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Would You Pay $1000 For Windows?
If you're interested in the anti-breakup point of view, even as devil's advocate, this is a useful place to start. I don't buy all of Liebowitz's assumptions or conclusions, but it's much more informative than most flamewars, and does bring up some nagging ideas about market behavior and legal remedies.
I found interesting, too, his assertion that "[a]t the current time, there appear to be virtually no major desktop applications that have been ported to Linux, including those from such market leaders as Intuit, Symantec, Lotus, Adobe, or Quark." Fewer than I'd like, certainly, but "virtually none" is hard to buy.
It's not unreasonable to suggest that the price of Windows would rise if it was made by a newly-formed separate division of Microsoft, but if the marketplace is truly dynamic, it seems like that change could as well be in the opposite direction. (How much would Liebowitz have predicted Netscape's browser to cost today, given the information available in 1993?)
And for some devil's advocacy the other direction, you might find this Motley Fool article (suggested by sjbe and others) an interesting take on an MS breakup as well.
but of course economics is as close to witchcraft as you'll find in the social sciences. You're pretty much right on, though.
Right now people get Windows at a fairly reasonable price, or at least that's the perception and it's usually hidden in the cost of the computer they picked up at Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. Eventually people will start to notice if when the computer they saw for $1700 two months ago is now $2500. The big question is, will they ask why? If they do, the big retailers are more likely to offer PC's with alternative OS's, especially if their tech dept. can add $100 to install the OS of the customer's choice and maybe even add on extra in classes teaching people how to use their new OS. That's where the money will come from to replace the missing $300 billion or whatever it was. And there's always the possibility that Apple will finally get the hint and drop their hardware prices a bit to induce more people to buy Macs. And what about the people who have considered putting out an OS but didn't because there was no way they could break into the market? This would be a golden opportunity for them, as well.
I would be ashamed to write such an article under the auspices of academia, especially at a school like Texas which has a good tradition of economic though going back to John R. Commons. Coincidentally, Common's big theory was that ultimately, the courts are the main determination in how the economy acts, no matter what the market "wants" to do.
OK, lets face the facts. I'm both a windows user/administrator, and a Linux user. I like things about both OSes. But we have to face the facts. Windows is so popular by the masses because it's _easy_ to use. Its GUI is hands down better than any X windows GUI out there now, or even a year from now. Sure, I get annoyed just as much as the next person when I have to go through all of the wizards(in 2000), and how I can't kill a process when I'm the freakin' domain administrator, but still.
I'm by far, not a Microsoft basher. I think that they've done some less than kosher things, and some of their product bugs are inexcusable, but the fact of the matter is is that Windows a usable operating system built for the masses...and that's what Microsoft is catering to...the masses.
To use a quote I heard from a Microsoft speaker: "Think of ordering a pizza for 150 million people. On this pizza you've got to put on certain toppings that some will like and some will not like, but in the end, that pizza's got to be acceptable by everyone that's eating it."
If you look at it that way, then you can understand their perspective a little bit better.
Sure, Microsoft has to change some things that they're doing. Raising the cost of the OS to 1 grand would be a change for the worst, but let's face it - if the situation were to pan out that way, Microsoft has to keep bringing in the money, and when you lose 90%+ of your other divisions, you've got to compensate. That's why, in this scenario, I don't think a breakup would be a wise decision. Present another situation, and I might change that stance.
MS Windows NT 4.0 SERVER 5 users / 10 users $995/$1280
MS Windows NT 4.0 Workstation $190 each
Well let's get with the new Millenium shall we?
MS Windows2000 Server full ver. on cd $1065 (doesn't say how many user licenses)
MS Windows2000 Pro full ver. on cd $195
Windows already costs a grand. Also, compare 2000 to NT4, the cost increases, and Microsoft says it has lowered the cost of a PC.
check the prices yourself, its in Vancouver BC Canada.
So p being "windows is $1000" and q being "Linux becomes the OS of choice" then your saying that p or at least p -> q is a tautology?
... Why do I have descrete math on the brain?
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ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
Pretty much the Paper Clip (the most irritationg part of MS Office) and Microsoft Bob (that was so successful).
The site is pretty sparse, post articles to them.
Ok, I assume (or hope) that you know about the "Interactive Setup" that Mandrake, Redhat, and probably other distros have during boot time, why not just make a little boot script (or chunk it into rc.sysinit) that allows you, if you so choose, to interactively pick which /etc tarball you want to use....
I could do it in about 15 minutes (if that), so it can't be that hard....
Think --> Think Different --> Think OSS
if you decide to go for the 16-bit hos you can get many more colors and paralax scrolling!
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ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
Fantastic! This increases the column under total cost of ownership for anything that runs M$$$(new break up price acronym). And great for Java in the current M$ PC because, like we did with OS2 the last platform to fail, you can justify Java as a migration path to the consumer(sorry - "even my grandma can use it") version of Linux.
For one thing, if you really knew what you were talking about, you would know that the win98 SE upgrade from '98 is not $125. Actually, when it came out, IIRC, the cd was free except $5 s/h.
:-)
There were two upgrades available.
One contained just the bug fixes that SE also included. It did not include Internet Connection Sharing or other "New Features". That was the cheap one.
Upgrading from Win98 to Win98SE has always costed around $90 list.
Now, you also seem to pretend that everyone who buys a copy of windows will automatically upgrade to the next version, at a retail price.
That is what Microsoft's revenue model is based on.
They generally leverage their other products to ensure this, too. You have Windows X and Office Y. Your friend buys Windows X+1 and Office Y+1. Office Y+1 does not work well with Office Y, so you buy Office Y+1. Surprise, Office Y+1 doesn't work well with Windows X, so you also have to upgrade to Windows X+1. Gee, isn't that a surprise.
You also assume everyone started from windows 3.1 and upgraded.. nope.
But if you did have a computer since then, and you weren't running DOS all this time, what were you doing? Are you suggesting everyone switched from FreeBSD to WinME?
Most of the legal copies of windows floating around are bundled with computers, where the suppliers (ala Dell) may pay a small price (for being MS buddies).
The "small price" is typically about what the Retail Upgrade version costs, or so Microsoft assures us. About $90 each.
If it was the Full Retail version, it would be about $200 each.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
It cannot be subverted. It is entirely under the control of its founders; the "members" are merely names on a list that will be used to argue that n concerned people are firmly opposed to the breakup.
There's no point in joining it, except to give more weight to this prime example of astroturfing.
--
I make selective use of the <strong> tag in my Slashdot posts because it serves to bring important points and words into higher visibility. It also represents emphasis in speech; I find that Slashdot is even more "conversational" even than Usenet, where I make much sparer use of the *rather* *annoying* *emphasis* *tags* *available*.
Call it user interface.
You sold it on ebay. :D
Those boys over at MF are no, well, fools. Time and time again I've seen commentaries in their "rulemaker" and other sections about Microsoft, and they (gasp) get it what it means to be an innovator, what it means to push an industry forward, and what it means for an industry to have an all-consuming(and suppressing) monopolist driving the popular understanding of that industry.
Just let the Evil Empire charge the full grand for Windoze. Heck, a lot of NT versions now are plenty over the k mark (pity anyone dumb enough to buy the stuff).
When M$ pushes the price up, peaple are going to buy superior stuff, be it Be (the best desktop OS, AFAIC, just needs some apps (port OpenOffice & Mozilla)), MacOs X, or even the Penguin. And they'll be a damn sight better off.
My 3.64 Australian cents.
Calm down - microsoft (so far as I know) isn't planning to price windows at $1k. All that's happened is a very pretentious, very simple man has made noises on a website - nothing more. Don't give him the validation he so richly doesn't deserve.
Linux and free OSes will gain a huge user base in coming years regardless of MSs position in the market. Adding Windows binary compatibility is probably not even a desirable thing any more: let M$ and Winblowz die in peace, not linger on.
The truth is, nothing M$ does anymore will matter; there is enough momentum in the anti-ms movement.
Ceci n'est pas un post
PC buyers don't really care about operating systems, except as far as brand loyalty (like the current inane crop of Pepsi and Coke ads in the US try and appeal to). The "average" home PC buyer really wants a web browser, e-mail, and some sort of word processor. A few want games, a few want office applications, and more than a few want some applications which replace accumulating paper (a la Quicken or a PIM). However, no one cares whether it's Microsoft or Mac or a Xerox Alto, as long as it does what they want, is fairly easy to use, and doesn't break at critical times.
Microsoft's marketing muscle and anti-competitive tactics have increased "brand loyalty" by creating the illusion that other operating environments are somehow incompatible, less functional, or incapable of interoperability with Windows, the "market leader". Therefore, for many PC buyers, liking Microsoft is like liking the popular and unchallenged local sports team -- there's little chance they'll lose, and they never *really* disappoint. There's no compelling reason *to* like them, but it's too much work to be a fan of anyone else. Unfortunately, unlike those scenarios of a couple of decades ago, my computer is powerful enough to run Windows on top of Linux, and run all of my old Amiga software besides. Even without Windows, I can still interoperate passably with windows-using colleagues for most things. (although I do use TeX for all word processing, even musicology papers -- with musical examples)
It's really telling that devices like the i-opener are wildly successful even though they're nothing close to Windows -- but that really proves that what draws people to computers is applications. Sure, on Windows, I can pay for seven different browsers (or get one that's inextricable from the OS kernel) and five different office suites -- but I only need one of each. Beyond that, even, the "applications" that people want are things like cnn.com, amazon.com, Napster, and e-mail -- and I can get to CNN from my mobile phone as easily as from a Windows box.
Microsoft is riding on brand loyalty, which they create and enforce with anti-trust actions. Unfortunately, their ride is slowing, because there aren't any compelling features in their products for most users, and there are enough people reverse-engineering MSFT stuff to provide reasonable interoperability from other operating environments. Most people don't need Word to manage bibliographies or outlines -- they don't really need anything more than Works, but they keep Word around to read Word documents....
~wog
Buying from a company like Dell or Compaq gives the end-user the convenience of one central point for support.
On the other hand, buying from a company like Compaq gives them the ability to say, "F**k off, you didn't buy Officially Approved Equipment and thus you aren't supported. And since everything from the motherboard to the screws holding the case together won't work in any other computer on Earth, you'll have to buy a whole new machine just to install a f**king CD-ROM drive. Have a nice day, and thank you for choosing Compaq."
(Based on a real world story. The profanity I added.)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
If windows was costing $1000, then free OSes start looking pretty damm good.
To point #2, in an old R.X. Cringley article, he asserts that charging a recurring fee for MS W-nd-ws is EXACLTY the type of product/service they want to put forth. To roughly paraphrase Cringley's arguement, he asserts that MS would ideally have people connected to the 'Net and "subscribe" to MS W-nd-ws "updates" sent once a month. These updates would be little more than bugs fixes or so called features ("Hey, we added a button, you have to pay us $$$")
That would require the least amount of innovation, yet still increase earnings despite the complete market saturation of W-nd-ws, since this would now provide them with a guaranteed recurring revenue stream from each subscriber...
THIS SPACE FOR RENT Call 1-800-555-CARL
"market leaders as Intuit, Symantec, Lotus, Adobe, or Quark"
Intuit:Quicken runs fine on Linux, a la Corel. (if Corel's Office Suite runs under Linux, so does Quicken, it's just not official...)
Symantec & Lotus: They already sold out, or have been crushed by Microsoft. Much more worrisome.
Adobe: They dropped all Unix support in Photoshop 3.x, even though the Windows version of Photoshop 3.0 runs just fine on Linux; see Intuit. Besides, we also have The Gimp.
Quark: Aren't you doing that on a Mac anyhow? Heck, if I had LinuxPPC, I might be able to get that working, too. There are alternatives, too, not that I'd ever want to use, say, Interleaf, but TeX is rather well known; people write books in it.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
What I disagree with is the notion that $1,000 is that price point; I think it will be substantially lower.
In addition, I suspect that he assumes that AppSoft (Microsoft's applications half, post-split) won't port Office to Linux or other OSes, which is a bad assumption, IMHO. Releasing an Office/Linux might cause many users to adopt Linux in such numbers that the $1,000 figure becomes untenable.
Finally, what if AppSoft decided to release a graphical shell for Linux? You'd have the power of Linux with the familiarity of Windows for all those people who want plug-and-play operation. It could happen...
THIS IS JUST STUPID! What a bunch of typical Microsoft propoganda. Windows is good in some respects, but definately not worth $1000. Don't you just want to slap old Bill sometimes. Like, really hard.
At least this may helping Linux. Sort of. The lemmings will believe this propoganda and start investigating "alternatives". $$Cheaper alternatives. Such as Linux.
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Daniel Zeaiter
daniel@academytiles.com.au
http://www.academytiles.com.au
ICQ: 16889511
In the study fact sheet on ACT's site, it claims the breakup will lead to an inferior Windows product. Later they claim temperatures will be lower than absolute Kelvin.
Beware typoes.
Well that depends, what kind of windows are they? Anderson? Double hung? Tempered glass? Bulletproof? A nice energy efficient bay window for my living room with good double hung side panels that flip down for easy cleaning, I could easily justify spending a grand on.
Who is going to take the call when granny's machine has ate itself and bluescreened? Or perhaps when the registry has bitrotted? In your example, someone could telnet in and install GAIM for her. In mine, it would most likely require her to take the machine in for maintainance if it wasn't something trivial.
Windows is EXCELLENT for newbies and that is why it is sold with almost all computers today.
Oh God, no. Windows is not good for newbies at all. I have worked as a technician at a couple of OEMs, and I can say with experience that there are a lot of people who have made an art out of fscking up Windows. If user-friendliness was the only reason for Windows' dominance, BeOS would be dominant now--or hell, even MacOS. Those two are OS's I would put my mom on.
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
For those that care (which seems to be precious few people, here, but oh well), a *much* better piece of literature that is not neccessarily Pro-Microsoft, but definitely Anti-Antitrust, is Trust on Trial: How the Microsoft Case is Reframing the Rules of Competition by Richard B. McKenzie.
Mr. McKenzie is a third-party economist with no interest in Microsoft other than economically (as in, the book was not funded by MS nor MS supporters, and he is not on their payroll in even the subtlest of ways). Yet, the books describes many contradictions in the DoJ's case, as well as describing the economic situation the software industry is in today. A very interesting read, as long as you keep a half-open mind.
For those of you that just brush this off as more Pro-MS FUD, I feel sorry for you. The book is a jewel of economic investigation, and sheds much needed light on the entire antitrust process, as well as the actual goals of the DoJ in this case (hint: Their goal isn't helping consumers).
A very good read. Too bad I didn't post this earlier.
For software competition, the rules have to be the same also. Microsoft gave us some standards, and then got greedy and began to play with "extended rules". This would be fine if everyone had the same rules at the same time, but we didn't. Competition 'could' create better software, or it could fragment the standards so badly we couldn't trade files with each other.
One behaving Microsoft setting standards for everyone on the OS is incredibly more efficient than 100 mini-Microsofts setting incompatible standards.
