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.

Comments

The Judge missed his chance,

[Markar]

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!

Re:What Bob has to say of it

[GypC]

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"

not going to settle

[mikpos]

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.

Re:not going to settle

[Col. Klink (retired)]

Yeah, I saw Bill's press conference. Many softball questions, but a couple of good ones he pretty much didn't answer.

The first unanswered question was if they had started seriously thinking about a split and what the other company might be called.

The second good question was something like "US Steel benefitted consumers too, but was a monopoly and was split up. How is MS different?" Bill's answer, of course, was to talk about how great MS is and how much they've innovated, and that, apparently, is the difference.

> they're not going to submit to anything willingly within the near future.

Which is precisely the reasoning Jackson gave for splitting them up.

This doesn't change anything

[sillyputty]

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.

Re:Microsoft's downfall....

[hypergeek]

"In the little town of Springfield, Nelson Muntz is raising his index finger toward Redmond, pointing, and saying, "Ha ha!""

Same sentiment. Different finger.

Re:Name those companies

[billscarwasher]

How about:

MICROS~1 and MICROS~2

Re:What Bob has to say of it

[quonsar]

He isn't living in reality...

followed by:

...we are still making the best software and are well-positioned to advance the state of computing...

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

Re:Name those companies

[rjamestaylor]

How about:

?icros~1.vbs
?icros~2.vbs

If you've not used UNDELETE, you won't understand...

Appeals

[DrgnDancer]

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?)

Re:Appeals

[wass]

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.

I completely agree with you. My friend was pointing out that breaking up MSFT, or punishing them in other ways, may hurt the US economy (this may or may not be true, however). IMHO, this is just all the more reason to stop them before the US economy is even more at their mercy.

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. This would hint that the company, MSFT in this instance, holds within it enough power to alter US legal rulings. This is a scary proposition, in that money and economy hold a higher position then the legislative branch of the government. The law, then, becomes nearly useless. It's one of Murphy's auxiliary rules coming true - The Golden Rule. He who owns the gold makes the rules.

To look from a wider perspective, big change (including economic) usually brings with it some temporary instability and uncertainty, but after the fog clears, it's for the better. For example, look at the US revolution (and no, I'm not comparing the ruling of MSFT to any necessary revolution by the people or anything like that). The colonists, at the price of their comfort and safety, put an end to the British tax and lack of representation by revolting. Sure, things were a mess for awhile, but for the colonists life was much better afterwards.

Just my twopence.

What Bob has to say of it

[Kaufmann]

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...

Re:What Bob has to say of it

[K-Man]

Over on Salon there are some articles about the differences between the IBM case and the MS case, and, to summarize the last 10-20 years, I would say that MS was passed the baton by IBM, and became IBM in much less time than IBM took, but the DOJ also got through the antitrust part much faster than it did with IBM, due to its prior experience with the business model.

Looking at MS today, and dealing with some of the parts of the monolith, it's easy for me to see the resemblances to IBM in the 80's - dominant market position, booming profits, and top people, but also an overbearing, creeping internal stagnation that leaves people looking forward to the salad bar at lunch more than the workday.

The reasons for this sort of decline are easier to see in hindsight, but the basic fact is that a monopoly has no reason to innovate or grow beyond a certain point. It becomes a virtual reality - new products are only expected to work with other company products, deadlines are only vaguely necessary, and the external, chaotic world becomes less and less relevant. (For example, I took a trip up to MS a few months ago, and, judging from the posters on the walls, what was their major concern? Software piracy! As if a bunch of engineers in an ugly office park were going to do something about it.)

The tragic effect of this isolation, and one that IBM went through in the early 90's, is that the good tech gets shunned along with the bad stuff. A lot of the top people that IBM hired ended up watching great, enterprise-grade software and hardware go down the toilet, while shoddy, overhyped substitutes were pushed by dodgy competitors. Part of that was human nature (and lower prices), but the less-seen reason was the the marketing process had become disconnected from customers, and the tech wasn't able to make a difference to the consumer. It's one thing to have the best disk drive in the world, but another thing to have the best drive that people can plug into their PC's, Macs, or Sun workstations (or MP3 players).

Microsoft is pretty close to that stage now. Putting great tech into Word or NT is good, but selling the same stuff independently is better, and that's a scenario that most people being hired by MS today will never see. IBM learned its lesson late, but they now see that opening up interfaces isn't giving away the farm. People still buy all-IBM when they want tightly integrated systems with high reliability, but they also mix and match to get unique things that IBM does well.

The appeals court can do what it wants; the fact is that the people who need to know what MS has been doing, now know, and will apply this knowledge as appropriate in the future. I have no qualms about admitting that IBM was a monopoly (even though I have a lot of ties to the company), and I think that MS has some growing up to do before it can admit that it has some bad elements. The fact is, management let a lot of people down. I've often bashed MS in the past, but I hoped deep down that the charges were more illusion than fact. However purposeful sabotage of competitors just doesn't feel right, and one day MS will be a better place to work if these practices are stopped.

