procedure?
After he found them guilty, he skipped the hearing on the proposed remedies. The government submitted its breakup proposal, then MS was allowed to file a response, then he went straight to issuing his judgement without allowing either side to call witnesses for or against the various components of the breakup plan.
I don't understand the full implications (did I mention IANAL?) but several news sources said that the appeals court may frown upon this as infringing on MS's right to due process, and it may count in MS's favor.
One Senator spoke out pretty vociferously about that, saying that it was wrong to rush something as weighty as tearing apart a however-many-billion-dollar successful company.
All that'll happen is that Microsoft will appeal, the DoJ will take it to the Supreme Court, and MS lawyers will plead that their prior appeal, wrt Internet Explorer, set a precident in which the law did not apply to large companies. Some large back-handers later, the Supreme Court will agree and call for an ammendment to the Constitution placing Big Business outside the American Judicial system entirely. The new (Republican) President will concur, and if necessary, force the ammendment through with an Executive Order, which gives the President totalitarian powers.
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)
I buy my electricity, gas and water service from a monopoly-utility. Having these services provided by a monopoly allows standardization and prevents duplication of effort, both of which are in the public interest. But these utilities are regulated to prevent them from abusing their monopoly power.
Can you imagine if the electric company threatened to cut of my power because I didn't buy all my electric appliances from them? Or if they somehow changed the voltage to make competitors appliances self-destruct...
I see Windows as being in the same situation. Windows has esentially become a utility. In many ways this is good because it creates a standard of interoperability. The problem is they have illegally (according to US antitrust law) leveraged their monopoly power to enhance their other businesses.
In the US, utilities are regulated by a State Public Utility Commision. Windows is also a utility, and is now being subjected to similar regulation. In my mind this is appropriate and consistent with the public interest.
"he only reason those viruses target Windows and Outlook is that there's a lot of people running that software"
...wine wine, but it's the biggest target blah blah fooie.
... Consumer Harm, you betcha.
I don't buy that for a second. It is the FACT this it is so easy to exploit. Don't give me that
crap
On another note, take a look at the Fire Arm Industry in America, They are sure putting alot
of blame on them for the safety of their products.
Humm
All you friggin *NIX isiots who just love bashing MS take a step back...
Sure, *NIX is nice - and in most cases nowadays free....Whoopie...big fuckin deal..does it work with all hardware? No. Does it work with most hardware - usually. Most of you idiots have no clue that to be compatible with the THOUSANDS of different pieces of hardware out there requires a LOT behind the scenes - THAT is the reason for your crashes and all...
It's funny how you idiots all whine about Service Pack this, Service Pack that - how many of you have EVER upgraded to the newest minio KERNEL update? Sounds an awful lot like a fucking service pack to me.
What I feel sorry for is all you idiots who bought Linux stocks when they were high priced - glad you lost your money - it's doubtful that it will go back up to the levels it was before...
Get off your fucking high horses - write something better yourself, and see what YOU can do....That's what I thought...
My point is that the issue of how M$ became the predominant OS on the PC platform is very complicated. It isn't fully described by saying that consumers "chose" M$. That's an oversimplification that ignores the fact that M$ bullied OEMs, and tied products, and...
#include <FindingsOfFact>
If you want to argue that consumers chose M$, then you're ignoring the facts.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
(A repost of a comment I posted on ZDNet's TalkBack...)
This has nothing to do with Microsoft being a successful and large company. This has nothing to do with Microsoft being a monopoly, per se. It is possible to have a legal monopoly.
This case is about Microsoft illegally using their monopoly to stifle competition. In this specific instance, it is about Microsoft using their monopoly on the desktop OS to stifle competition in the internet browser market.
Microsoft basically spent a billion dollars to develop a very good web browser. This, in and of itself, is not bad. Microsoft then gave this browser away, instead of selling it. Again, this is not bad in and of itself.
Microsoft then started packaging the web browser in every copy of its operating system that it sold. This starts getting into a grayer area. Since Microsoft has an effective monopoly on the desktop OS market, this means that almost everyone buying a new pc or the most up-to-date operating system received a free copy of the web browser. This gave Microsoft an advantage over all other browsers on the market. I dont' think that this is illegal, but it is a gray area.
The illegal part came when Microsoft started threatening PC manufacturers who wanted to install Netscape's browser instead of Microsoft's browser. These threats ran the gamut from prohibitive pricing for Microsoft OS licenses to actually not allowing PC manufacturers to sell Microsoft's OS (which would effectively destroy a PC manufacturers chance to sell PCs). Microsoft also limited what icons PC manufacturers could put on the desktop, what software could be installed, etc. Microsoft used their OS monopoly to dictate to PC manufacturers that only the Microsoft web browser would be installed when the PC shipped. And this is very definitely illegal.
If Microsoft had stuck to legal business practices, there would not be a problem. Microsoft could've continued with their monopoly in a completely legal way. They could've introduced Internet Explorer, but then left it up to PC manufacturers what web browser was installed on new computers. But Microsoft wanted to control the browser market, and used their OS monopoly to make this happen. THIS is what caused the breakup (if it ever happens).