Perhaps the OS side of MS should be controlled like a public utility, including a set price. We all use standard electical connections, and look at the innovative things we do with electricity. Voltage is a standard. Perhaps we need 110 volt MS and 220 volt Linux, and then competition will flourish.
If Linux desktops become good enough to replace Windows desktops, we could see Windows driven into the "niche" category. In that case, a $1000 price tag would not be unrealistic at all.
I don't have any hard data, but I believe I have heard of other cases where Free Software has a dominating market share, and if you want some obscure feature that the free version doesn't have, you are driven to pay a high price for something that satisfies your particular need.
The analogy that I always like to use is the public school analogy (software under the GPL is much like a public work). In the US, public schools provide free education for everybody, but it's not always the best education. Those who want a better education for their children often pay thousands of dollars per year for private schooling, even though their taxes also support the public school.
In the future, the masses run klutzy X-desktops; and the wealthy pay a premium to continue running their favorite apps on state-of- the-art hardware. It could happen.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Cost of spending 100+Million writing IE to throw off netscape.
Cost of over paying top programers to do dumb GUIs in order to suck talents out of the cometitor's hands.
Cost of buying out small companies to kill competition.
Cost of buying a big chunk of Macintosh.
Cost of top lawyers and lousy video producers to defend lawsuits and file for random Patents.
If companies like Macintosh, BeOS, QNX can charge lower price for an OS, why can't Microsoft?
Maybe Gradma and Steve the jock can use Macintosh instead of Windows?
Here is a little economics lession. If your Windows2002 cost you $1000. Suppose that you work for $10 an hour. Suppose it takes you 100 hours to learn how to install linux and type email and use StarOffice. Assume that besides Windows, you need to buy utilities such as "Norton's disk keeper", "Guard Dog", "WinGate" for $1000 dollars. These utilities come free with unix distributions.
What is the rational choice? Linux. because you save $1000 dollars that way. I'm not saying that these numbers are realistic. I'm saying that OSes are simply commodities, like any other commodities, there is a substitution effect. Any economist will tell you monopolistic market charge higher price than free market.
You have to realize that linux has a weak point ... it is NOT 100% POSIX compliant ...
Um, neither is Windows NT.
Next, please?
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
But then again, I don't know a damn thing about audio software.
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
$1,000 for Windows?
Well yeah..
However splitting Microsoft up will nither cause nore prevent this...
Other companys have offered Unix operating systems for a similar price tag...
I still rember when $100 for an operating system was an outrage...
and when you asked for $20 your software had better be the best software PACAGE you could provide.
But software prices keep going up...
Becouse fewer and fewer users can write code.
As long as programming is a rare skill the few who can may charg the rest up the nose for 3 lines of code...
But with a larg programmer population... a bunch of kids can write a program that beats they hack out of your $200 software pacage in one afternoon.
I don't actually exist.
for this time of night and level of beer consumption, but the whole idea of pulling out a rather lengthy full-blown report on the dire consequences to the economy if MS gets the axe really gets my goat.
I recall that BG & CO, screamed bloody murder and also predicted dire market behavior if win95 release was in any way fscked with. Result: nothing happened.
Being sort of a hobbiest re. the market - on off-days I watch the business heads on CNBC from Squawk Box to the market wrapup, I've heard various analysts state that they like MS stock in the lower 60's: not flying high.
BG is riding a very tricky wave. Right now tech is like the magic guest list for Studio 54 back in the late 70's/80's. He's just short-sighted enough to really believe that the market is tightly aligned to the fortunes of MS, et.al. If you watch the market, traditional Blue Chip industries which are not tech heavy are always there as a shelter for investors.
Bottom line: tech ain't the cat's pajamas.
Disclaimer - I'm a techie and I'm not a luddite, but I have great faith in the natural movement of investment and people's bottom line: elightened self-interest. If Billy boy and his techopop present/future don't play. he ain't gonna get paid.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
Not much unless your willing to become a corporate member ($100 minium fee)
Snipped from the ACT Membership agreement
So much for that.I wouln't even take win if it were free.
What can winsuck do for me? Nothing.
It can't do much of anything really.
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Reread the page, dude. Check out the answer to 'Thinking about Microsoft -- the computer software company that produces Windows 95 and other products -- do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the Microsoft Corporation?' 65% in favor, 72% among computer users. Essentially equal to people's opinions about his Billness (69/74). Think about it. If it were put to a vote, Microsoft would get off scot-free.
so how much professor Leibowitz charges for his academic integrity?
Well, that would make Linux grow pretty quick. Picture this:
A Dell PIII with a monitor, keyboard, mouse and modem with Linux installed: $2000.
Same configuration with Windows installed: $2500 (since Dell always gets the OEM price break).
Now who would want the Windows machine? Everyone else will take Linux and save the $500 bucks. Think of all the people who would rather use an Apple but it is just too expensive so they get a PC. Microsoft would be history and Linux, BSD and MacOS could fight it out.
Viv
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I Use Napster. I use DeCSS. I buy over $1000 a year in CD/DVDs.
Viv
Gmail invites for ip
800kB floppies? That would have been luxury (and was standard from the 512KE through the... what? IIx?)
The original Mac 128k had 400kB floppies. But you really did want a second floppy drive. The disk swap tango was annoying as hell.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
The following Symantec products serve to correct or work around design flaws of Windows/DOS or MacOS:
The following Symantec products serve purposes already filled by existing free software:
The following Symantec products serve political purposes not in tune with many or most Linux users; specifically, they are parental or office censorware:
- I-Gear
- Norton Internet Security (censorware portion)
(The functionality of censorware may be duplicated with free software, so these could perhaps be put in the previous category; however, due to the general opinion of censorware as Bad And Wrong [i.e. unethical on principle and furthermore broken in its implementations] among the Linux community, they belong in their own category.)The following Symantec products are potentially useful under a Linux-based OS:
(Mobile WinFax is not counted as it runs on the PalmOS, not a conventional OS. Norton SystemWorks is not counted because it is a bundle of several packages listed above.)
In short, it is not to be taken as a surprise that Symantec, and other "utility software" companies, see themselves as not having anything to offer the Linux community -- they don't.
What's most important about this case, however, is how few people outside of the whiny geek contingent actually care about the issue.
This is changing as computer become more and more important and integral to everyday life. Until recently computers were a hobbyists playground. There was nothing useful that could be done by them. Now they help run critical business functions, hell you can use them to pay your tax!
Most people who use Microsoft products are sometimes annoyed by the crashing and the cost of upgrading systems, but these are the same people who have used AOL for three years despite all of its technical problems.
This is crap. I currently use Windows and wouldn't touch AOL with a barge poll. Admitedly I have bought Linux Mandrake and anticipate installing it after my Uni exams but that doesn't change the fact that I only recently became aware of Linux as a possible alternative and it is only recently that the people behind the distros are mounting a real challenge to Windoze in terms of installation and ease of use. Give people time to think about and take the plunge in changing OS's.
I hate Windoze crashing and being unable to shut down the comp without getting the blue screen of death. Hell that's half the reason I am changing OS's.
The second he/she gets a link to a Windows Media Player or QuickTime movie, a cute EXE attachment like a video greeting card, or a Microsoft Office document for StarOffice to slowly beat to death, you'll have some 'splaining to do.
Not really. WMP links are easily dealt with under Linux (use another player), QuickTime should be ported if Apple knows what is good for them and running an EXE attachment meant for Windoze isn't such a great idea these days.
I'm surprised that Bill Gate is not thinking about becoming the next president of U.S.A. Then he could really fuck the country. Manditory purchases of Microsoft products and just forget about all the legal issues with Microsoft.
Um... you obviously do not understand how these things work. How do you think Windows got installed on that computer, as a gift from your OEM? No. Part of the cost of that computer went to Microsoft for the Windows license.
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
I'm not familiar with Microsoft's Transaction Server; isn't COM sort of like CORBA, except that it's a Microsoft Standard instead?
I'm sure Visual Studio lets you mock up a GUI quickly, but I'd be somewhat suspicious of everything else; besides, even Unix people can find GUI-builders if they want them.
Generally, I just don't like the direction that Microsoft takes with their products; I could go through a laundry list of design stuff I don't like with their products, and many other people can, and have.
I liked Borland's stuff, "back in the day", when Microsoft had more competition in the PC world. Of course, I really like Linux, and Unix in general, and from that perspective Microsoft has worked around a *lot* of design flaws to get to where they are.
But my opinion is that the center will not hold in the Microsoft world, and that eventually everything will have to be redesigned, and they'll end up entirely destroying backwards compatibility. That's happening with Windows 2000, so I hope they get it right this time. However, I won't be suffering through it to find out.
I might get a separate DOS machine though, so I can get sound working correctly on the Future Crew demo, and for stuff like that.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I know that Photoshop started out as a Mac program used for special effects work on Cameron's movie "The Abyss," but I'm pretty sure that it's been an Adobe product for as long as it's been commercially available.
(though a crappy one for a while - remember Collage, the third party program that you had to get if you wanted layers before Photoshop 2.5?)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
It's a pity that nobody here seems to have actually read Liebowitz' article.
It's quite hilarious to read how Microsoft is a non-profit-maximizing, in other words: altruistic, organization, and that it would be best for all if it also took over the games and server markets that are currently dominated by profit-maximizing companies.
So these are the paragons of capitalism?!
-cjr
1. If he is a shill for MS, he hides it very well. (Translation: I don't think he is one.)
2. He has done a *lot* of solid empirical research in business economics. He's a scientist, not an advocate.
3. His current work on MS is not easy to dismiss.
-BBB
I agree, Windows is easier for an average user than Linux, but it ain't perfect. As a tech support of my friends / half-friends / family members... I often found myself in the very situation to tell how to install software / drivers / etc to the windows box.
Maybe linux isn't developed to the desktops yet, but we are not so far from there. KDE and gnome are quite usable now a days and there is some applications too. (Star office, Word Perfect, etc.) I often hear something like "I would use Linux, but there is no Microsoft Office for it". I would ask so what? Average home desktop user needs word processor just for writing some notes, letters and such, and in that use. Some Word Perfect for linux (or almost anything) will do.
AZi
If Windows were to cost $1000, who would buy it? I mean, seriously. They have to meet demand.. and *especially* if they are broken up and their stranglehold is somewhat abated... there WILL be other choices.
As for 'the world economy taking a 300 billion dollar hit'.. that's meaningless. You cannot judge the effect of something purely on economic numbers.
Whatever my sympathies though, Linux is not a user friendly OS.
Problem is "user fiendly" is a term which is thrown arround so much it's almost meaningless.
It's getting better, yes, but it's far from there. Most of the time you can't simply pop in a cd or double click an icon and have a program install on the first try with obvious icons and easy to understand instructions for its features...
That may be fine on a HOME machine. On a machine in education or a company, the end user being able to easily install programs from either removable media or the internet is an expensive disaster. Either the sysadmin has to spend time cleaning up afterwards or a lot of time and effort to stop users being able to do this.
so, does that mean Windows is a plain cheese pizza?
"I'd rather not know the answers, than not know the questions." - Hezh
The USDoJ's current plan is to split M$ into two parts: an OS company and an applications company. As I have stated before, the OS company _will still have a monopoly_.
Monopolies are not illegal.
Abusing monopoly power is. Microsoft got in trouble because they used their OS monopoly to leverage their other products. (The case started with Internet Exploiter, but many other examples were uncovered.)
By splitting the OS division off into a separate company, they can no longer use each other to control the industry.
Problem -- abuse of monopoly power -- solved.
Make sense now?
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
:) Thanks, that's funny as hell!
If that's what Microsoft's Freedom to Innovate means, keep me out! I can't stand Clippy!
Projected I.E. 8.0 Interface:
-----------------------------
Clippy:"You look like you're posting to slashdot; would you like some help?"
Me:"Yes."
Clippy:"Would you like your post to be:
- Informative
- Funny
- Insightful
- Troll"
Me:"Insightful"
Clippy:"What is the subject?"
Me:"Would You Pay $1000 For Windows?"
Clippy:"Contacting microsoft.com..."
Clippy:"Microsoft® Windows 2000® Advanced Server
What's New
Built on Windows * Windows 2000 Advanced Server
2000 Server contains all the features and
improvements of Windows 2000
Server, plus...
Enhanced SMP and * Deploy the latest server hardware
memory support with up to 8 processors and
support for up to 8 gigabytes of
Random Access Memory (RAM). Ideal
for running today's most demanding
applications.
Network Load * Quickly and easily scale-out Web,
Balancing VPN, and Terminal Services using
integrated TCP/IP load balancing
technology. NLB distributes
incoming requests across farms of
up to 32 servers, enabling rapid,
incremental scalability while
guarding against both planned and
unplanned server downtime.
Cluster Service * Two-node high-availabilty
clustering for applications such
as databases, messaging
applications, and file & print
services. Ideal for
business-critical applications and
services where data integrity and
availability are the key
requirements. Supports rolling
upgrades from Windows NT Server
4.0 clusters (w/ SP4 or higher).
$3,519.00"
Me:"Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
i beg to differ.
No, it doesn't fix the problem. It works around the problem. It causes the present manifestation of the problem to go away, letting the user go back to his or her work, while the problem itself -- the bug which caused the user's grief -- remains unfixed. Thus, the underlying problem is almost guaranteed to plague the user again.
Quite often Ive found that their problem is related to installing one or more programs and trying to use them without rebooting, if the programs updated windows dll's during install, often a reboot is necessary to force the OS to recognize the new code. In addition, support positions quite often put the tech in the position of having to keep call times down or an unrealistic part of managment views them as sub-par techs. In order to keep your job and be eligible for raises/promotions your call times must be kept competitive with the rest of the techs on the floor. The reboot shotgun-style approach quite often fixes (sometimes only temporarily) the issue, appeases the customer, and keeps managment off your back. This is an especially apparent situation in large support contractors (http://www.stream.com) - filled with almost as much middle and upper managment as techs. Managers have to compete with each other on their techs call stats in order to further thier own careers and the pressure is passed on.
.sig wanted: Must be concise, funny, and display my cleverness.
I agree with you r-jae - this is by far the stupidest analysis I have ever had the displeasure of reading. This professor should consider another line of work.
I will respond to this long paper with an equally short response:
1) Competition, assuming there is any, always drives prices down. Always has, and always will. All of the incredibly convulted analysis to the contrary is pure hogwash and pseudo-economic masturbation.
2) Competition, inexorably produces better software. Since no one company would have a stranglehold on innovation, consumers will inevitably lead towards the better product assuming no single company, as in the case of Micro$oft, is allowed to crush their enemies through collusion, strong-arm tactics, bullying, marketing propoganda and illegal activity.
We should all remember the famous last words of Bill Gates, "I don't recall."
Real Intelligence beats artificial stupidity.
www.enthea.org
--
you must amputate to email me
--
you must amputate to email me
i read all replies to my comments
a beowolf cluster of what?
slashdot troll assholes?!