Re:What Bob has to say of it

[iCEBaLM]

imagine how you would feel if Red Hat or VA were trading at 53 cents and the press constantly dissed it despite the fact that you believe it makes the best software and will dominate the future of the industry.

Well, heh, this is pretty funny:

1 - I don't think Redhat makes the best software
2 - VA doesn't make *any* software
3 - Their stock price means absolutely 0 to me

You see, in the world of (free|open source) software, stock price means nothing because those who want to work on it still will regardless of any stock price.

MS broke the law, deal with it, leave MS if you are so inclined, but don't get angry because a court and people are calling a duck a duck.

-- iCEBaLM

Re:What Bob has to say of it

[konstant]

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

He isn't living in reality. Losing this trial has caused enormous damage to Microsoft, whether or not it is overturned on appeal.

It is not easy being told by your friends, by your enemies, and by the media that you are an evil lawbreaker, even if you don't buy it yourself. It's not easy to wear a smile to work when a large part of your compensation (salary is fairly low) is in the toilet. It is *definitely* not easy to recruit smart people to work for a company that, in their minds, might not exist in a year.

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. But even that is somewhat galling - imagine how you would feel if Red Hat or VA were trading at 53 cents and the press constantly dissed it despite the fact that you believe it makes the best software and will dominate the future of the industry.

No, the prevailing opinion (or excuse, depending upon how you look at it) among my immediate friends at Microsoft is that we lost the trial because the judge wasn't following the law. You disagree. We will discover who is correct at the appeals level.

-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!

Re:What Bob has to say of it

[Darren Winsper]

the prevailing opinion (or excuse, depending upon how you look at it) among my immediate friends at Microsoft is that we lost the trial because the judge wasn't following the law.

Perhaps the judge was following the law, perhaps he wasn't. But let's not forget that there was another party not following the law in the court room; Microsoft. Or has falsifying evidence suddenly become legal?

Re:What Bob has to say of it

[wass]

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.

I'm sorry, konstant, but what goes around comes around. The emotions of MSFT employees, which you've described, and I've quoted above, are not unique. I'd believe that the tens or hundreds of thousands of employees in the hundreds of companies that have been bought out or assimilated over the years by MSFT, or been unfairly driven to the ground through monopolostic techniques, for daring to compete with MSFT, probably felt the exact same way. And, I'm sure many of these employees also have fairly low salaries, and thus also lost barrels of money by watching their stock options come tumbling down.

And the sad fact is, that's the just life as usual in the tech industry.

What I'm curious about is how did MSFT feel about the IBM breakup back in the 80's? My friend told me that Bill Gates was actually complaining to the government about IBM's monopoly, but I can't substantiate this rumor. Anyone have info? Anyway, I would guess that MSFT was jumping for joy at IBM's antitrust ruling, because many IBM clones could now be built cheaply, all of which would still use the default operating system - MS-DOS. IBM probably felt the same way you describe above too. But MSFT jumped at this opportunity.

You may have enjoyed it when you were on the top, where you were shielded from the pain caused by the ruin of these other companies. But now the hand of karma has come back to Redmond, to complete some unfinished business.

In further news (repost)

[zeet]

Microsoft has decided to change their stock ticker symbol to BSOD to reflect their new focus on Windows 2000.

Microsoft just doesn't give up.

[Brian Kendig]

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.)

Re:Microsoft just doesn't give up.

[Hogarth]

I agree to some of your points, Brian. The two company split ordered by the court won't do ANY good.. but the reason for that is this:

NGWS. Next Generation Windows Services.

Billy-boy and company believe that the future of computing is through an Application Service Provider type model. They believe that the browser will be the application platform by which they deliver absolutely every component of their value proposition.

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 you can bet your sweet booty that they won't be letting any other ASP's host the applications they develop. They'll only be available by MSN.

Micro$haft has just gotten rolling, and the true power is still residing within one single corporate entity.

I believe that at least 4 splits would have been required to really bring competition back to the market:

• One for backoffice software. Win2k, SQL server, IIS, et al.
• One for consumer versions of Windows. (WinME)
• One for internet service providing (MSN, Expedia, bCentral, Hotmail, etc.)
• One for Internet Explorer development
• One for application development (Office)

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.

Hogarth

All I can think about...

[bughunter]

... when I read the coverage of the judgement, is the Microsoft reorganization of nearly two years ago, and how it seemed designed to give themselves ground to assert that it would be overly traumatic to split the OS and Applications into seperate companies. At least this was my impression; I never saw anyone in the press or on Slashdot recognize it.

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.)

Sigh!