--- Biffster.org
"Bite my shiny metal ass."
- It avoids a court known to be more friendly to MS than Judge Jackson
- It shortens the process by a year or two.
But I can't see anything in any of the news stories on this.Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
Oops, I accidently posted this to the wrong thread :-0 (Rob, it's a bug... I can't d/c while composing a reply any more.) Here it is again, for what it's worth...
New ways of Getting through Windows Security.
My impression at this point is that the idea behind NGWS is to use rpc implemented via SOAP (an awkward sort of XML rpc wrapper for Visual Basic) to split traditional desktop apps into a client-resident part and a server-resident part. I find this concept incredibly scary - mainly because of the security record of the company that's doing it. Forchrissakes, if they can't even keep Visual Basic programs from executing out of email attachments, what's going to happen when they open up whole server farms for this kind of intrusion? How many hundreds of creative new possibilities are they proposing to create to let script kiddies come in and take over Windows boxes over the net?
It's already been demonstrated as clearly as necessary how porous Windows really is on the security front, and everybody knows what the main actor in the last drama was: Visual Basic Script. You'd think the thing to do would be to get it under control, but instead we have this proposal to deploy the exact same disasterous design all over the entire net.
--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Now why would you need any other source of news about this than Microsofts own website?
"There are many elements of the government's proposal that we think go beyond what's reasonable. It's not just the breakup, but also the fact that when we do innovative work we have to give it to our competitors, rather than get the benefits of our innovation..
Yeah.. now how about those innovations.. Kerberos, Email, TCP/IP, the GUI, Active Scripting, Java etc.etc... I mean what would you all do if MS had not 'innovated' all these things.. I guess at least we'd still have the net, since it was Al Gore that 'innovated' that.
-
air and light and time and space
The fact that Clinton was not removed does not mean that it is okay to lie to grand juries. The Congressional power to remove a President is a political power, not a means to enforce law.
Unless granted a pardon, Clinton will probably face criminal charges shortly after he leaves office. (He has already been found in contempt of court in the Paula Jones case, and fine excactly one buttload of money for his crime. Since he restated many of these untrue remarks before a grand jury, his problems did not end there.)
Of course, whoever our next president is, he might decide to pardon Clinton, as Ford did Nixon. Even a Republican President might choose to pardon him "for the good of the country."
In hindsight, I think Ford probably did the wrong thing. If we had set a precedent of throwing a former President in jail for crimes committed while in office, I doubt Clinton would have been so cavalier in the way he ran his administration.
I'll shut up now, because this is all way off topic.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
From everything I have heard and read, I doubt that MS has a real chance of appeal. I believe that Judge Jackson had a really good reason for every judgement he made, and that his decision was really in the best interest of everyone inolved. A reversal is really the worst thing that could happen at this point. I truely hope that MS is denied outright an appeal.
A word to others out there. It is not that I am just anti-MS, though I am, it is that I see everywhere evidence that the PC software market is stagnating. (In spite of a Linux rebirth.) The idiot users out there (stereotypical Windows users, does not mean every Windows user) do not help whatsoever. In this age, we need compatability, not uniformity. There is a difference. I am also in favor of computer literacy, which MS does to advance. Instead, MS permits the everyday, idiot user access to a community that once once the playground of the competent. This is the basis of my personal dispute with MS.
Ciao
nahtanoj
This may be slightly off topic, but here's my impression of Bill Gates on his many propaganda commercials, or whenever you see him on TV for that matter:
"Innovation competition innovation. Competition competition innovation competition innovation. Innovation innovation, competition innovation. Innovation? Competition competition. Innovation competition, competition competition. Innovation innovation; competition innovation."
And here's my impression of Steve Ballmer on his commercials:
"Innovation competition, competition competition. Innovation innovation; competition innovation. Innovation, innovation, competition."
Pretty good, eh? Just throw in some cute little black kids and you've got just about every microsoft commercial.
Wasn't this called neuro-linquistic programming in the 70s? The constant and mindless repetition of a word or concept in conjunction with another (the grim visage of Bill) in order to connect the two in the subject's mind? Don't know if it works, but Microsoft and political ad designers sure seem to think it does.
So, the next time you see a Microsoft commercial, slip into your straightjacket, peel your eyelids back with metal clamps, and viddy well little brother, viddy well!!
Praise the Force Field! Praise the Laser Project! Slackware Loon #19830573
Judge Jackson is a bear and is into leather? Sounds like the perfect judge to knock Gates and Balmer up and give them what-for. I must say, though, "Penfield" isn't such a great name for a leather daddy....
j/k
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
So why is the government doing this? Could it be because they don't have a real clue on what they sued MS over? You know, they have never come out and said specifically why. Oh sure, unfair business practices, but this is supposed to be for the good of the consumer. Spending millions on a case that you are going to try and settle after the trial seems absurd. Maybe if Mac came out with an OS that had protected memory in a timely fashion or Linux, etc. was easier to and install and use (ever have a newbie computer user attempt to login?) the taxpayers could have saved lots of money. You can't blame MS for other companies that can't come out with a good OS or have poor marketing strategies.