If i could, id send a cluster of PENIS BIRDS directly to you, and every other random "BEOWOLF CLUSTER" poster. DAMMIT.
.sig wanted: Must be concise, funny, and display my cleverness.
and, of course, we mustn't forget that those companies that will be hit the hardest are those who make their money off of the bugs in windows..
Think --> Think Different --> Think OSS
IANAE (I am not an economist)
Actually, you're slightly off. He does consider that if the price of Windows increases purchasing will decrease. The flaw is that he makes this assumption based on the idea that Windows has a monopoloy. He is able to make that assumption w/o explanation because that is what his opposition bases its case on. What he fails to take into account, however, are the following:
Together, these will throw his whole scheme out of whack.
Personally, I believe that a divided Microsoft would likely charge more for Windows... for a while. They'd be able to get away with charging $400+ per license just as they could now. But this would only serve to speed up their losing of the monopoly which enables them to do so.
Software is different than manufactured goods as far as controlling the market. The difficulty in breaking a traditional monopoly is in development, production and lock-in. The difficulty in breaking a software monopoly is in development and lock-in only. The biggest hurdle is lock-in... which will be difficult to work out. The development isn't going to be as tough. I don't want to get into an argument about whether or not Linux or BeOS or whatever are as good or better than Microsoft, but I think we can all agree that if they are behind Microsoft the aren't too much behind them.
The key is lock-in. An increased price of Windows would open a lot of eyes to the liability of being locked into a MS solution and I believe there will be a lot of work done to break out. It will be tough for a while, but that is the way the cookie crumbles.
IBM puts a lot of stuff out in pre-release. (Even stuff that has no right to go out, even in pre-release, but enough about that - NDR, as you probably expect.).
They've really changed over the last 10-20 years, since the anti-trust suit. I wouldn't want to work there (I was a contractor there once) but it's interesting to be on the periphery.
--
--
There is no premature anti-fascism. -Ernest Hemingway
The windows learning curve is steep if you consider the problems associated with the OS itself, hardware problems, drivers, etc.
The Windows learning curve is such that it appears "easy to use" at first, there are some things which are actually easy (assuming it all works), but it soon gets to the point of being difficult to work out how to do things. Effectivly Windows is a very ugly (and unfriendly) OS with a thin covering to hide all the uglyness.
The unix learning curve is such that the user is expected to have some idea what they are doing before they start, but once they know the basics it's reasonably easy to understand more complex things.
If I'm right the argument is
"Microsoft would increase the price of Windows until people stopped buying computers"
with the optimal profit point being $1000 for a copy of Windows - raising the cost of a $2000 PC to $3000.
Does anyone other than me think that Apple Mac sales will go up here?
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
Plug-and-play is in the OS and installer, not the GUI - and for an awful lot of hardware, Linux is there. And as far as I'm concerned, most of the GUI is there, too. Some things are missing, and I wouldn't turn my Mom loose on KDE without allocating a day or 2 of my time to get her going,
Indeed some things, like attempting to emulate the sysadmin features of the Windows control panel might be better either out of KDE or restricted to root logins be default.
Also things such as browser proxy settings badly need a global setting and not infrequently keeping well away from the end user. Especially users familiar with Windows, who are used to fiddling with all sorts of things.
$1000 is a bit much, but I could see $600.
.....
$600 - $400 msn rebate =
I better shut up. They may actually think that was a good idea.
Well that depends, what kind of windows are they? Anderson? Double hung? Tempered glass? Bulletproof? [...]
Will double hung tempered bulletproof glass keep Windows away from my Linux box? If so, I want some!
Tell a man that there are 400 billion stars and he'll believe you. Say a bench has wet paint and he has to touch it.
Tell the man there are 400 billion molecules of wet paint on the bench.
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
Does that include the source code :-)
Considering that a large amount of Symantec's business is to make up for deficiencies in Windows, and since Linux has it's own diagnostic tools included anyway, they should not really be included. The only product I can think of from them that would be really handy would be Ghost, though I'm sure there's a similar thing for Linux already. And finally, what has Linux got to do with whether MS is broken up or not. They broke the law repeatedly and should be punished. That won't mean people will suddenly stop buying Windows or Office.
And they lie all the time. How about:
- Windows 95 will use less memory than windows 3.x
- We forgot to label the proprietary extensions in the Winsock doc.
- The NT workstation kernel is inherently different fro the NT server kernel (even tho binary compare says they're equal)
- Mindcraft was an independent benchmark
- Bill Gates: "I forgot.. I don't remember.." while disucssing his own emails.
- "This video shows.." describing an obviously faked video. (And this in Federal court!)
This is an outfit that doesn't know how to do anything BUT lie, no reason for their shills to do anything else.Note to moderators: please don't call this a troll unless you can refute even one of my points.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
My point is that people on slashdot have this weird, pavlovian reaction to the word Microsoft.. hence my post's title.
But on the tangential note you've brought us to about what people should do if they don't have windows as an option anymore.. just what is it that you're suggesting here? If they don't use linux they should use macOS?
Assuming MacOS X runs as well as it supposedly does and that it can be made to run on a pc, what happens when all the former windows users go out and pick up MacOS for their new computers? Sure, some would probably go for linux instead, but that still leaves you with a large majority of the computer using population using MacOS.. So I suppose that monopolies are okay, just so long as theyre based on a BSD kernel?
Dreamweaver
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
Yes, you can install redhat 7 in 5 minutes without knowing much about your computer, but do you really think that Grandma wants to learn the directory structure, or that Joe will be awed by the power of the command line?
... they want to ... have a bright and cheery GUI with nice big buttons staring back at them.
Does Grandma know what C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\IOSUBSYS\AIC78XX.MPD is for?
Does Joe know what DOS command and switches to use to copy a directory branch to another location while preserving file attributes but excluding empty directories?
Just because a product contains a feature that some people are not interested in does not mean the entire product is useless.
GNOME. KDE.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Microsoft (or its post-breakup spawn) is a company.
Companies try to make money.
Now, how many Joe Average users are going to spend an extra $1000 on a computer just to run a certain OS when there's cheaper Apple, BeOS, and Linux boxes sitting next to it at Best Buy? enough to make it worth it? We'll see once small businesses (the employers of 90% of Americans) start dumping the $1000 app for a reasonalby priced one.
No one's that stupid. Plus if you have to charge that much for a non-specialty OS to start with, you deserve to be out of business.
-----------
end communication
There's BeOS too. At $1000 a copy, you can dump a lot of money into something and still compete.
> Anyone who has been using Windows since version 3.1 (the earliest version at which the product was anything more than
> a joke) then they have, by now, paid between $250 and $500 for the product,
Hey, I've been using Windows 3.1 up to February of this year, & I never paid a dime to Billy G since it came installed on my computer.
> if they have been upgrading faithfully.
Er, like I said, I used Win 3.1 until February of this year. (Been using Linux exclusively since then, except for a day or two when I thought I fried my hard drive & had to revert to my old computer.) Except for being confused about which year it was (which was reflected in the date it returned for a given file), it worked just as well as it ever did.
Funny to relate, DOS 6.00 did not show a Y2K problem. Once I reset the date due to a BIOS problem, DOS had NO PROBLEM with this being the year 2000.
I might just wait until next year to exorcise DOS from that hard drive, just to see if DOS 6.00 was truly Y2K compliant.
]revealing a possibly fatal weakness[
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
Windows doesn't do you much good without a computer. How much would the software for a DVD player cost you anyway? Don't compare apples to oranges. The oranges will always get jealous.
Any action now is more about the power of government as an exercise.
One: Perhaps the on-going anti-trust issue has helped prevent Microsoft from squashing these latest competitive threats?
Two: You are tried based on your past crimes, not the current situation.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
HUSH! Yes you are!
MarNuke
You're entitled to your opinion, but you're mistaken in your analysis. Notes/Domino isn't a "mail product" - it's a database product. It offers mail and messaging functionality, just like it offers phone book functionality, KM functionality, discussion functionality, etc, etc. Everything is just a front end over a rather weak DBMS. Notes has always been like that.
Now, Notes isn't particularly good at mail (although Exchange is much, much worse). However, if your company bought a Notes system and only uses it for mail, they should, quite frankly, have their heads examined. And so should you.
There's no way that IBM could have used Domino/Notes as a front-end to WebSphere, so failing to do so is hardly a failure on IBM's part. IBM also uses Notes for a lot of their commercial sites, such as their small business, EPP, and download sites, so there's no lack of confidence at IBM wrt Notes.
How do I know this? Let's just say I know those sites quite intimately. WebSphere may be the future at IBM, but there's nothing particularly wrong with Notes/Domino.
--
--
There is no premature anti-fascism. -Ernest Hemingway
I'd like to apply for a professorship in Economics. My thesis will be proving that 2=1
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
When Jobs stole the idea of a User Friendly GUI from PARC Apple paid $200,000 in stock options to Xerox for IP rights to the GUI. ---soooo, apple is allowed to buy budding technologies for personal use, but microsoft is a monopolist thief?
I don't know what's more ridiculous...that people are bidding that much, or that the seller thinks it's worth even more (the reserve isn't met yet!).
Then a Mac with 2 G4 chips 512MB RAM 12GB HD and OS X will seem cheap. Good...
What a friggin moron...
Barring consumer revolt, the only direction prices ever take in a monopoly is UP.
Except with Linux. 110% of $0.00 is still $0.00...
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Iomega do not charge for support (at least not here in Europe) I have phoned them regarding the 'blue click of death' there was no mention of charges for customer support
.... parts & labour.
Admittenly nothing got done about so when my drive finally diedI phoned their support, told 'em my drive had died and I got the usual it will be
I mentioned that it had suffered the dreaded blue click of death , and they had the grace to replace the drive even though it was out of warranty at no charge
So full marks (eventually) to Iomega for getting it sorted
You hit on my funny bone .. there *have* been computer problems caused by the equivalent of cosmic rays. Less than two decades ago DRAM was very unreliable and no one could figure out why .. until someone discovered that the natural radioactives in the ceramic used to package the DRAM would occasionally flip cell states. Cleansing the ceramic of radioactives fixed the problem, and the end result is that today we are able to build machines without ECC memory and actually have a useful product.
This cool thing is, new macs will be MacOS X which, as we all know, is UNIX. More MacOS X on the desktop and the next thing you'll see is the code being ported across the board of all UNIX OS. Then the gamers will get into it, and the buniess people and soon every one might be using UNIX. Of course this will only happens if two things extists:
No one but zealots and power users care what OS they use. Most people just want something that can do what they want to do, easy to use, and still have money leftover. $1000 bucks for an OS for a desktop will fly about a far as a sherman tank.
MarNuke
I just took a look at ebay, and someone is apparently willing to pay at least $380.66 for Windows.
Some people will pay big bucks for old Nazi souvenirs, too. Not that Microsoft is trying to take over the world, of course. They don't have heavy, sloppy vehicles of war with which to run over opponents and blast the competition to pieces.
Oh, wait a minute ....
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
would that mean I would finally be able to buy a computer with out an OEM copy of windows?
/*
*Not a Sermon, Just a Thought
*/
*Not a Sermon, Just a Thought
*/
You can play QT stuff on Linux using Xmovie IIRC.
Especially, since there's no denying the greatest allure for corporate IT for the Free OS's is price. Seems this type of propaganda just leads people further in that direction.
Linux rocks!!! www.dedserius.com
www.dedserius.com
VB != VisualBasic
If people were actually given a summary of the finding of fact document in the media, instead of them pretending that Netscape just had a bad business model, I think those numbers in favour would drop a bit.
How intelligent. is this the level of discourse you devolve to whenever someone says something that maybe questions a little piece of your linux-centric world?
Well, maybe due to the past trend of Windows bloat requiring more hardware...but that much more? If it bloats that much more, the additional bugs will make the crashes will happen even more often.
The thing that this guy forgets is that many small business that CURRENTLY use MS products would suffer a great deal if they had to pay for everything that the MS liscence says so. And watch it not affect me. $1000 for their crap? Well, that will be good for RedHat, Mandrake, BSDi, Caldera, etc. Well, maybe due to the past trend of Windows bloat requiring more hardware...but that much more? If it bloats that much more, the additional bugs will make the crashes will happen even more often. And from what I've seen the business students consider themselves smart for knowing how to clear the screensaver, so this is the sort of article that they will just swallow whole, without salt. If that actually happened if would almost force OEMs to provide an OS choice.
(like I would want some pre-configured version anyways, but a step in the right direction) Since no one at Slashdot runs Windows, why do we care? Oops, I forgot -- Rob has to keep a couple machines around to play games like Diablo II. He pays the Microsoft tax and likes it.
The list price of the upgrade from 98 to 98SE was $19.95. At the very least, it's the price in US dollars in Canada. So not a lie, but a bit misleading if it's the first, since I assume the $1000 from the report is in US dollars. Moron! Moron! Moron! RJ11 is a moron! For one thing, if you really knew what you were talking about, you would know that the win98 SE upgrade from '98 is not $125. I've known many, many people who don't both to (I have known no one who has "rushed" out to get the latest edition).
You've spent 810$ in something like 10 years? Man that must of kept food off the table.
Actually I'm amazed they've been allowed to be an unregulated monopoly this long! What exactely, now, set's the price of, say Msft Office?? It's not competitive market forces of artificially limited (licensed) supply and demand! As it exists NOW, what's to stop Msft from charging whatever they feel like the market will bear, or extortionist prices? Nothing. Bill wants another yacht or another company - just jack up the price a few more bucks - what are customers going to do? Use the 'other' office suite? Grandma and Joe are locked in and can't get out! What if your local power company or the phone company were unregulated and could charge whatever they wanted? What if your electric bill was $350/month and you had NO CHOICE but to pay it or do without power? That is NOT capitalism. Now those slimy bastards in the PR dept are using the antitrust case as an /excuse/ to raise prices, when the real problem is there is no viable alternative to give the CUSTOMER some measure of control! Heck, if WalGreen charges too much for some item, I go over to Target, and visa-versa - that keeps everybody effecient and honest - but this deal with rising software costs is just obscenely perverted and needs correcting immediately. All it gives us is a smug self deluded corporation and generally lousy shiny products. Unfortunately, it looks like we're going to get 2 years of high powered media manipulation that'd make Goebbels gape in awe, and likely no satisfactory resolution. The only solution for computer professionals is to MAKE THEM PAY. Enforce the law. Msft has been getting a free ride from amateurs for way too long. Giving away your copies of Office and ME just entrenches the evil empire in the public mind that much more. CHARGE Grannie the $500 for Office Pro and point out that it's the law, that's what Msft wants, and she can use Word(tm) to write her congresscritter about corporate price gouging of senior citizens. Unfortunately, I can't see that happening either, so all I can do is look out for myself :))
A contradiction does exist in the argument that your average Joe wants to plug in and get big simple buttons to press, but at the same time claiming the consumer market has the intelligence to choose the best product and doesn't need regulation or protection against unfair uncompetitive technological monopoly leveraging tie in trickery (Ye olde "Opps, sorry the competitors products don't work on our latest platform - guess you just have to dump them and buy ours! Ours works great!" trick - which is what a break up will solve). So which is it? Are consumers intelligent enough to have committed everyone to the best of all possible product, or are they ignorant bumpkins that need protection from the equivilent of a software snakeoil & used car salesman?