[jd]

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.

Microsoft's downfall....

[miguelitof]

(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).

How long to the Supreme Court?

[Paul Johnson]

Any news on the expedited move to the Supreme Court? Its obvious that this case is going to wind up there sooner or later (unless Linux happens to make it moot). ISTR past talk about an option for the Judge to bump it up there directly, bypassing the Appeals court. This has two important effects:

1. It avoids a court known to be more friendly to MS than Judge Jackson
2. It shortens the process by a year or two.

But I can't see anything in any of the news stories on this.

Paul.

Re:How long to the Supreme Court?

[aphrael]

DOJ has 15 days in which to ask Jackson to refer the case to the USSC. Once it has done so, he has 15 days to issue the referral.

What happens from there depends on if the court is in session. If the court is in session, it gets the paperwork and decides whether or not to take the case. If the court is *not* in session, than one of the justices gets the paperwork and can (a) issue an emergency stay; (b) call for an emergency court hearing; (c) postpone consideration of taking the case until the court session starts (in October); or (d) refer the case back to the appeals court. *Any* of those actions can be overturned by a full vote of the court if another justice chooses to press the issue (although that is fairly rare).

My bet is --- regardless of which path it takes --- the USSC will end up returning the case to the appeals court, mostly because it will allow the appeals court to help filter through the monstrous amount of data associated with the case (and because Rehnquist, at least, is well known for wanting to *reduce* the court's workload).

*smirk*

[/]

From ZDNet:

Judge Jackson, 63 years old, is a bear of a man, with a shock of white hair, a deep tan and an old black pipe he often stoked during the interview. Reclining in a leather swivel chair in his book-lined chambers in U.S. District Court here...

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

Arithmetic Exception

[XPulga]

The situation with Microsoft is that nobody knows what to do with it.

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.

Name those companies

[rjamestaylor]

ZDNet is asking for the names of the two new companies. My suggestion:

1. MicrOs
2. MicrApps

Or, should the capitalization on #2 be adjusted? ;)

No damage to consumers???

[wass]

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)

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?

M$'s case

[chompz]

Microsoft's case for appeal should be pretty simple to pull off. They should be able to just ignore Microsoft entirely and go after Jackson's preconcieved ideas. Jackson's statements after he passed judgement were very negative, and did not give the case fair judgment. Microsoft was guaranteed a fair and impartital trial, but with the judge choosing sides, its pretty to dismiss it as a valid trial. It will be heard again by a different judge, maybe one who doesn't have a strong bias.

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.

NWGS aka. ActiveX

[Kurt Gray]

I see NWGS as nothing more than a distraction
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;

/* FIXME: Memory leak. Maybe free ($new_API_name) here? Ah screw it. Tell users to buy more RAM. */

}

Same ol' song and dance.

Re:NWGS aka. ActiveX

[Kurt Gray]

Ah you're right. Microsoft also has plans to rent its applications over the net. Microsoft is one of those software companies that obsesses over imaginary revenue lost due to piracy so they're eager to push some sort of pay-per-use revenue model. Several companies have tried that and failed already. Can Microsoft make it work? Remains to be seen.

But it's funny how Gates scoffed at the idea of a network computer a couple of years ago when "network computer" was the buzzword of the month.In his NYT column he said NC's did not make sense and the PC is here to stay. He more or less said that the idea of applications being served from a network server was an obsolete scheme being marketed by Sun and Oracle because they sell servers. He stuck to his guns that Microsoft was all about the PC and power to the user, blah, blah, blah. Now Microsoft suddenly has this "new" idea of becoming an applications service provider. So in other words Windows clients would more like stripped-down applications clients... kind of like a network computer. So I guess if the thought never occured to you before then it must be a "new" idea.

Re:About the breakup

[Zoltar]

Microsoft burned themselves with their integration

I disagree. I think Microsoft burned themselves with their attitude. If you piss off enough people you will pay for it. That's the thing that gets me. I think that MS could have been the dominant software company without all the nasty things they did. When they got DOS bundled on the IBM... well.. it was pretty much their game to lose at that point.

The fact is that many of these other companies basically shot themselves as much as MS did. Apple refused to compete on price...IBM had no clue how to market OS/2. Netscape imploded while it still had marketshare. Sure MS played a part in their demise... but not all of it

If MS had been a little more politically correct the government would never have gone after them. All they had to do was give a little and it would have saved them more than a lot.

The End of the Line.

[styopa]

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.

Re:The Mac Perspective

[Pope]

More proof of a Microsoft conspiracy:
Office for the Mac is one of their better selling applications. It always makes money, and always sells. One of the big things Bill always held over Apple was taking away Office unless Apple dropped certain lawsuits against MS.
So, stopping development of a very successful product in order to screw over another company is called what? Anyone? :)

Pope

Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!