People can still install Netscape or any other browser they want. They can still use products that compete with MS's. Imagine having a bunch of different competing OSes with little standards or ones you have to wait years for companies to agree upon (record and video companies for one case) so that developers can create software. Ha how about if you want to upgrade your software and you have to change your OS?
And why single out MS? Cisco has a monopoly and there is little or no competition for them. They even suggest that the Internet runs because of them in one of their commercials!
Maybe someone should have thought about the implications of all this before they started this silly adventure and actually put the consumer in mind first, and not the alimighty dollar of corporations. Come on, there is competition in the market....and the governement knows it....and most Linux users would agree, since there are choices.
Kupie
(Win 98 and Linux, a nice combination? of course)
if you actually look at what MSHAFT is doing right now, they are expanding activex and exchange protocols throughout industry.
why? they work with nothing but MSHAFT products -- DESKTOP products.
the judge or legislature should force/legislate the opening of exchange, and removal of active X controls from all gov't web pages.
alternatively, they could mandate opening of LDAP or POP3 on all exchange servers.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Many, Many dense folks out there...
I posted this in reply to the idiots on the other site...
Many of you are missing the point. Its not that Microsoft is a monopoly because there is not another choice of OS (of course there is)
The real issue here is that Microsoft used its dominance (not full monopoly, but dominace) in one market (the OS market) to leverage its products in another market (applications) This is the illegal part.
Microsoft used Win95 (OS) to leverage its IE browser (app) against Netscape's browser (app). This was illegal.
Microsoft still continues to use unpublished programing calls to the OS to make *its* Office applications more powerful and integrated. They refuse to publish these "secret" calls so that other people can complete on a level playing field with them against their office applications.
Microsoft used tiered licensing policies to "punish" OEM's that wanted to sell other OS's (instead of Windows)
(If you want a little proof of this, do a little reasearch on how they reacted to DR DOS, this is still a pending court case the last time I checked)
I've seen little innovation on Microsofts part. I would challange you to come up with some "Innovation" or Product that microsoft has released that they didn't originally buy or steal from some other little company. Here, let me shoot some down right away: the wheel mouse, the optical mouse, double space disk compression, dos, windows, several sections of the office suite, all stolen/copied/bought from other companies. (I could think of more, but its early)
I don't buy Ballmer's whiney "we were a small company once" bit. They got a lucky break with IBM. Thats it. It wasn't "Innovation" that made their company, it was luck, and the fact that Bill had brass knockers and pitched a product that they didn't even own when they sold it.
Microsoft is being broken up because they practiced *illegal* buisness.
I'm not going to make this post a 10 page dissertation on the woes of microsoft, but I, for one, don't buy the woe is me bullcrap that MS is trying to toss around.
An MS breakup into an applications and OS division is good for the industry, and in the long run, will be good for Microsoft.
Run. I like water. Push My rutabaga.
PopeAlien said M$ made the following "innovations":
/. threatened with legal action, hmmm?)
Kerberos, Email, TCP/IP, the GUI
Kerberos: Open standard since at least 1992, recently the target of an attempted "embrace and extend" at the hands of M$ (perhaps you saw the thread that got
Email: You're kidding, right? Microsoft invented email? What the blue fsck was I using on the VAX mainframe at college?
TCP/IP: Again, an protocol that existed prior to MS's existence, much less something they've done anything good with (unless you count providing exploit opportunities, my little MOOB packet).
The GUI: One word - Macintosh. As the old joke goes, "Windows95 = Macintosh '84"
This was just ludicrous. How did it get moderated to +2?
Rafe
V^^^^V
Rafe
Opinions expressed by the author may not actually exist in the wild.
You found a sword: +4 damage, +5 moderator points
The first decision was to divide it as it has gathered too much power. Having this one decided, they faced the question: divide in how many companies ?
The correct answer to this is the number of Microsoft-like companies we would like to have in the world: zero.
The whole thing is not about monopoly or jurisprudence, it is about dividing by zero.
Microsoft and Billy Gates may be in a state of denial, but I sure ain't - it's over guys. Microsoft now has a Court Order ***ordering *** it to (amongst other things) split in two.
Everything laid out in that order is *going to happen* and the Court is going to see it enforced. They aren't going to win on appeal, they aren't going to be able to drag their feet, and they aren't going to get a last-second pardon from the Governor.
Stick a fork in 'em, they're done.
Uhh, you all sold your stock today, right?
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
BeDope's humorous take on the situation perhaps accurately best describes what will happen. The BeDope outlook is that the company will be seperated in half with a long strip of masking tape that no employee will be allowed to cross, and that half the shareholders write in another name on the stock certificate. I don't think it'll amount to much more than this, anyway (even if BeDOpe is being sarcastic).