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Ok, I lack understanding of this. Take a $250 billion company, and break it into two pieces. Now, the economy takes a $300 billion hit? How? The two companies still sell their wares. And, any gaps will can be made up by competitors. OS company doesn't do to well? Well, that will be good for RedHat, Mandrake, BSDi, Caldera, etc. No one buy the applications? Fine, Corel looks decent, and if staroffice gets ported to Gtk+, yay. So, can anyone explain to me how breakign up Microsoft will make the economy die?
-------------
HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
If Windows is so easy to use, why do I have to help my dad, who is a great deal more intelligent than me, keep his Win98 system going. Windows is easy until something goes wrong, or you want to do something harder than writing letters or playing games. As soon as you try something like networking, it becomes a bastard, due to the 5 minute reboot cycle, and the array of options you have that the Unhelp facility fails to explain properly, or Win98 has 'innovatively' bound your dial-up adapter to your network card which stops IP traffic getting through. Contrast that with Mandrake 7 - fill in the IP address, the device of your network card (defaulted to the first one) and hit OK. Hey ho, you are now connected to the network. I'd like someone like you to give me a few examples of Windows ease-of-use, not to troll, but to see how Mandrake compares. I rarely have to hand-hack a text file to do anything these days, although sometimes I do just to keep my hand in.
what if AppSoft decided to release a graphical shell for Linux? You'd have the power of Linux with the familiarity of Windows for all those people who want plug-and-play operation. It could happen...
I don't disagree with your main points, but the material above is confused. Plug-and-play is in the OS and installer, not the GUI - and for an awful lot of hardware, Linux is there. And as far as I'm concerned, most of the GUI is there, too. Some things are missing, and I wouldn't turn my Mom loose on KDE without allocating a day or 2 of my time to get her going, (probably not a good example, my Mom is fairly computer-savvy) but what's really missing is apps, especially a reliable, full-featured browser (which netscrape is not if you count Java as part of full-functioned.)
Finally, and I get marked as a troll every time I say this, I wouldn't trust Microsoft s/w on my Linux machine. (Maybe it would be different from AppSoft.) I just expect too much underhanded spyware or crashware techniques.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
Screw MS. Ive never paid a dime for their software anyways, and regret that to be compatible with associates and friends, I have a MS partition.
Go ahead. Charge more. And watch it not affect me. $1000 for their crap? Ill spend my own time and money burning linux CDs and handing them out on street corners.
.sig wanted: Must be concise, funny, and display my cleverness.
Linux is free.
An IMac is $1000.
Windows would simply lose it's market share if this were to happen - only business would be able to afford it, and once consumers stop buying, software developers are going to develop for whatever becomes the consumer standard instead.
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
PLEASE READ:
However outlandish and even ridculous some of the claims in the aforementioned paper appear to be, there is some core economic truth behind what the professor from Texas is writing about.
It's basically a matter of "monopoly power" and the concept of "monopoly pricing". Current (and widely accepted) economic theory has a lot to say about monopolies and the purpose of anti-trust legislature. First of all, it divides monopolies into two categories: 1.) Natural; and 2.) Anti-competitive. There is also a third near-monopoly situation known as "oligopoly", in which a handful of firms control a market rather than just one (note: this is not a cartel like OPEC, in which the firms coopoerate. Competition still exists in oligopoly markets).
"Natural" monopolies will form in a perfectly competitve market when 1 firm is able to produce more efficiently than >1 (I don't know if these actually exist, but utilities often fall into this category). Historically, "natural" monopolies have been regulated like mad by the U.S. gov't. But the recent deregulation of the telecommunication, airline, and utility industies are marking a policy theory change in favor of a less-bureaucratic sytem (mostly because these markets aren't yielding the "natural" monopolies the gov't thought they would, and instead take on more oligopoly-like market structures). It is thought that "natural" monopolies will lead to the exploitation of consumers via "monolopy pricing", meaning that the monopoly firm will price above its production cost in order to increase profit. This also causes a reduction in efficiency, because under "monopoly pricing" a firm doesn't have to produce as much in order to profit as much. Its all gain for the monopoly at the consumers' expense. This all occurs under the premise that entry into the given market is very difficult, and that the monopoly does not have to worry about competing firms coming in and pricing at the more efficient level (there-by earning market share), and that even if one does the monopoly can always begin using "anti-competitive" practices to regain its monopoly power (and thus becoming an "anti-competitive" monopoly, the evil of all evils).
"Anti-competitive" monopolies are formed when a firm uses its dominant market share to force others out of business (read: uses "anti-competitive" practices). This usually happens through price under-cutting. "Monopoly pricing" still occurs in this situation, as does inefficient operation. In addition, these markets are assumed to be better off when they operate with >1 firm, and because of this the gov't opts to enforce anti-trust policies rather than regulate.
The basis of the Liebowitz paper is this theory of "monopoly pricing", and the presupposition that a monopoly (whether "natural" or "anti-competitive") must first exist in order for it to occur. His data, as well as most I've seen, suggests that M$ prices well below the "monopoly price" for Windows. His suggested "monopoly price" of $1000 (however silly it seems)is based on the current demand data (which is used to calculate the product's elasticity - a partial derivative of demand with respect to price). Whether anyone would really pay $1000 for a copy of Windows (analyzed using basic human rationale) isn't of interest here. What's important is the data, and the data undoubtedly shows that M$ is pricing below the "monopoly price" that it *could* use if it truly had "monopoly power". Obviously, without "monopoly power" there can be no "anti-competitive" monopoly practices, and the DOJ loses its right to prosecute on the basis of anti-trust laws.
Of course this doesn't say anything about M$'s pricing of its other products (such as its Office suite), or the discounts offered when purchased along with a new PC (and the Windows OS). If anything, I think M$ is using its OS market share to proliferate its other products. This, in my opinion, isn't a bad thing, or at least it isn't as long as the prices stay where they are. Because as long as they do there is opportunity for a competing firm to take market share using good ol' competitive practices (such as marketing, which seems to matter a lot more than the usefullness of the product itself).
Just to let you know, I'm a 3 year computer science/EE major turned economics major (still in college) who dual-boots LinuxPPC and MacOS 9 (and soon the public beta of MacOS X, whenever it gets to my apartment).
"If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn."
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Hey, whoever is selling that windows is from my town, coeur d'alene! Not that it really matters much, just nice to see our hole of a town mentioned every once in a while.
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he doesn't exist.
The sad fact is that if the cost of the OS went up you would simply see a lot more illegal copies. This would also have the added benefit of spurring development of software for the open source OSes. People familliar with the open source operating systems would be in more demand and the "Shut up and reboot" technique of tech support would die.
Bring on the 1000 dollar windows :)
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
Their mission statement says Freedom to Innovate, and to think someone said they were a Microsoft shill....
You can tell how desperate Microsoft is when it pulls something like this. I think they must be following Hitler's philosophy that bigger lies are more likely to be believed by the public.
A thousand dollars a copy? I'm sorry, but Windows isn't a car. It isn't a material product with a cost of manufacture subject to economies of scale. Windows is a successful product, one which generates vast profits for Microsoft. Were it to be spun off into a separate company, the division which had windows would still continue to make money.
It's like Dennis Miller said, Bill Gates is one persian cat away from being the villian in a James Bond movie.
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Why would anyone want to be 100% Posix compliant? Are you including things like 1003.5 (Ada bindings)? 1003.19 (Fortran 90 bindings)?
Actually, Domino is a workgroup product, which requies DB and e-mail / messaging. Workgroup products are designed to build automated workflow (i.e. in enrolling a new employee, HR needs to put in some info, the forms need to be routed to sysadmin to create accounts, payroll for to creatae pay stuff, etc. Workflow systems automatically route all the data, use a database to centralize storage for queries, and use e-mails for notification of need to do action). As such, it's a great product. However, that also means all of it's e-mail is heavily overloaded, so it basically sucks.
Of course, it would be better if they would design it / redesign it to work with standard mail interfaces, so you could plug in any e-mail system.
It's about both really, although I've just paid £60 for Mandrake Linux 7.1 and after installing it I have yet to find a need to return to Windows 98 (perhaps when I want to watch 'the Matrix' again, but that's a whole other can of worms). You don't pay for the OS in OSS, you pay for the nice manuals, the 5 extra CDs full of applications and utilities, the 90 days support if you need it and privileged access to the update server, and the fact that you didn't have to download a 600MB ISO file at 6KB/s (god I hate British Telecom).
When you buy a product you dont try to understand the ins and outs of it assuming that it will fail. When a car breaks you take it to a service station and pay for it. Same goes for a software/PC. Irrespective of the OS/GUI/Tools something might fail. Get to know a good system service center or you next door geek. Wouldnt you do that for your car ? try not to figure out the basics of winnt/system32/etc/drivers/. . . you dont get under your car and start pulling out the parts for every minor sound that you hear.
Analogy beaten to death.
yes but apple oculd never be the next microsoft, because Mac OS runs on mac hardware, and mac hardware alone, which apple alone controls, the masses would want more choice than that, which apple tried, and killed the project back earlier in the ninties, coz it couldn't compete with the apple clone makers
but I can also get Linux for free...
All right, for those of us too lazy to go out and buy the book.... what is the DOJ's goal?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I will not dispute any of your facts presented at the beginning. You argue technicalities based on the really shitty writing. I will take issue with the ending, though.
You say that the common man doesn't know about alternative operating systems. I said as much in my statement. The thing is, wishing for Microsoft's seperation is not the means of enlightening the common man. Microsoft has not abused their market dominance anymore than AOL has. I don't see many of the linux zealots screaming form hari kari over AOL, though. The reason for this is quite simple: Microsoft offers a product that keeps people blissfully ignorant of Linux.
Why cheer for the break up of Microsoft? Here: It would be easier to let the government kill MS then it would be to make Linux user friendly. That is not to say that Linux isn't good today, for if I were to say that here I would be killed by Technobigots, but that linux has a lot of code evolution to go through. It may be powerful, and versatile, but none of the people are going to want to use it if it isn't easy. And for ease of use, Windows, MacOS, BeOS, and QNX all rate far better. Mind you, that this rank is not based quantitatively but qualititatively based on my work with each OS.
Pax Digitalia
The argument that currently popular Windows applications haven't been ported to Linux is commonly made, and while this is generally true, it may bode worse for those applications than for Linux.
If one looks at the currently popular Windows applications of a given class (word processor, spreadsheet, etc.), those applications were not always the most popular ones. In fact the major shifts in application popularity corresponds remarkably well with major shifts in platform popularity. In particular, both the market shift from CP/M and Apple II to DOS and from DOS to Windows were both accompanied by a toppling of the popular productivity applications at the time (e.g., Visicalc -> Lotus 1-2-3 -> Excel).
Of course the correlations are not 100% and there were other factors, but in general, the best applications on the newer platform tended to supplant the popular applications on the old platform. In many cases, this was due to the older applications not being ported to the newer platform -- for example Lotus took too long to come out with a decent Windows version of 1-2-3 and hence lost their market to Microsoft, who had a Windows version ready even before Windows was a popular stand-alone product; same thing with WordPerfect.
The bottom line is that Windows application vendors that don't port to Linux/BSD are taking a gamble - if Linux becomes a big desktop platform, these applications will risk loosing much of their ubiquity.
It amazes me that people are so willing to use law and the force of the government to beat down a private corporation. So you _demand_ that they continue to produce the operating system, and you _demand_ that they release it at a price that you like. It's so simple -- don't use it if you don't want to pay for it! There are ample alternatives.
The only thing holding down the price of Windows right now is the that MS has been trying to fly "under the radar" of the government. Once the two companies are broken up, OpCO would be fools not to crank up the price. The remedy's already gone through at that point, competition is theoretically "restored", and let the market forces do their work! If OpCO is charging too much, other companies will barrel in there, creating spiffy new and better products.
Are they going to charge $1000? No way. But if I was CEO of OpCO, I'd double the price of everything. There's no reason not too, and I have a responsibility to my shareholders.
It's not documented, but I'm using a three button Belkin mouse on my iMac running OS X Public Beta. The right most button now does a Windows style right-click, or in Mac terms control-click. And it does not seem to matter whether the app is OS X native ofr an OS 9 app running in the Classic environment.
And Steve Wozniak didn't get out of computing, he works on integrating computers into society. And he still buys at least 2 of everything Apple puts out.
But you are wrong, the core of Apple's OS, Darwin is derived from FreeBSD. Darwin will and has been compiled for Intel platforms and at least one person is working on an X Server for it.
Not 100% POSIX compliant?
What is it missing besides CDE and Motif? It's tough to be 100% compliant with an open system when there are proprietary pieces in the "standard." Now that they are opening up a bit, we'll see.
What other Posix requirements are missing from Linux? Maybe I'm just out of touch.
The reason why people have been using Windows for so long is because it's on the computer already and it's what everyone else uses. And it's what everyone else uses soleley because it's on the majority of consumer computer systems. If windows becomes so expensive that the system vendors have to charge $1000 for it, I'm sure they'll start looking into other options (i.e. linux). This might be how linux starts to dominate the desktop market.
Windows 95, 95 OSR1, 95 OSR2, 98, 98SE, NT 4 Workstation, NT 4 Server, NT 4 Enterprise, NT 4 Terminal Server, Win2k Professional, Win2k Server, Win2k Advanced Server, Win2k DataCenter, Whistler
Gaaaa!!! Way too many windoze to support, and it's getting worse every year. I had enough problems migrating people from Win3 to the Win95 std gui, even then some folks still prefer fileman over explorer! Though Office2k runs happily on Win95a, there are plenty of forced tie in upgrades via the network effect. I was royally pissed to find Win95a wouldn't support USB and that only an OEM upgrade version did. Same deal w/ an AMD 400Mhz cpu upgrade - win95a had a timing issue and Msft wasn't interested in fixing it, sorry AMD. Just yesterday I had to send out a memo to one dept with a 'newer' Office version reminding them to 'save as' an older version for a dept with older Office OR ELSE write up exactely what features your using in the new version that justifies spending $300/wrkstn for upgrades. Answer is that few people use any of the advanced features, the 'newer' version dept has what they have because it was purchased later or is a fashion/status symbol. With the market penetration Msft has, constant upgrades IS the Msft business model, even if it's the equivelent of trading in a perfectly good car for a new one with larger fins and rearranged taillights and that sleek, aerodynamic modern look (whoops, reboot).
Oh, yesterday I got royally pissed at NT4SP5 when a ras process got HUNG and would not terminate (something between WinGate and ras made ras think a port was in use, when you could bring up hyperterm and dial out with no prob!), forcing me to go around and log everyone off to reboot - Usually it is up for months and I leave it alone, serious, but do one thing unusual and it freaks, jeeez.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I admit. I like M$, here's why... If it wasn't for them damn winboxen and their applications crashing all the time I wouldn't be working.