Visit
The educational contribution that Microsoft is making teaches us that if we are found guilty by a higher authority, we can distort the matter and irresponsibly turn away from the repurcussions of damage we have created.
In claiming that an independent governing body has restricted their innovative freedom, Microsoft fails to account for every innovation they have distorted or corrupted, and educates us that dominance is of a higher importance than cooperative diversity and imagination.
I fear that corporate business has already begun to replace the institution of government, and our perceived need for a technocentric unity is short sighted when it decries and discredits the truly innovative human spirit.
of antitust violations. What are you going to do now?
We're going to the Supreme Court!
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
Found this in my e-mail yesterday...
... The Nasdaq carnage has been wide-ranging. And why not? The Internet intervention of government, often in league with trial lawyers, threatens every high-tech firm in America." - James R. Glassman, Wall Street Journal, April 6, 2000.
NewsMax: James Davidson
"While Joel Klein and his Justice Department were publicly and distastefully celebrating Judge Jackson's decision, the market capitalization of Microsoft was dropping by more than $100 billion. That's not some theoretical figure. It is a loss in real wealth - in many cases, in retirement savings - of more than two million direct shareholders of Microsoft and of tens of millions more who have substantial holdings of Microsoft in their mutual funds and annuities.
Microsoft is fined $100 billion
For many years, Silicon Valley was Death Valley as far as politicians were concerned. Candidates trolling for dollars and lobbyists seeking to squeeze rents from successful companies usually came away empty-handed in dealings with New Economy companies. High tech entrepreneurs were getting rich without help from government.
Even worse, as far as the politicians were concerned, the new entrepreneurs were insufficiently motivated to pay the kind of protection money that has flowed in torrents from Old Economy companies and corporate executives accustomed to the normal perils and blandishments of government intervention. Many of the big boys of the New Economy, most prominently Bill Gates, the world's richest man, paid less tribute to politicians than a junior vice president at General Motors.
It did not go unnoted. Under prodding from some of Microsoft's politically active competitors, like Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, and America Online, owner of Netscape, the Clinton [In]Justice Department brought an antitrust action against Microsoft. As everyone knows, the judge in the case, Thomas Penfield Jackson, appears to have totally swallowed the competitors' view of Microsoft, including the strange notion that Microsoft abused consumers by giving them free Internet software.
I am not a Microsoft shareholder, but like most owners of PCs, I am a Microsoft customer. While not without fault, the company has indisputably helped make personal computing much cheaper and more practical than it would have been otherwise. Indeed, it is the very usefulness of Microsoft and its products that make its example informative. Judge Jackson's unfavorable ruling on Monday, April 3, touched off a steeper high tech sell-off than even five Fed interest rate hikes could engineer.
In theory, the government clobbered Microsoft for violating some almost metaphysical points of antitrust law. But don't waste your time reading law books. The $100 billion loss to Microsoft shareholders, as well as the one trillion dollars lost from the value of other high tech companies, disappeared for an altogether different reason. Microsoft paid the price because the company and its executives failed to contribute enough money to the Democratic Party.
You can bet your last nickel that if Bill Gates had been paying gaudy sums to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom or sponsoring illegal fund raisers in Buddhist temples, he would never have been targeted by Janet Reno's brigade. Had Gates contributed as avidly to the Clinton re-election as the People's Liberation Army, Microsoft would not only have its near-term future intact, it would probably be running the Panama Canal to boot. If Gates had contributed to politicians instead of to education, the Antitrust division of the Justice Department would have spent the last two years filling crates with useless documents about the courtship between Exxon and Mobil.
Why did the Clinton administration go after Gates but leave Exxon alone? Because there was no need for the politicians to pound the oil industry over the head. Oil executives have known that their industry was in thrall to politicians since even before an antitrust ruling broke John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil into 30 pieces at the beginning of the 20th century. By its end, the Clinton administration was perfectly content to let two of the bigger of those pieces merge back together.
Make no mistake. The government attack on Microsoft is not a genuine, if misbegotten, attempt to make markets work better, as some infatuated A-Level students of antitrust theory suppose. It is something less exalted and far more primitive: a power play. Politicians act like jealous dogs. They want to establish their dominion over any new sphere of wealth that technology and economic development bring to the fore. Once upon a time, they fretted that John D. Rockefeller was becoming too powerful. So they sliced and diced his company.
The politicians want to be the big dogs in the road. To that end, they are content to impose ruinous costs on anyone who threatens to escape from their thrall.
If chopping $25 billion out of Gates' net worth knocks $20,000 off the value of your portfolio or undermines the retirement savings of millions, clipping the value of 969 mutual funds that own Microsoft, so much the better as far as the politicians are concerned. That will make you all the more grateful to them when they "save Social Security" or fetch up some prescription drug benefit for Medicare recipients.
The interests of politicians are not best served when you achieve financial independence and success for your family. They would prefer to see an interlude of prosperity which creates wealth that can be taxed and otherwise redistributed away. The system requires that only a few persons in a thousand become rich enough to bear the costs of all the promises that politicians extend to the underachievers. If you doubt it, just calculate the lifetime tax rate for top earners in the United States. Depending on personal circumstances, it ranges from 73 percent to above 90 percent.
The whole force of the United States government is directed to seeing that in two generations your descendants will never see more than pennies of the dollars you earn. That is the blunt arithmetic of the income and estate tax laws.
As I indicated in a recent analysis, the "subversive lure of wealth" is one of the engines driving and accelerating "creative destruction." As government is one of the main incarnations of the old ways of doing things, and thus one of the fattest targets for destruction by revolutionary new technology, no one should be stunned that one of the most powerful officials in Washington, Alan Greenspan, openly frets that too much wealth is being created too quickly, and that incomes are rising too fast.
This recent sell-off in high tech stocks was wanton wealth destruction, engineered directly and indirectly by the U.S. government. In addition to the Microsoft ruling, James Glassman lists half a dozen contributing factors to the widespread decline in New Economy stocks during the week of April 3. (See "Is Government Strangling the New Economy?")
His argument underscores a point I have been warning about for years, namely that investors have naively overestimated the degree to which the United States protects them with a genuinely free and open legal system. In fact, anyone with wealth is well-advised to put as much as possible beyond the reach of the corrupt U.S. legal system. Ironically, in the early days of the Strategic Investment Web site someone impersonating Bill Gates wrote a post ridiculing the themes of the Sovereign Individual and pointing to Gates' success as evidence that nobody in the United States needed to protect his wealth from government. That wasn't Gates really writing, but, in any event, recent experience has disproven the point.
Contrary to pretenses, the U.S. government is not a true friend of property rights. As I have painstakingly detailed on many occasions, the U.S. legal system has been perverted to conjure up novel liabilities, which never before existed in the history of the world. Threats of confiscation and destruction through regulation that are not posed directly by the government itself are eagerly taken up by the predatory pack of trial lawyers that politicians have encouraged to form on every corner in the United States.
followed by:
Pretty clear to ME who is living in reality in this instance.
-- "I'd rather be dead than cool" -Kurt Cobain
- MicrOs
- MicrApps
Or, should the capitalization on #2 be adjusted?-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
How about the 2 new companies be named Micro-dee and Micro-dum? Sounds good to me....
-----
"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
Are they serious? No harm to consumers? Here are a few examples, IMHO, that point out harm MSFT has caused it's consumers.
Instability . Couldn't the government point to much more stable operating systems, a la Linux, BSD, Solaris, AIX, and other which I don't know much about? These OS's I've listed are very stable, and nearly everyone who's ever used windows knows that it certainly isn't. Can this be evidence enough?
One could point out that MSFT uses all (or nearly all) of it's resources to make their products user friendly, at the expense of stability. Could it be claimed that by making this their goal, and not offering consumers stability that most other OS's offer, that they've been harmed?
Lack of Security . How about the many recent Outlook exploits? That's an example of how trying to tie the application (Outlook) to the OS, (ie, leveraging their monopoly), viruses are easily spread. Hence, harm has come to consumers, due to files being erased, etc.
Upgrading. What about the upgrade cycle? Pay for the OS, then pay for each bug-fixing service pack and upgrade? Then pay for the next upgrade to fix the bugs caused by the previous upgrade. Ad nauseum. That's harming consumers in terms of their money spending.
MSFT Tax. And then there's the harm to non-consumers. Ie, the MSFT tax. Buying a computer from almost any dealer necessitates the installation (and hence purchase) of windows.
So, in these ways, amongst others, I think consumers have been harmed. Does anyone agree/disagree?
make world, not war
Last night, while channel surfing I ran across Bill Gates and Steve in their little press conference. I really had no intention of actually listening to it, but I found myself caught and amazed.
Bill isn't stupid. Neither is Steve. But they are both publically insisting that MS did no wrong. Bear with me here a second, I know *we* all know otherwise. However, during mediation, MS *did* propose solutions to 'curb' their business practices, which while mild were at least a tacit admission of guilt. Now they are not only saying that they will fight to the finish on the judgement, but that they will also fight even having to do the remedies that they originally suggested themselves.
Up until now, MS has relied on a rather stupid public to believe that they were the injured parties, but between these very publically contradictory actions, and realization that consumers are having about the fact that they are not allowed to actually have full copies of the software that they purchased, public opinion is rapidly going to turn against MS. And that is one factor that they have been heavily relying on.
No matter how big their PR machine gets, their horrid business practices are now too glaring to be remedied... and I expect to see public support not only eroding away, but a growing customer base looking for alternatives to having to use MS. OSX, anyone? I bet the people at Apple are grinning like fiends.
Check out Magic Firesheep!
Instability . Couldn't the government point to much more stable operating systems, a la Linux, BSD, Solaris, AIX, and other which I don't know much about? These OS's I've listed are very stable, and nearly everyone who's ever used windows knows that it certainly isn't. Can this be evidence enough?