So far, I can think of only three types of people who like Microsoft: 1. MSFT stockholders, 2. people who think that anything that makes money is inherently good, and 3. people whose jobs depend on it. Your statement puts you in the third category.
A WIDELY USED UNSTABLE O/S MAKES MONEY
CHILDREN!! Ask any sysadmin what they spend the majority of their time fixin, Linux or M$.
And you actually like it for this reason? This is the stupidest thing I've read all day (but the day's still young). Wouldn't you rather be spending your time getting work done, doing innovative things and make money? That's what I can do all day long because I don't have to waste time trying to make Microsoft stuff work.
I'm sick of all these whiny people bitching and moaning about how unfair M$ is.
And I'm sick of all these whiny Microsoft apologists making stupid arguments.
Don't get me wrong, they're all got their merits but M$ has been at the forfront of ease of use for a long time.
What a nice opinion.
Ever try configuring hardware in NIX? Pain in the ass for a sysadmin like me let alone a user.
I configure hardware under UNIX all the time. Since you seem to be spinning your wheels in the point-and-click land of NT system reboot^H^H^H^H^H^Hadministration, I'm not surprised that you find it difficult to configure hardware under UNIX. Since I have some knowledge in that area, I don't find it so difficult. This is true for all system administration and computer use, for that matter: if you are trained and skilled, then it is easy. Otherwise, it is difficult. Tell me: if Microsoft is so "easy to use," then why is there such a thing as MCSE?
M$ makes some damn good free stuff. Look at how nicely IE has matured.
IE is not free. Microsoft has admitted that much of the price of Win98 was comprised of "research and development," and they have also admitted that much of their "research and development" was done inr IE. I bet you also think that IIS comes "free" with NT server.
MS has been there for me and many other admins (even though they won't admit it) for many years now.
They've been there for you, standing behind you, asking you to bend over...
My alliance to the dark side of the force is stronger than ever. JOIN THE EMPIRE!
I can't see why, considering the numerous idiotic statements you've made regarding the specious merits of Microsoft. I'm guessing that this has more to do with what psychologists call "cognitive dissonance": the inability to hold two disparate ideas simultanously. For example, you may have trouble simultaneously understadning "Microsoft makes me a lot of money," and "Microsoft makes poor technology, tries to force people to pay for it, and it unethical in general." People in this situation (see also: Scientology) often make all sorts of moronic statements and defend their point of view with vitrol and excess exclamation points.
But it's just a guess.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
"Although Microsoft might have market power, it has not in the past exercised this power, as I demonstrated in my book with Steve Margolis."
Don't think there's been enough air getting under the rock he's hiding beneath all these years.
Nuff said.
Free music from Jack Merlot.
Try Posix threads, which Linus and Alan Cox have said will never be Posix compliant because the standard's so broken. There is Ada bindings for Linux (Florist), though.
Honestly, Posix complaint usually refers to 1003.1 & 1003.2, and the only I know of there is that no one wants to pay for standards checking each Distro version.
"// this is the most hacked, evil, bastardized thing I've ever seen. kjb"
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
I honestly hope the market gets bitten in the ass for its knee jerk reactions about Microsoft. Microsoft managed to bring computing to the modern person. When Jobs stole the idea of a User Friendly GUI from PARC, he was credited with bringing computers to the common person. Yet macintoshes are no the number 1 computer today. Even if Microsoft were fighting unfairly, certainly such 'innovation' would be the wedge Apple needed to dominate the market. But they made a mistake: they restricted the market to a certain type of hardware. And since Unix/Linux was, and still is, not a viable option for simple users, Microsoft stepped in to fill a niche. They did this well and produced software that was actually pretty good for the common man. Now they face the same fate as William Wallace. It would be insane to assume that the OS could maintain its place in the market, as was the intention, which means something will have to give. I doubt quality will give, as Microsoft has seen a steady decline in quality, so price seems to be the next logical move. MS Apps already cost a lot. Do we want to see the OS rising to those prices, and the Apps gorwing even higher yet? Technological elitism needs to stop. Quit poking your fucking Microsoft voodoo dolls, and work on making a product the dumb, the poor, or the disabled can use effectively. The death of the only widescale simple OS will not make Linux better, nor will it make Apple better. You write the fucking kernel, not Microsoft. You shape the future of Linux. Get your shit together and stop worrying about Microsoft. If your OS is truly better for the common man, then he will overcome his ignorance soon enough.
Pax Digitalia
Who cares how much Windows costs. Bill Gates has bleed the populas for far too long anyway. I say raise the price, let the idiots pay that much for it, and let people with common sense use Linux.
One contained just the bug fixes that SE also included. It did not include Internet Connection Sharing or other "New Features". That was the cheap one.
That was just the 98 Service Pack 1, avaiable on CD for $5.95, or freely downloadable.
Upgrading from Win98 to Win98SE has always costed around $90 list.
Not true. $19.95 list. It was originally called "Step-Up," although I think they changed the name of it right before release. Here's some info.
Cheers,
extremely large grain of salt? as viewed from where? space? are you sure they didn't type extremely large salt mine?
Mabe we will get lucky and Windows will cost 1 grand or even more. This will force consumers to take a good look at what the're getting and what they were really getting when it was only 100 bux. This turn of events would not only overturn M$'s current 'Evil Empire' status, but would allow the avarage "techno-bozo" user to discover the efficiency and value of Open software (BSD/Linux in perticular). This may not be as 'humane' as a willing and gradual transition, but it would be interesting to see how this situation plays out in the long run. Price hikes could have a much larger impact than the current legal litigaton.
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Perversely greped and groped by PowerPenguin
So if Microsoft is broken up, Windows becomes $1000, and everyone switches to Linux. Where's the problem?
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
While I am an attorney, this is not legal advice. If you need legal advice contact an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction.
:)
:)
But you may take my economics as absolute truth
I read the entire Starr report. I read the entire Findings of Fact. I read the entire Conclusions of Law.
I could only make it about ten pages into this, even wearing boots (O.K., I'm wearing the pythons today, and I don't want them permanently stained
It is sheer an utter nonsense, the type of lying that is normally done with statistics rather than economics. If this were submitted as a field exam by a graduate student, he would fail . . .
Start with the "low price strategy" as applied to Windows. Complete rubbish. Yes, MS may have charged less than it might have, but the evidence has shownn--and there are explicit findings in the FoF--that microsoft used its monopoly power to charge nearly double the competitive price for windows. This is the *only* part of a desktop computer whose price has risen rather than decreased over the last 20 years.
The argument about not pricing high because the OS is a small percentage of the system cost and therefore a large increase in OS price would only be a small increase in system price is similarly specious: microsoft *has* raised the price in this regard. Furthermore, he seems to be willfully ignoring the fact that MS holds a "contestable monopoly"--it *can* be taken away, and this possiblity *limits* how badly microsfot can abuse its power in setting prices (but does *not* eliminate the power).
Another act of willful ignorance is in the "double marginalization" argument. For this to hold in the manner presented, mere market power by both is not enough--full monopoly power (or at least very close) is needed. However, Office's market power is a dirct consequence of the Windows market power: it comes from bundling both with the system. Break the windows/office tie, and Offfice's market power is drastically reduced.
While I'm at it, there is further error (or at least misdirection) in classifying windows and office as "complementary" for this purpose--people will buy an OS and office software, but (other than illegal acts which microsoft unconvincingly denies) there is nothing making office any more complementary to windows than star office or word perfect is.
While I'm at it, he is correct that ms chose a low price strategy for office--actually, the inherited policy from word and excel, which did indeed drive down prices *for the entire market*. MS figured (correctly, as it turns out) that it could make more by selling more copies at a lower price than the $500 typical asking price for a word processor or spreadsheet tat the time (street prices were lower, but ms still came out way ahead). What is ignored is that microsoft reached this strategy prior to having power in that market. [sidenote: this dates to a time when microsoft wrote quality software that was clearly better than most of its competions {Yes, I'm old enough to remember that . . . }].
hawk, an en economics professor whose opinions aren't for sale to the highest bidder
This is what I've heard, but I haven't actually tried it out. I've still got the X Men preview, so I'll give it a go and see what happens
So to the average Thai, Windows does cost $1000 compared to their wages. Is it any wonder then that piracy is so rampant in these countries? It's not through some inherent maliciousness, but simply because the originals are so outrageously priced that no one can afford them. The same goes for other consumer media such as DVDs, VCDs, CDs etc. which are often even more expensive than the West (even to a Westerner like me).
There is a lesson here. Claims that Microsoft could increase its price for Windows to $1000 are ridiculous because no one would buy it. Even corporations who would quickly migrate at the first sign of this happening. There's simply nothing compelling about Windows that would cause people to shell out, especially with so many cheaper (and free) alternatives around.
If you are a user who obtains Windows software by legal means, (such as from a store.. there has to be at least one or two of you left) odds are fairly good that you have paid almost that much already.
.. but all it did was fix bugs.)
See, Microsoft is a 'lets-make-money-forget-the-customers' company -- they charge for everything, including every piddly little upgrade for Windows. (The Windows 98 -> SE upgrade is almost $90 from EggHead.com
Windows 95 Upgrade (From 3.11) - $125
Windows 98 Upgrade (From 95) - $125
Windows 98 SE Upgrade (From 98) - $125
The FULL versions of these pieces of software are at least twice as much. (At least here in Canada.. granted, our currency is worth slightly more then a pile of donkey shit.)
Oddly enough, Microsoft sent me a copy of Milennium for free. (I beta tested it for them.) Guess where it is now?
(Answer to rethorical question: on my coffee table, making sure that wet glasses don't leave moisture rings!)
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CitizenC
The difference, young jim ;), is that Xerox's corporate management had no intention of using the technology that Apple bought from them. A while later they realized just what a mistake they had made and tried to sue Apple about it, but their bad management decision was already made. So, really, Apple wasn't buying a potential or actual competitor (as Microsoft tends to do) but buying a technology that the company who sold it had no interest in. I don't have a problem with that, do you?
When Microsoft tends to get into a market, they buy up some small company who would have been a competitor and then they stomp around and investors in all the other MS competitors get scared.
One of the big problems of severely large monopolies is that they have too much influence over the economy. It may be painful in the short term to cut down a monopoly, but in the long-term, a more diverse economic system where more companies share the power makes for a more stable and productive system. Look at the stock market every time a significant MS occurrence happens. There shouldn't be that big an effect from one single company!
ever call their 1-900 support line?
Why would anyone pay $1000 for Windows? They still haven't fixed any of the basic problems with the system since 95! They just add more bells and whistles (to break) in each new release! Of the things that are still less than atequite on Windows (especially the new ME): - Socket support is still a POS. I have to shut down every socket-related app before connecting and disconnecting online, otherwise Windows Explorer (and the OS) pukes. - Removeable media is still poorly supported. Before shutting down my machine, I have to figure out which zip disk I had in the zip drive when I booted. If that same disk isn't in the drive, I get my favorite blue screen of death. - Still using the DOS filesystem. Even with fat32, we're still using a very archaic structure. Why do I want to separate my filesystem based on partitions? And IO is still terrible! The only reason I even have windows is because my work said I needed it, and purchased the license for me. The world would be so much better off if people downloaded linux, or bought a linux distribution (cheap!), and used the rest of the money they would have spent on windows and buy books on linux.
The next generation search engine -- TRY IT!
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -- "Step Right Up", Tom Waits
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Having seen ghost in action, I have to say that it is a godsend for rolling out large numbers of identical workstations. At school, we use it do do a fresh install on every machine in the computer lab at the beginning of each semester.
It great, being able to do FULL installs of N machines simultaniously. After 15-20 min (PIO mode 4 drives) all the machines have been cloned, and after that, all they need is a reboot, and to be given a unique network name.
As far as I know, currently, the closest thing to this for Linux is Redhat's kickstart, which just keeps the settings, but requires that each machine get an individual install... doable for 5, hell on 50.
(yes, I know that there was a post the other day in the multicast software distro thread about somebody working on a Linux ghost proggy, but as of right now, nothing EXISTS)
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
My apologies. I pulled an ASS-U-ME. I assumed he was referring to a different Gallup Poll which I was recalling seeing from memory.. lemme see if I can dig up a link to reassure myself that I'm not completely on crack :)
Do not taunt Happy-Fun Ball
Oh So Hard To Rip Up.
Aside from Wintel, who else do you pay a premium for an OS? SUN? Apple? HP? You get the damn thing with your hardware, as intended. Apps get reduced in cost in porportion to the community that buys them (wanna guess why you pay for native Dev packs now?)
Nice FUD, but if M$ charges 1k+ for the OS, they are going to disappear faster than SCO, and the other M$ will be porting to anything they can.
39 pages that breaks down in the exec sum. M$ lobbyist can't even pass ECON 101. Let's hope the circuit court can.
Seriously, I would *want* to see an annual fee for software. Just imagine if you could rent a piece of software like that, on an annual or monthly basis:
I'd think that a "software for rent" system has its advantages.
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You may like my a cappella music
Man, around here, a new set of Windows will cost you roughly $3,000 for a whole house. I'm assuming this $1,000 price tag suggestion is for a whole house. Even if it is just for one floor, it's still cheaper.
If you use a server version, you already have to spend bucketloads on the damned software licenses... for each fun thing you might like to do... "client access licenses" I believe they call them. ramps the cost well beyond the $1000.
then of course there are SQL7 and other "premium" stuff.
That is a dangerous assumtion. CP/M was firmly entrenched, then along came PCs and DOS. Wordperfect had most of the wordprocessing market, then Word overtook it. The assumtion that because something is entrenched people will continue to buy it only works until its sucessor arrives and ousts it.
This guy completely leaves out the possibility (and if he is a MICROS~1 shill, he probably doesn't want to think of it) that if the price of Windows goes up, customers will simply stop buying it. Windows != the computer economy. iMacs are very popular in the mass market recently...
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
Does grandma have to even know she has a windows/system directory? Will joe ever need to even See a DOS prompt?
... but there's really no point in arguing it.
No, and that's exactly my point. They don't know or care about such things, so why should they know or care about them in Linux, either?
Of the few things Windows has going for it is the fact that you can do pretty much anything that would come up in normal use without actually having to know anything about how the system works.
Linux is pretty much at that point now, if you're running the latest-and-greatest and it has been properly setup.
Yes, Linux requires proper setup. So does Windows. The thing that really makes Windows "easy" is that it comes pre-loaded on the HP Pavilions at Wal-Mart.
Most of the time you can't simply pop in a cd or double click an icon and have a program install on the first try with obvious icons and easy to understand instructions for its features...
The support is there. Most of the time, it doesn't work because it's a Windows disc you just bought. Duh. Software companies tend to focus on the product that has 95% of the market.
Then why are you arguing it?
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
>Um... you obviously do not understand how these things work. How do you think Windows got installed on that computer, as a gift
>from your OEM?
I meant ``since" in the temporial sense. As in ``_after_ I bought the machine."
And at least I got install media with it. Nowadays, the best some poor sucker can hope for when you buy a computer with the Windows' license is a CD that will wipe & reinstall the original image of the hard drive.
Sorry to be unlcear.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
dvdug wrote:
Try Posix threads, which Linus and Alan Cox have said will never be Posix compliant because the standard's so broken.
No, they said the native kernel threading model will never be Posix compliant. They have also expressed interest in supporting a userspace implementation of Posix threads, but only if it doesn't require bad kernel patches.
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Open mind, insert foot.
Erm, yeah I realized this after taking a second look at your post. That "since" you put in there was kinda ambiguous. My mistake.
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
Dude, go take an economics 101 course, okay? Take it at night if you've got a real job.
First, MS hasn't put as much into R&D as they have into mergers & acquisitions. Buying up companies that have a new idea isn't called research, it's called stifling competition.
You also dispute the original article's assertion that there are no real alternatives. Yes, there is Linux. Yes, I use it. No, it's NOT ready for the corporate desktop. It's closer this year than it was last year, though.
As for OpCO jacking the price, they would be foolish to try it, although I suspect they will. The big advantage of Linux is that it has no cost. RedHat or Caldera or SuSe (to pick 3 in no order) provide a convenient package, and they pre-test for compatabilty, and provide support. That costs $$$, say about 1/3 to 1/4 of what WinME costs. Sure you want to make it 1/8?
Finally, keep in mind this is the first time MS has been up against a competitor they can't buy and can't beat for price points. It should be interesting...
Meow.
Yes, that's really my e-mail. Don't change a thing.
But if a user steps out of those bounds in Windows they tend to sink like a rock as well, so what's your point.
Microsoft's (or Gate's) popularity has nothing to do with whether or not they broke the law. That is for the courts to decide. Nor does their market share have any relationship to the quality (or lack thereof) of their products.
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Oops, this should have been in there . . .
For the record, I *am* a hard-core free-market type, and am firmly in the Bork/Posner camp on antitrust law. Indeed, over time the market *will* break the microsoft monopoly without government intervention--but in the meantime, consumers are suffering starggering hands at the hands of the monopoly, and chances at economic growth are being permanently lost.
hawk
I would pay $1,000 for a terrorist to drive a bomb into Redmond.
--
"What do you want me to do? Whack a guy? Off a guy? Whack off a guy? Cause I'm married."
No applications from Adobe? How about FrameMaker?
-Waldo
If you say "The University of Texas", most people will understand you to mean the flagship Austin campus. The author of this paper is not from the University of Texas. He's from one of the other much smaller and far less prestigious branches of the UT system which should always be referred to by their full names, in this case, UT-Dallas. It provides some useful perspective that this guy does not hail from a top ten business school (i.e., UT) but rather a second or even third-tier institution.
Man, I got no idea of what the hell this means. I mean... What do "pay" and "Windows" mean? This is S-L-A-S-H-D-O-T here.
This story is evidently a troll coming straight from the Evil Empire itself. Don't read or listen to them! They're trying to pervert us with incohenrent yet subversive words!
/max
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
(Component prices from pricescan.com)
$509 PIII-933MHz
85 20GB HD
99 128 MB 133MHz SDRAM
175* 17" M781 monitor
150* 32 MB NVIDIA TNT2 M64 AGP
35 48x CD-ROM,
24 SB 64V
50* Altec Lansing ACS-340 speaker system
15 3C905C ethernet card
60* Some sort of motherboard
50* Basic Keyboard and Mouse, case & power supply
???? and a 1 year service policy.
======
$1252.00
For a savings of $417 from the Dell price, you can build it yourself (minus any extra shipping costs for the separate parts, of course). The only problem is there's no support. Of course, for that much, you should be able to hire a consultant to fix it.
(* Specific item not found at pricescan. Estimated based on similar products)
Anyone here ever played the Monopoly board game with the FTC involved? It's fun as hell. Especially when you own the railroads and you refuse passage for the federal investigators. hehehe
The Original Celebrated Curiously Strong GHOST (mentha lemures)
Who is going to take the call when granny needs to install gaim on her new computer and needs root access?
What people keep forgetting is that "granny" is a niece market, indeed to some extent all markets are. One problem with Windows is that it trys to be a "jack of all trades" and manages most things badly. (Saying that it manages being a standalone single user machine the best. Connect it to a LAN or want multiple users and you are soon into headache teritory.)
Much easier to tell them to stick a CD in the drive, click install, and be done with it.
Rembering to cross fingers that it will work and that no other application will suddenly start misbehaving.
Windows is EXCELLENT for newbies
Except that it is hardly "excellent" in terms of ease of use also it isn't a good idea to give a newbie something which is quite trivial for them to break
and that is why it is sold with almost all computers today
Actually the reason that Windows is on virtually all new computers is the result of Microsoft's selling arrangments. i.e. "If you only bundle our product then it costs X per unit, if you don't then it costs Y per unit. Where Y>>X (Assuming we will sell it all)" N.B. this kind of thing is also illegal in many parts of the world.
and I feel personally responsible that the final product is so damn bad. I mean, the beta cds work fine, but the final one trashes my video drivers and prevents icq from running! Ridiculous
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
1000 bucks? If only there was a free (beer) alternative....
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"Almost isn't good enough - but it's almost good enough."
-Me
MS knows this ... but when has MS payed attention to mathmatical law, let alone any kind of law?
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
PalmOS runs on enough machines to be counted as a conventional OS. *ahem*
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
It's the University of Texas @ DALLAS : Try this URL : http://www.utdallas.edu/directory/
Seriously, that's pretty unlikely. As an IT Professional , the most common arguments I hear about open source products are:
Who's going to support it?
If it's free, it isn't worth anything.
What happens when it breaks?
Open Source Programs are buggy. Look at how often they're updated.
What if the author gives up the project?
As an Open Source advocate, I know these arguments are based largely on FUD. We don't need to rehash this here. But I'd like to bring up a answer to the $1000 M$ operating system that isn't opensource (and watch everyone go nuts:
What about Solaris? Runs on the Intel Platform, and can run just about everything Linux can. Yet Solaris is backed by Sun - who isn't going away any time soon (much to Bill Gates' chagrin) and is a large name that IT managers and investors can trust. Sun's Solaris license is pretty liberal - at Linuxworld, they were giving copies of it away and telling people to install it on every desktop in their company. M$ would blow a blood vessel just thinking about ordering their PR guys to say something like that.
I think Windows has only a few years of life left in it. People are starting to get hip to the fact that there's high quality software out there for free, just waiting for a nice lil' Intel or AMD to call home. Once John Q. Public embraces this, Bill Gates could price Windows at $1.99 per copy and people would most likely select something else, as 99% of computer users know Windows is crap.
I didn't intend for this to be a MS bash post (but this is Slashdot, after all) - I just wanted to raise thoughts about other free OSs besides Linux and BSD. Yeah, Solaris has strings attached on the license. So what? You can get it for nothing, or next to nothing. It's high quality software, and the company will be supporting it for some time to come. Those are the selling point to John Q. Public and the IT management folks.
The windows learning curve is steep if you consider the problems associated with the OS itself, hardware problems, drivers, etc. It isn't exactly a NetPC or a WebTV for that matter. Every non-power user has a power user buddy they call on these frequent times of emergencies.
You shouldn't be so Linux-centric, if what you say is true there's always the Mac.
You are *such* an HTML queen!
<smirk>
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If the natural price of Windows is $1000 and it turns out that people don't want to pay that much when they know the price in advance, then I guess the product just isn't viable.
And it's funny that he talks about $300 billion damage to the world economy, but fails to mention that the benefit to the economy is many, many times that, for a humungous net increase.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
How does that hurt the tech market? They'll then be able to use other products instead. There are alternatives out there that are a lot easier to use than Windows (you mentioned the iMac yourself) and more importantly, the economy will finally be repaired to the point where it will be even easier for more alternatives to be developed. Until this happens, Microsoft will do its best to crush advances. Compare what personal computers can do these days, to what they could do fifteen years ago. Not much of a difference, huh? You think that ending this stagnation will hurt the tech market?!
This guy wants the government to subsidize Microsoft by not enforcing the law against them, thereby giving them a competitive advantage over every other company. I would rather let the market choose which OS lives and which one dies, rather than government subsidies. Then if Microsoft finds that they have to charge $1000 in order to make a profit on the sale of a copy of Windows, the market can decide whether or not that's a good price.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
they can't seem to follow simple logic: economist: double marginalization ( you'd pay for a browser and OS and that surely costs more than the bundle ) uhh...says who? M$ can charge "profit maximizing" amounts for the bundle too ( and they do; right down to charging you to fix their bugs) ...of course if they're split up then I might
not by either piece of software from M$
( that's the anti-monopoly part guys ).
Stan Liebowitz represents himself as an "academic" but in fact is a paid shill for Microsoft. It was Liebowitz who pushed the UT Business School into a long-term contract with Microsoft which not only locked them into using Microsoft software but forced students to use it as well. Liebowitz likewise designed course materials -- such as a Web design course -- which taught students only about Microsoft products and tools and omitted information on industry standards and on alternative products. (One goal of this course appeared to be to teach students to create pages that would be visible only from Internet Explorer and not from other browsers.) Liebowitz is now paid by Microsoft to lecture all over the country as an "independent" academic who just happens to embrace Microsoft's stance on every issue. He is clearly not only a sellout but a dangerous fraud.
"pcAnywhere -- Linux has ssh and X for secure remote login and display."
I use pcAnywhere to connect to our NT server and vnc to connect to our Linux machine.
I prefer vnc. It's free (in both ways), it's simpler and quicker to install (simple small viewer on windows, just run it, no restarts ..), it's multi-platform (pcAnywhere doesn't work at all on Linux, vnc works on Windows and *nix (and mac IIRC)), it supports true and high-colour (pcAnywhere downgrades visuals to 8-bit), you can run multiple "desktop's" with vnc if you run the server on a *nix box, and vnc also feels quite a bit faster to me. This is somewhat surprising, as the Linux box is a Pentium 200/32MB/10MBit, while the NT server is Pentium II 450/128MB/100MBit. I haven't tried to run the vnc server on the NT box yet though, that would be the most fair test.
Moderators: this was a valid question/statement ...
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
According to the narrow minded blind, deaf and dumb professor, the world has no competition AND no company in the world wants to make a proffit.
First, IF windows cost $1000 a copy, companies would be scrabling to write their own OS's to cut into the OS market and grab their piece of the proffits. No one would allow M$ to get away with making that much money willingly.
Second, PC users would not upgrade their versions of windows, and Linux would look much more enticing as a "free" OS.
Third, The problem of "Double Marginalization", while real, is already happening with Windowns and M$ Office because of the monopoly abuse. Since the products together have no significant competition M$ has already increased the price to above the maximize profit level. We are already at the high level that the article is talking about. So breaking up the company will subject the company to price it's products on the Profit Maximization intersection, not above it.
The article is assuming that the two products "complete" against each other, that one can't operate without the other, but that is wrong. The OS is not dependant on the Office Suite. It just seems that way because it's been done for the last 5 years or so.
Fifth, as the cost of the OS increases, it will be more subject to piracy issues, further decreasing profit.
The End
I was working with the USDA Forest Circus when they decided to switch Lotus Notes/Domino as their email system nationally. Notes may be a DB product, but it is certainly marketed as a mail product.
Although I agree that anyone switching to this product strictly for it's mail functions (as they did) is phucked, I have to contest your statement that "there's nothing particularly wrong with Notes/Domino". In spite of the fact that it offers lots of groovy calendaring functions, it's an email client that the users cannot import their personal address books to. Even after I'd converted several outlook and applixware (shudder) address books to tab delimited flat files, the IBM-employee Lotus gurus we'd brought in to facilitate the switchover insisted it couldn't be done.
Did IBM just assume that no one who had used another email client would ever switch to notes? Actually, that may be a fair assessment.
Wait... you mean you still haven't joined the ACLU?
Eazel is supposed to make Linux easy to use for the very people Windows/Mac OS targets, and it will run on top of Linux:
Eazel
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
And I could've sworn that Windows could only get better...
Seriously though, if Microsoft is broken up, then that should be sufficient impetus to the OpCo to start producing higher quality software, as they will no longer be able to count on being bouyed by the Applications side of things.
Um, what polls are you looking at? Every single poll I've seen has shown between 55-70% of people against a breakup.
I got " No employee record was found for the name that you entered"
Too bad, I wanted to thank the guy for producing an entertaining story.
As for a $1000 Windoze, suits me fine. It would give the entire PC manufacturing community lots of reasons to support Linux and to put money into the kind of development that is yet to be done in order to make Linux and its applications usable for one's computer illiterate grandparents.
I really want to see that. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to advise somebody who's new to computers to buy a computer, spend a day showing them the ropes, and NOT have to provide unpaid customer support afterwards?
However, I really don't think anybody at M$hit is really stupid enough to commit to the course of suicidal stupidity described in the PDF.
In a post-breakup environment, they would have to compete for real with stable operating systems under circumstances where the developer community momemtum would be out the door from their viewpoint. Their options will be to cut prices and improve product quality in order to stay in business.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Mindspring? Don't they use MS as the desktop running vantive as the troubleticket system? See your boss knows linux isn't a business o/s.
I am really surprised at how stupid your response is. First, you did not address any of the points I brought up. Second, you attempted to respond to my post by bashing Linux as something that "...[is not] a business OS" when my argument had nothing to do with what is the best "business OS." Third, you assumed that mindspring is "my boss" which they are not -- they *were* my ISP, and were never my employer.
I suggest trying to respond to my points. You'll probably come up with a much better argument.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
It is disappointing to observe the low level of reasoning reflected in so many posts on the topic of alleged increased costs to the consumer to the tune of $1000 for Windows following a break-up of Microsoft.
Point 1. Microsoft acts as a monopoly, therefore market-based reasoning is misapplied in this case.
It is simplistic to claim that people would not pay $1000 for the Windows OS. Microsoft would make them pay . The very point about Microsoft to which many object (though perhaps confusedly in most cases) is that it acts unfairly. Unfair means using monopolist power used to gain excess profit. Since, to the end user, "the OS is the box" Microsoft has pursued a single-minded strategy which boils down to seizing the main gateway to the PC - the OS - and then using it to extract excess profit. Their strategy has hardly been a secret: "Microsoft in your cellular phone and PDA, not to mention oven and refrigerator". Microsoft already, now, coerces consumers into paying for its bloatware. In short, Microsoft created a cash cow and is milking it furiously. On the hardware end prices go down while power and quality increases. That is closer to a market functioning properly (although the argument can be made that Intel has used incremental progress in its x86 architecture to create its own "cash cow"). It is even reasonable to suppose that the $1000-for-Windows claim is a test "scare" designed to prepare for the day when Microsoft will make the consumer, literally, pay for the government's intervention in its monopoly.