One could point out that MSFT uses all (or nearly all) of it's resources to make their products user friendly, at the expense of stability. Could it be claimed that by making this their goal, and not offering consumers stability that most other OS's offer, that they've been harmed?
Lack of Security . How about the many recent Outlook exploits? That's an example of how trying to tie the application (Outlook) to the OS, (ie, leveraging their monopoly), viruses are easily spread. Hence, harm has come to consumers, due to files being erased, etc.
Upgrading. What about the upgrade cycle? Pay for the OS, then pay for each bug-fixing service pack and upgrade? Then pay for the next upgrade to fix the bugs caused by the previous upgrade. Ad nauseum. That's harming consumers in terms of their money spending.
MSFT Tax. And then there's the harm to non-consumers. Ie, the MSFT tax. Buying a computer from almost any dealer necessitates the installation (and hence purchase) of windows.
So, in these ways, amongst others, I think consumers have been harmed. Does anyone agree/disagree?
make world, not war
Jackson seemed to be pissed because he lost his last descision about M$ to an appeal, so he was vindictive in his method of making a descision. He may have weighed it in his head for a long time, but I don't think he considereded it from a fair and impartial point of view. If I'm right, he'll be hearing juvie cases for the next ten years until he retires...
no matter what happens, microsoft is in my opinion guilty, but thier guilt doesn't matter if they weren't given a fair trial. It'll be a while before we hear the end of this. Maybe the trustbusters will be more carefull before trying antitrust cases, afterall, it is not a crime to be chosen by the average consumer, and therefore sell more units of thier software than others. It is a crime to tell OEM's not to give more software options, but that's probally not a trust thing anyhow. OEM's listen to the dollar, changing prices for someone who signs a contract for X number of years is common in all lines of business. That's not an issue.
I agree that the computer industry is not exactly like anyother industry (except maybe Music and Video...) I know, we all hate the RIAA and MPAA, but seriously, they suffer from the same problems as people trying to profit from software in the digital age. Nobody gets too pissed when software exec's discuss anti-piracy measures (I like kenetix hardware lock idea), but when the RIAA starts sueing over the piracy of something they own, everyone is ready to get the gun.
I know its flamebait, but that sounds a little hypocritical to me.
Spring is here. Don't believe me, look outside!
Did you read the article? Cringely's position is that MS didn't push back too hard in the trial, as it realised that the DoJ had not clearly shown consumer harm. If they had pushed back there, the DoJ would have dug further, and Jackson would have helped. The basis of the appeal will be lack of consumer harm, but MS want it to happen in front of a more sympathetic judge.
-Jo Hunter
If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are headed.
I see NWGS as nothing more than a distraction
/* FIXME: Memory leak. Maybe free ($new_API_name) here? Ah screw it. Tell users to buy more RAM. */
to keep developers in the Microsoft camp.
I used to be a MSDN subscriber and Windows
programmer (forgive me, for I have sinned) so
I know how the game works:
while(1) {
$new_API_name = new GlitzGlamName;
rename($old_API_name, $new_API_name);
hype($new_API_name);
delay($new_API_name);
enforce($new_API_name);
change_spec($new_API_name);
orphan($new_API_name);
$old_API_name = $new_API_name;
}
Same ol' song and dance.
Bill will be sure to tell you that they are confident that they are not going to win the appeal, since they did nothing wrong.
Time to open your eyes everyone.
The truth is that Bill and M$ will not take any resposibility because that would make their whole image look bad.
If you've been watching TV lately, you'd notice that Bill is in the commercials. If you look at any adverstisement with bill in it, you'll notice that Bill looks friendly in some way. The fact of the matter is, is that Bill doesn't want to look like the 'richest person in the world', he wants to look like your next door neighbor, somebody who you wouldn't dare of commiting such business atrocities.
Remember, when your the richest man in the world, you can afford the best media spindoctors in the world.
Regardless if you like M$'s products or not, you can't deny the antitrust allegations. I've heard many people argue before, "Well, I like Windows, so I don't really care about the Antitrust case." This denies other companies competition, which in the end, screws us over. This is because, the less companys that sell a product, the higher the price is. Yet, if apple was much larger, and there were other major competitors, this wouldn't be a problem.
Yet, Bill still denies any wrongdoing. If you do something bad, and you admit to it, most people won't get angry, they'll just say "that's bad", no please don't do it again. But, when, like microsoft, you deny any allegation, it makes you seem untrustworthy. If Microsoft wasn't so stubborn, and didn't treat its image as the most sacrosanct and inpenitrable ideals, they probably could have avoided much of this.
ZDNet has a big thing on it, as well as new words from Judge Jackson. The Financial Times site, FT.com, has news and a Ballmer interview. And here's something from the Washington Post, talking about the possibility of an out-of-court settlement. Enjoy.
And while I'm in Slashdot-critique mode, is it really necessary to provide a link to a common company name? For example:
Rob Roy, CEO of Adobe, wrote an article about the Internet.
C'mon, like none of us know how to point to adobe.com.
--
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
My favorite quote is in this washington post article where it says...when talking about one of the orders
"The company contends that [this will] harm the product's reputation when it breaks down."
Could M$ OSes break down more?
More like humpty dumpty, except this time it'll be Microsoft that falls off the wall and breaks into pieces that can't be put back together again.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
At this point MS has lost, plain and simple. Even if this is overturned, the earliest that could happen is at least a year from now, during which time footholds into the industry have already made by companies that MS either can't buy or can't flat out destroy. Now, I have seen MS turn out great products when they desparately need to, NT3.51 and Excel 95 are good examples, but right now their ship is sinking and from what I can tell there is nothing they can do about it.
My reasoning is as such.
Web appliences and laptops running linux are either out there or will be in short order. PalmOS has taken over the PDA market. Apple has started to retake what they lost and then some, while linux keeps draining the power users from Windows. We can now buy PC's without Windows on it.
The number one web server is Apache, and considering Sun released IPlanet free with your free copy of Solaris 8 (so long as you have >=16 processors). While linux has the number two position for lower-midsize servers, and the UNICES have the upper end. With linux and Solaris 8 both free, along with web server technology they just did to MS what MS did to Netscape with IE, drop the price of the product to zero. The same thing is happening with office products, StarOffice is free and when gOffice grows up it will be too. I already know one very large company that has decided that supporting all of the licences of MS Office takes too much money and is switching over to StarOffice.
Java programers are starting to pop up like weeds, and although MS just won an appeal in the Java case the number of MS friendly developers is on the decline. When Java has the support of Sun, IBM, Apple, and a whole host of other companies their ability to corrupt has dropped significantly, so long as those companies stay true to the write once run anywhere.
On top of this, MS keeps making enemies when it desparately needs friends. They don't want OEM's shipping full version of their OS, and are therefore telling them to create "repair" cds. The price for an office to licence MS Office continues to skyrocket. Even the student prices of their products are outragious. I see my fellow engineering and physics students abondoning MS at increasingly larger rates.
On top of all this while MS drags this thing through the appeals process they have one hand tied behind their backs because they know if they make more extremely aggressive moves they will only hurt their chances of winning.
Frankly, IMHO breaking them up is the best thing for MS. They will have a better chance of staying competative as separate companies.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
I mean, they have an obligation to maximize profit for the shareholders, right?
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
What good will it do to split MS into an OS company and an applications company as the court is currently planning to do? The OS company will still have a monopoly....
=================================
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
You know, Microsoft keeps claiming that it need the freedom to innovate, and then we all jump all over them claiming that they've stolen all the hardware and software that they've put out. Maybe they're not referring to technology innovations. I think they're referring to business practice innovations. They're finding new ways to use contracts to force OEM manufacturers and consumers into a circle of profit for them.
There's a whole bunch of really insightful posts at salon.com as follows:
Are two Microsofts better than one?
Court to Microsoft: This is for real!
Microsoft owes everything to Justice (how MSFT was lucky about IBM)
The main tech page, of course, is at http://www.salon.com/tech/
Will in Seattle
That's right, the pain is real as of now. Remember what happened to IBM in the seventies when they were fighting their anti-trust battle? They developed a political commisar type system, only with lawyers. Most middle and upper managment had a lawyer with them in most meetings and reviewing most of their communications. Every decision, every initative, sometimes every memo, had to be vetted by the lawyers.
I have always believed this was the real reason IBM missed the boat on the personal computer. They were fatally distracted.
MS may not have learned from history. The signs of distraction are already apparent. Look at the disasterous PR blunders of the last six months. The kind of sanity and decisiveness needed to change the dynamic is not present in Redmond, or at least not visible.
Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer may not care what Judge Jackson thinks, and they may be 100% certain of a win on appeal, but they run a public company. They cannot run this company as if there is no court order. The board cannot allow it. The result will be a messy collision of Gates, Ballmer, the board, new products, unhappy employees, would be mediators and lots and lots of lawyers. Kinda feel warm all over just thinking about it.
Then it gets interesting. Like a classical tragedy, will the things that made Gates the most successful businessman of the age lead him to destroy that success? The man seems unable to compromise. The smart thing would be to acceed to the break-up and fight the conduct remedies, those are the real danger to Microsoft's way of life. At the moment, there seems no sentiment in Redmond to cut the losses. They are going to bet the company, quite literally, on the appeal.
Stay tuned folks, the next six months will be the most interesting part of the whole saga.
The poll asked the question "Has Microsoft's marketing strategies harmed consumers?" and right now reads 31% Yes, 69% No. Are that many people really thinking that the Microsoft way is the best way? Or have they simply forgotten about the trail of failed businesses with true innovations that Microsoft left in its wake after promising lucrative deals and partnerships and instead stealing their ideas? Perhaps they missed the latest news on Slashdot about how Microsoft is going to cut back on piracy and increase their profits by making us pay twice for their software?