Point 2. Whether people "care" about the Microsoft monopoly or not is besides the point.
Stepping in to limit monopoly power is properly included in the list of the government's powers, as is stepping in to defend the country, building highways or putting John Gotti behind bars. In fact, there is an argument to be made that the OS for Intel or Intel-type machines is a "natural monopoly" which should be closely regulated by the government. The speed of innovation and its "virtual" character have outpaced the government's ability to respond. Intervention is most effective when it is preventative and the government should have stepped in much sooner. This would doubtless have prevented the current situation, when Microsoft has illegitimately used its position to amass wealth which it is using to maintain and gain additional monopoly positions as well as to fend off government attempts to intervene. As for the average consumer, their apathy, particularly in the face of concerted, massive PR organized by Microsoft, is understandable.
"A democracy is a bad way of governing, but there is no better system of governing."
To think that anyone would pay $1000 for such an OLD technology is past me.
It seems to me that if you have a market of millions the cost of the OS would only be a couple of $. The cost of the media and manuels would be more.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
At Dell, for $1669, you can get a PIII-933MHz with a 20GB HD, 128 MB 133MHz SDRAM, 17" M781 monitor, 32 MB NVIDIA TNT2 M64 AGP, 48x CD-ROM, SB 64V, Altec Lansing ACS-340 speaker system, 3C905C ethernet card, Basic Keyboard and Mouse, and a 1 year service policy.
I call that pretty much top of the line. Sure, you don't get all the snazziest peripherals (Jaz/Zip drive, CD burner, DVD, printer... no printer!!! ack), but that's a nice system.
Go someplace else online and select components yourself and put it together, and you could get it for closer to $1000-1200. $1700 indeed... moron.
I don't find $1000 unreasonably low at all!
Eric
PS I'm ranting about information pg 7-8 of his "report"
'cause I'm not going to annotate the whole stupid thing.
;)
Incidentally, I'm viewing this in Adobe Acrobat Reader for Linux x86.
OF COURSE the breakup is going to change their pricing structure. Competition generally drives prices *lower*.
Please tell me what Microsoft's 'low price strategy' is. They sell Windows and Office separately now anyhow.
How could the Windows software environment *possibly* be less predictable?
Please give examples of any actual "Microsoft Innovation" that doesn't involve buying other companies.
No one would pay $800 for an OS when they can pay that for a computer now.
Prices dropped for Word Processors and Spreadsheets due to competition; everyone made them, and they came standard with a computer. Later, we get unfair competition: I never paid for MS-Works, back in the day; it was bundled. And a lot of companies went out of business, or disappeared.
Corel hasn't been solvent for a long time; it has nothing to do with their recent plans, which are quite good. They've just been leaking money.
You can already do everything low-level in Word BASIC. I move that it be considered part of the OS, and removed from Office, and preferably the Universe as well.
Ever hear of MySQL? It's free...
If AppCo becomes a competitor to OpCo... well, maybe they'll get broken up again. I was hoping for a 'Networking' division, too.
A game console really shouldn't have an OS, but that's completely separate from the hardware, since that stuff should be on the cartridge. Also, different gaming companies should be free to use it or not.
"Lower Quality Windows OS"? Bwahaha...
It genuinely scares me when paper-pushers think Microsoft==Computers==Innovation. Nothing could be further than the truth.
I give up. Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.
Since I don't consider this a serious debate, I haven't outlined all my points clearly, but if you wish to debate, pick a point and I will elaborate. I think this whole thing is incredibly pathetic, though.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
One advantage of the microsoft monopoly in terms of efficiency that you never hear mentioned is that Microsoft can have massive internal reuse of code- somthing that can be difficult in a closed source environment.
I'll be glad to see microsoft split up, even though it'll probably mean some loss of tax revenues for the USA as overseas companies pick up some of the slack. But it's not the end of the world.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
One of the things that pains me most about the way MS develops software, is that they are perpetually working on *symptomatic* treatments of the problems in their software, rather than fixing the root causes. This attitude seems to permeate across their entire range of software.
When your computer is hosed by a virus, MS does not say "ok we'll improve the underlying security model in our next version of Windows", they say "it's your fault for not running an anti-virus and keeping up to date with the latest virus updates". Or, rather than admitting that Outlook has horrible security holes, they throw their hands in the air and say "e-mail viruses that can format your hard disk are just a natural unfortunate result of everyone's desire for everything to be mega-connected" (para-phrasing a quote from an actual MS exec after the ILuvYou mess.) When they write vulnerable software, rather than admitting that they merely couldn't be bothered to improve the security, they just say "well, hackers are at fault here for being such bad people, they should be put in jail". Same for virus writers. So windows has tens of thousands of viruses - Microsoft just says "we should just make it clear that virus writing is bad and that virus writers should be punished." Sort of like always leaving your front door wide open whenever you go anywhere, and then blaming the police for being slack when you get broken into.
Symantec has a number of "crash-protection" products, purely symptomatic "fixes", for which there would be no market at all had Windows not been so unstable.
Each new version of Windows seems to have a bunch of new tools to try work around existing problems in Windows - Windows 98 loads background programs to scan the registry in the background, looking for errors, and fixing them whenever the registry corrupts itself. They advertised this as a wonderful new feature of 98, but did anybody ask why the registry is corrupting itself in the first place?
MS has been making a lot of noise recently also about the wonderful new features of their new package management software: packages (like MS Office) will now automatically detect if system files they require have been corrupted, or have been deleted, and will reinstall them if they have. And yet Joe Public does not know enough to think to ask, "but why are those files getting corrupted in the first place?"
I'm sick of it, quite frankly. Why are they so afraid of just fixing the underlying causes of these problems? I'm a software developer for Windows, and my machine crashes on average around 1 to 3 times a day (and NO this is not faulty hardware or buggy drivers - this average has been about the same for at least 5 totally different computers I've worked on over the years.) I am so sick of the crashes. I am so sick of spending hours and days finding bugs that turn out to be some basic design flaw in Windows (one recent example, my software just kept totally locking up the machine, as it turned out I had deadlock involving a DirectX surface lock and a sockets "sendto" - both of these seem to grab the monstrous design flaw known as the "Win16mutex" - a single global mutex that can squelch the operating system itself). Don't even get me started on the days and weeks spent trying to figure out the screwed up Microsoft API's, that don't work properly, or where the documentation is just plaing wrong, or are badly designed. Some days I really just feel like quitting my job and finding myself a job doing *nix programming. I love the work we do though, I don't want to do any other type of work (realtime 3d graphics simulators). In South Africa those jobs are almost non-existent.
No, I didn't warez it. I won it at the Microsoft RoadShow, just for attending. I like Winodws 2000, but I would never pay $1000 for a workstation version. As far as Windows ME goes, I think the Windows team went a little too egotistical with that one (get it?!?! Okay, there's the corny nerd humor of the day). Considering that the DOS boot disk is dead, and that every current version of Windows isn't just a GUI overlay for DOS now, the Windows sector might be doomed to repeat the mistakes of other "innovators."
On a slightly offtopic note, I managed to execute seven windows of Quake3. It took up a whopping 1200780 kilobytes (yes, nearly 1.2 GIGAbytes) of memory (320 MB of that being physical). So THAT will be the absolute limit of my system. Stuff like that is nice to know.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
not to go too far with this, but look at Mac OS. Mac users say how easy it is to do things in it. I personally find it a SOB to use(at least from a administration POV).
As for helping your dad, the reason most people have problems with the basics of computing is that they overcomplicate the task. It's a learned helplessness that they've picked up. Face it, we're the computer generation, so we find it easier to do things with them because we were brought up with them. When you introduce something new and complex, like computers, to an audience that's not been brought up using them, then they're going to have more basic problems.
(BTW, my mother is probably the best example of "lost cause" in computing)
It's also easier for most people to ask for help when they know they'll get it. It's easier than thinking. I'm guilty of it, just as many of us are. I'd rather ask someone who knows the answer and can fix it than toil with the problem for hours. It's easier.
I like Mandrake. But you said "try to do something harder than writing letters or playing games." Tell me, if a user steps out of those bounds, how do you think they'll hold up in linux? They'll sink like a 50 pound rock. That's also my other beef with linux -- it's still unecessarily complicated -- FOR THE MASSES (read: don't start flaming me).
To finish off, I didn't say that Windows was hands down easy to use. Someone off the street couldn't come in without any computing experience and sit down and just start working. Everything is somewhat complicated. Computing is a complicated beast. Look at how many people still can't program their VCR and how easy it is to do once you've been taught.
From a user's viewpoint, you've got to pick the lesser of the two evils, which, for better or worse, is Microsoft Windows.
People have already stoped buying their bloatware. Sales of Win2k are dismal, because of the OS's internal problems and high costs. If you have not noticed MS prides itself on conducting "business as usual (TM)" regardless of what the federal govenment has to say. Don't forget that the OS on it's own is next to useless, you have to buy hundreds of dollars of CD's to get any real functionality out of the damn thing.
Without breakup, we might really see a $1,000 OS as MS integrates the entire freaking Office and Visual Nightmare Suite to make it competitive with free software. Sorry, that is just not competive.
The path of least resistance is flowing away from them. Grandma? Hell, I don't know what goes on inside an MS machine and I never will. It's easier for me to set up any of the Linux distros and I can learn everything if I want.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I am still reading the pdf but I find it interresting to predict that people would actually SHELL out $1000 for it.
Okay, they might get Windows with their new computer, but I doubt that the HW manufacturerers would bit the bullet and invest into microsoft OS that much. I think it is more likely that they simply start to pure money into Linux and Co and ready it for prime time pretty fast.
Why? Because there THEY have direct control over it and don't have to pay additional money for every box they sell.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
Bah move over you old timer slashdotter.
This is about as convincing as "you all suck!"
You may have been here first but remember the american indians?
Am I to read this as, "The American Indians sucked, and you're like them, so you suck, too."? That's certainly how it sounds.
You may have smarts but us MS people definetly have numbers.
Thanks for the compliment and the tacet admission that MS people don't have "smarts" and must rely on their numbers for any kind of credibility. Oh, BTW, you are exhibiting argumentum ad numeram.
And you might also try responding to my original points. But, at this point, I'm doubtful that you can.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
There's also a number of Windows CE versions, plus several new derivations thereof (e.g. for car-radios, for pete's sake ..)
Also some derivations of Windows designed for specific things such as the X Box.
It would still come as a plain cheese pizza by default, but you could get a third-party add-on (a la Litestep, 98lite, etc) that would remove the cheese and make it acceptable to those who can't or don't eat dairy products.
For more information, click here.
Let's say microsoft had broken up, and suddenly the next version of windows costs $1000.
Or even to look at both sides of the coin, let's say that microsoft wins the case, and is able to use their "monopoly powers" to "price-fix" windows and the next version is $1000.
Would it affect me immediately? Of course not. I'd just stick with my current version of windows (windows2000) for as long as possible.
But when the time came that I needed a new OS or computer? By that time, linux might be more useful (right now it just doesn't run all the apps I want -- I admire it from a technical standpoint).
I could
1) buy an x86 w/o an OS on it and put either win2k on again or linux or beos or some other alternative os that's currently gaining ground.
or, 2), and this seems to be something that everyone's been ignoring thus far, I could BUY A MAC.
I have no clue why the judge in the microsoft trial dismissed Macs as a viable competitor for windows. There are lots of applications common to both platforms, and big ones. And think of the average consumer, going to buy a computer -- suddenly windows machines are $1000 more than the macs that seem to do the same thing, what are they going to buy? MACS. I'd consider Macintosh to be the #1 competitor to windows in the desktop OS arena (of course the trial narrowly defined it as x86-desktop-oses, again for a reason beyond me, since this isn't realistic from the *consumer*'s point of view).
Whew, got off on a tangent there. The other possibility is that department stores might start selling computers with linux or beos preinstalled, and the normal consumer might buy one of those.
Either way, it shouldn't affect people. They'd just stop buying windows. Microsoft does have competition, breaking them up doesn't magically make competition appear.
Doesn't MS make most of their money through NT licenses anyway? Oh yeah, and Office.
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The following sentence is true.
The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence was false.
Oh really? Most of the QuickTime movies I see use some sort of proprietary codec (*cough*Sorenson*cough*) that hasn't been ported to Linux just yet.
For more information, click here.
OK, I admit I have not read his article, so I don't know what his reasoning is, but I fail to see how *increasing* competition in the OS market will cause prices to go *up*? Especially when you consider that MS has one of the highest profit margins on the Fortune 500 - they have a lot of room for slashing prices, and still making lots of money.
I don't buy it. I think breaking up MS would be one of the best things the USA could ever do for their economy (the breakup of AT&T was clearly one of the best things they ever did. Take it from me, I live in a country where telecomms is still a government-regulated monopoly, pricing os telecomms is incredibly high - if you're pretty wealthy you may be able to afford an ISDN line, but don't even think of being online more than 1 hour / day .. metered rates .. forget about any sort of permanent connection unless you want to pay your entire salary each month for one 64Kbit permanent connection.)
Yes, a break-up would cause a bit of inconvenience for 1 - 3 years, but then the benefits will start to come. As MS itself has perpetually tried to argue, the software market can be very dynamic (if there is competition) and you can bet your balls that there are hundreds of companies that are just waiting for the opportunity to build *decent* software in a competitive environment. Some people seem to think that if Microsoft were broken up, nobody would bother to try improve software, and we'd all go back to the fragmented days of Unix. That is just such crap - considering how much money there is to be made, there are thousands of people who would not wait a single second to jump into the market. Then we'd see some *real* innovation in computing.
NT = No Thanks
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"No se rinde el gallo rojo, sólo cuando ya está muerto."
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
On one hand you have the Microsoft extremists, who vouch that $1,000 versions of Windows would cripple Microsoft's already breaking-at-the seams-company, although it would be worthwhile; on the other hand you have Linux and open source advocates saying that noone would pay $1,000 for Windows anyway, and it isn't worth that much.
It seems like a judge ruling for both sides.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Note: He's not from "The University of Texas."
He's a prof at the University of Texas - Dallas
microsoft is already pushing it charging $400 for a product that you can get all the equivalent functionality from a free package. i'm talking about staroffice. if microsoft wants to see a mass exodus then they should charge $1000 for their os!
--
And Justice for None
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And Justice for None
Just two points:
Anyone who has been using Windows since version 3.1 (the earliest version at which the product was anything more than a joke) then they have, by now, paid between $250 and $500 for the product, if they have been upgrading faithfully. If they made the jump to Windows NT they are probably verging on that magical $1000 mark by now, if they have not already surpassed it.
On top of the outright cost, we should probably be counting the costs factored into bundled hardware sales and third party software development, which I couldn't even begin to compute here. I'll just say that I suspect that costs to consumers have been increased, rather than lowered, by the existance of the Microsoft monopoly.
If Microsoft has anything to say about the matter, every Windows user will be forced to pay an annual fee for the privilage. I don't know what the actual fee is likely to be, but I suspect that it would rapidly accumulate into a sizable chunk of change.