I think Minesweeper was a pretty cool innovation. I'm not so hot on the blue screens, security holes, or the I-own-your-soul EULAs though.
---
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Actually, several news sources (including a story on the cover of the WSJ) suggests that, once MS recognized that the judge was likely to side with the DOJ, they (MS) intentionally began "pushing the judges buttons". Basically seeing how far they could push the law, knowing that the judge has a reputation of being impulsive, in order to attempt to try and produce procedural errors on the judge's part.
To some extent, it seems to have worked. Reguardless of the relative merits for each side in the case, the Court of Appeals could choose to overturn the ruling simply because of these procedural errors. If so, then MS is unlikely to argue the "findings of fact" from this court, but rather try to get it thrown out on a technicality. If that fails, then they'll begin arguing that the DOJ failed to adequately prove antitrust violations by MS.
Was this post moderated down (Overrated) because it isn't interesting (It's from a Microsoft employee)? Or is it because you don't agree with his viewpoint?
What the hell, man, this is a post from a Microsoft employee about the Microsoft Breakup....
MODERATE THIS TO A 5 AND LEAVE IT THERE
I'll burn my free point in effigy.
-------- "All I want in life's a little bit of love to take the pain away" --Spiritualized
But wasn't that the whole point? If you lock Explorer into the OS and lock Explorer into market, doesn't that take necesarily take the legacy OS (and its price tag) into the future with it?
Here courtesy of Brunching Shuttlecocks.
--
RumorsDaily
Wait a minute... if it's not absolutely true, then by its own logic, it must be completely false, which means it must not be true that if it is false in one thing it is untrue in everything, but since we've already demostrated that it's false in everything, it must be false in something, which means that it can't be true that it's untrue in everything, but wait a minute, didn't we just show that... could I approach the bench?
Quiquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
"Not all versions of Windows are unstable. Ever used Win NT or Win 2K as a desktop machine" whoa, man. Yup. Everyday. I have Win2K on my laptop, and not 2 hours ago it locked up so bad, I had to pull the friggin battery to get it to power cycle and reboot. This happens about every other week, but regular lock-ups are at least weekly. (and no, it's neither a bleeding edge, unsupported new model nor a clunky old model)"I go weeks without rebooting" Install Office on the thing. Then you'll have to reboot. I find having to reboot after an application install inexcusable, but alas, I've had to reboot Win2K after EVERY app install. Anyways, not a flame, but NT and Win2K are jokes, I have a TON of real world, big-company evidence to support this.
mas cerveza, por favor politically incorrect stu
Instability Not all versions of Windows are unstable. Ever used Win NT or Win 2K as a desktop machine? I think that you'll find it more than stable enough. I spend all day developing software under Windows. Believe me, I do some stuff that would Win 9x crash left, right and centre. I go weeks without rebooting. I do all sorts of stuff that pushes the machine from a driver and hardware point of view. Hopefully Whistler will be more NT than 9x.
Lack of security The security is there. Unfortunately Microsoft chose convenience foremost: security and other protection disabled by default.
Upgrading I don't pay for bug-fixing service packs. I installed six service packs for Win NT 4. They were all free downloads.
MSFT Tax I definitely agree with you on that. MSFT were well out of line with their OEM licensing, etc. My PCs are all home built, so I haven't paid the tax!
LOL.. the moderators certainly didn't read this post very carefully...
Funny, yes.. informative, no.
-------- "All I want in life's a little bit of love to take the pain away" --Spiritualized
...is that a few companies are looking to Microsoft for an example of how not to behave, and, as a consequence, play more fairly. I read an interesting story on it on msnbc.com the other day, and it seemed like the people at Cisco have it just about right.
What? You avoid using inflammatory language? You don't assume that everything you do is right no matter what it is? You avoid business decisions that may be looked upon unfavorably by the DOJ? What? You actually talk to them on a regular basis? Oh, puh-lease. You people are just way too reasonable...
Be nice to your friends. If it weren't for them, you'd be a complete stranger.
Its made up of lots of medium and small ones. YES large companies can afford to do all of that, but smaller and medium sized ones can't afford the solutions you are listing.
I work for and with those companies as a living. I am not a 19 year old kid playing with Perl (I do play with perl though!). They cannot afford the sheer level of staffing required to keep up with the patches, fixes, etc that problems like the recent outlook virii/trojan horses/worms have caused.
The real world is made up of little people, not big companies. Big companies only employ a very small percentage of the workforce as compared to small and medium businesses.
This isn't socialism, this is being practical. Microsoft is a monopoly, and monopolies are allowable as long as they don't break certain rules. MS not only broke those rules, they were very proud of breaking them, and have refused again and again to modify their business practices.
They claim there is no precedent for what is being done to them - two words "Standard Oil." There's the precedent. Or the movie making industry in the 30's who owned the movies, the distribution process AND the theaters.
MS could not even innovate a new way to be a monopoly!
Check out Magic Firesheep!