It is exactly the monopoly power that Microsoft wields that will allow them to institute this new pricing scheme.
People also would be less willing to shell out another $89.95 for an upgrade, because they feel 'accustomed' to do so, on the next buggy Windows release and perpetuating additional buggy OS develelopment by the well known guily party.
It would be nice to see what happens to MS if they don't receive their expected windfall of money on any given two year interval of OS releases...
What a sad, pathetic special interest group. Of course, no matter how completely asinine their mission statement sounds, they have the money to shove whatever they see fit down Washington's throat.
What happens if we were to all join up and subvert it from the inside? C'mon everybody, join and start e-mailing them your input. As a concerned member, they have to listen to you ;)
Microsoft sells their OS for less than they could get for it given their monopoly. Most of the profit comes from the applications. With a breakup, the OS company would have to make money from just the OS, not the applications, and they'd have a monopoly on Windows, so they might raise the price.
That's not a totally stupid claim. That's what might happen for the first few years after a breakup, until the market share of Windows declined. On the other hand, the guy doesn't mention that Microsoft has about 3x the return on investment of the rest of the desktop software industry.
He also makes the point that Microsoft's standardization of APIs does have some value. Remember when apps had to have printer drivers? The UNIX community had a terrible time standardizing; POSIX is pretty basic (no GUI) and there's still some Berkeley/AT&T incompatibility. On the other hand, once you've ported to a variant of UNIX, you usually don't have to update as often as you do with Windows. (Ask anybody who writes to Direct-X.)
It's a very biased article, but not totally dumb.
Umm. Ok.. Explain Oracle / Sybase then. If you don't pay your anual licensing fee, you database doesn't work anymore.. period. Thankfully they provide data-dumps (in csv's / tsv's).
The key is that if you can extract your data into another format, then you, as the customer, can freely migrate from platform to platform if you don't like the functionality / services of an existing supplier.
In things like Quicken (MS Money), Word, etc, it might be hard to completely dump / restore your data into newer formats (csv's, and RTF may not be completely reliable for this).
That said, an OS is arguably much harder to lease. The average user does not have the resources for which to migrate all of their information from one platform to another.. They don't have ethernet, nor tape backup nor multiple partitions nor most importantly, the know-how.
Are we going to give Comp USA tons of business by sending lay people to have their OS swapped? Most likely the leasing structure would not work as for the home-user as it would for a business.
-Michael
-Michael
goto hell:
hell:
hi billg, code style look familiar
If it's true that microsoft has used their "anti-trust" actions to create and enforce "brand loyalty" rather than to stifle competition, then they haven't done anything illegal.
... quite the anti-MS framing job by the judge. Exclude the #1 competitor from the consumer's point of view, and you have a much more monopoly-looking situation.
One of the points of antitrust law is to prevent a monopoly with price-fixing power. But what will happen if windows machines are suddenly $1000 more expensive?
Simple: people will start buying more Macs. Because Macs are the closest thing to windows machines out there right now to consumers. They don't care if it's an x86 or not in there, just what applications they can run.
If MS pricefixing causes them to lose sales to a *competitor*, then they are not a monopoly.
Too bad the anti-trust case excluded Macs early on
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The following sentence is true.
The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence was false.
What's the cost of eliminating that annoying bloody paperclip?
What's the cost of deleting MSN Explorer spam?
What's the cost of understanding COM?
What's the cost of integrating with deliberately incompatible protocols?
etc., etc.
Jebus! The more I think about it, the more I think life would be so much cheaper without Microsoft.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
But it simply isn't going to happen. The reasoning in the report is less than stunning.
Besides, no Microsoft executive with an ounce of sense would consider charging a grand for Windows. Even a Microsoft exec is going to realize it just wouldn't sell. And since the only way a Microsoft OS division would survive is by selling lots of licenses, they would never make a pricing decision that would alienate 90% of their user base.
As far as Domino's web-serving abilities... I think IBM is beginning to move beyond the stink of that product. All versions of WebSphere (NT to OS/390) now come instead with IBM HTTP Server 5.1 which is simply a re-branded Apache 1.3.12.
Domino is dying, and I can't wait until it is gone...
You have to realize that linux has a weak point when it commes to being accepted as a replacement for M$, it is NOT 100% POSIX compliant, hobists and businesses use it but the US gov wont back it until it is compliant and the gov has a lot of power and influence.
Another thing, why does slashdot think that there are only two sides?(ms and linux) There are many sides and linux may not come out on top. There is a loyal following of BSD, the MAC is still strong despite everyones claims against it, and BeOS is a stable, powerfull OS that might get some development attention if MS were to get cut. QNX has a nice new OS out that is 100% posix compliant and has the beginnings of a nice GUI.
Microsoft(or one of the parts) would still have quite a bit of controll because of costly upgrades or change overs to other operating systems and data transfers. They would be in need just for compatibiliy with existing data files.
I admit. I like M$, here's why... If it wasn't for them damn winboxen and their applications crashing all the time I wouldn't be working. A WIDELY USED UNSTABLE O/S MAKES MONEY CHILDREN!! Ask any sysadmin what they spend the majority of their time fixin, Linux or M$. I'm sick of all these whiny people bitching and moaning about how unfair M$ is. Yes I use NIX, I also use QNX, solaris, BEOS and BSD. Don't get me wrong, they're all got their merits but M$ has been at the forfront of ease of use for a long time. Ever try configuring hardware in NIX? Pain in the ass for a sysadmin like me let alone a user. M$ makes some damn good free stuff. Look at how nicely IE has matured. Media Player 7 although not as good as musicmatch is actually decent. I don't take this with a grain of salt. MS has been there for me and many other admins (even though they won't admit it) for many years now. My alliance to the dark side of the force is stronger than ever. JOIN THE EMPIRE! --toq
Facts that you can easily obtain from the net.
...
1. Microsoft product(s) for sale, or use.
2. Microsoft product functions per product.
3. Microsoft pricing.
4. Microsoft ease of use.
5. Linux product(s) for sale, or use.
6. Linux product functions per product.
7. Linux pricing.
8. Linux ease of use.
Conclusion:
Lite analysis of items 1 and 5 shows convergence has occurred.
Average analysis of items 2, and 6 shows convergence will take at least three years to occur.
Casual analysis of items 3, and 7 shows that for Linux products that already exist, we are past convergence. It's cheaper to use Linux products than Microsoft products. Bottom liners are beginning to trade brand loyalty for cost savings.
Hard analysis of items 4, and 8 involves the human element. Not all humans are concerned with brand loyalty. But, all humans are concerned about learning curve requirements. Linux products are just beginning to address this issue. Microsoft appears to have answered this question before windows 98 was obtainable.
Possible suggestion:
1. Create a Benjamin Franklin list of Microsoft, and Linux products; both freeware, and non-freeware. What products does Microsoft have that Linux doesn't, and vise versa.
2. Go on further to identify the functionality of all these products. What functionalities does Microsoft have that Linux doesn't, and vise versa.
3. Start to fill in the gaps with an explication of what the differences are. And are the differences significant
Why all this non-sense?
Because Redmond Oregon has started to become like the city of Jericho. A place were things use to happen.
You can't forget that the masses equate MS as the guru computer company. They think the entire industry revolves around them. These people are the clueless day-traders who over-evaluate the tech stocks out there. If they think MS is in trouble, they'll invest their money elsewhere. Would the market be hurt by a MS breakup? Absolutely, only because those trendy SUV driving douchebags don't know any better and consumer confidence would drop.
Just think... Once everybody stops buying Windows and uses one of the many viable alternatives out there, mainly MacOS and Linux. BeOS could become a contender if the software support improves. Between MacOS and Linux, few businesses or end users will have trouble geting work done - all it would come down to are custom applications that require a Wintel box. And, once mini-M$ has this wake-up call, it's only a matter of time before they work to drop the price to a normal level and rework the OS into something USABLE, STABLE, and - gasp - EFFICIENT. Of course, that's assuming it lasts long enough after the breakup to be ale to pull it's head out of it's ass (it may just end up with Gates and a few student programmers hacking away in an apartment somewhere on a Java port!)
Friends don't let friends use 'doze
...for everyone to use Linux.
Besides, if you consider how many people never even pay for their copy of MS products, I bet you it already costs MS $1000 of potential sales for each copy they sell.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
Here's a free clue: If you want other people to respect the GPL, then you have to respect other people's licences too.
Not going to happen. Currently it is possible to build a no-frills but usable computer for under $500. That number is also going down not up. Microsoft will simply not be able to compete in the marketplace if they offer their base OS for much more than their current prices (~$100). The market simply will not spend twice their computers hardware cost for basic software. It is not going to happen. People from this market are already looking seriously at linux because of the money it will allow them to shave off their bottom lines.
BTW We still have two windows kernels out there, 9x and NT. Microsoft has been claiming that they will fold these together in the future since the release of Win95. Why aren't they? Money. M$ can make lots more by selling an unstable cheap OS (9x) and a stable expensive "server" OS (NT). A large part of the NT market is people who simply want a stable 95. No one would buy NT if the 9x kernel became stable by server standards. Thats ~$200 times the larger number of NT users who would downgrade.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
I doubt this guy's even a Microsoft apologist. He's just plain stupid. It's obvious he knows nothing about computers whatsoever, as evidenced by the fact that he thinks WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 competed with DOS in the operating systems market despite the fact that neither Lotus 1-2-3 nor WordPerfect are operating systems at all.
He attempts to apply classical econimic rules in a field where they simply don't apply. And he doesn't realize why they don't apply. Classical economic rules apply very well to things like card, hammers, television, and such, because people know about these things. They might not be experts, but they know enough to spot obvious lies. People don't know about computers. This is how Microsoft has managed to make its way to the top; it decieves consumers with various techniques (their favorite being what we call FUD, which there is plenty of in this piece as well).
Honestly, I don't see the reasoning behind this at all. It talks a good game, yes. Lots of overpretentious stuff aimed at confusing people. But if you wade through it and look at the wording and the terminology, you'll find that there's absolutely no substance whatsoever.
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People will see that it is completely unreasonable to buy a machine with the Windows operating system, and thus will look for other, less expensive options.
Linux, anyone?
... and what's more the document is terribly typeset (making it difficult to read) (must have been done using Word?). If only ... which incidently wouldn't have cost them a bean.
they had used an intelligent document preparation
system... like... oh... LaTeX for example
Small. You meant that the story should be taken with an extremely *small* grain of salt. To take it with a larger grain would mean we should all take it *more* seriously, right?
Right.
OK so I get nitpicky, but it reflects on the whole meaning of the statement, n'est ce pas?
Back to the topic, consumers are fickle. They know by now what to expect to pay for a computer. If M$ follows through on it thinly veiled threat to jack the price, they then face the fallout of a market backlash and diminished returns - Yes, of *course* they know that. The report is meant to stir fear/M$ Sypmpathy,(FUD: M$'s MO) nothing more IMHO.
Is madness a syptom of genius or vice-versa?
(rounded to the nearest $10 increment)
So I've laid out $810 already (before sales tax) on Windows, which has never even been my primary operating system. Next time I have to upgrade my Windows install to stay current so that I can exchange files with "The Outside World" I will probably exceed $1000 if sales tax is considered.
Amount spent on Linux over the years? $50.00 for ten boxes of blank floppies that I used to hold downloaded Slackware versions 2.x and 3.x until it went CD/Zip, and after that nothing because I've been downloading my distro CD contents on the net to the same 640MB MO disk over and over again now for several years.
Amount spent on MacOS over the years for my Mac machines? $0.00 -- Apple has always had MacOS (though a slightly out-of-date version) available on-line at their ftp site.
Only Microsoft will still happily sell you a decade-old version of their operating system for full retail price.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I'd pay to not run their crap.
If they're not careful, they're going to price themselves out of the village idiot's buidget.
I've never paid for Windows, not even Windows 95 or 3.1. Your average computer hobbyist doesn't pay for windows. Your average consumer will pay for whatever's cheap at the store, and call their "computer lingoed" friend to fix it whenever it doesn't do what it wants them to do. The reality is that Microsoft mainly screws the company's that SHOULD be it's partners and competitors. Instead of a competition of the mind, we have a competition of the pocketbook, and that's all we've always had. Linux isn't that far away from being a solid desktop platform. Corel is on the bandwagon bigtime. Wordperfect, though maligned, has always been a superior word processor. Quattro pro isn't any less complex than Excel. And their office suite has a presentation graphics program (I haven't used it). The only things truly missing from the equation is good e-mail, and database programs.
Go Lakers!
Domino Server R5 works fine on Linux. I ran it for a few months myself. It's reasonable to assume that IBM, who now owns Lotus, will be pushing its applications to linux, first for the server (as they are already: DB2, WebSphere, etc), then the desktop.
Lotus hasn't been a major player in the desktop applications market for quite a while, in any case.
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There is no premature anti-fascism. -Ernest Hemingway
That's easy. It's because Apple is a hardware company. Their OS is and always has been a loss leader to drive sales of actual Macintoshes, and it's profit from those sales that keeps Apple going.
Note that Apple will still charge you for an OS upgrade, tho'. I don't see how that is very different from MS getting a licence fee for every piece of hardware you buy from their OEMs.
Well, if what this man says comes true, and prices of windows do rise, maybe people will get a clue finally.
Cost of Linux: $0 (will always be $0 regardless of the market)
So Linux popularity suddenly shoots up overnight. Not a bad thing at all. (of course, *BSD could follow too, I dont care what it is, as long as its not windows).
The Mac should also hit a newtime high too. I mean, Macs have really had a lower total cost of ownership in reality (ie: hardware that lasts on average years longer then x86, cheaper OS - usually below 100 US for MacOS - which includes not only a full version in the package, but also *ghasp* an upgrade for older products!).
How is this a bad thing for the consumer? They get better products all around and everyone sees how pathetic Windows and M$ in general is.
Brielle
I just took a look at ebay, and someone is apparently willing to pay at least $380.66 for Windows.
Someone selling Windows 1.0 on Ebay
Screed, indeed!
After all, Mac OS 7, 8, 9 and X are all available for substantially less than $1K. And, of course, there is also BeOS, et al. Put simply, if all that the Baby Bills could offer was a $1K Windows, they would all be quickly extinct, and Apple would be the next Microsoft.
What is more, if Apple decided to try to take a monopoly rake, it would then in turn have to face free software as well as anything else the flow of capital to a free market would bear.
All that is required is a free and fair market for OSes -- the rest, particularly the price, will take care of itself.
Let's not forget that a lot of the mess Wintel machines are in is derived from the incredible headache Intel hardware is. I used to be a tech, and twelve hour days sorting out some server's problem with two scsi busses, two network cards, and a sound card are what I remember of Intel. That *was* a linux box. Heaven forbid you ever install a 3com in an NT4 box without fixpacs. Geez.
Mac hardware is easier to work on because there are no IRQs, there are no base addresses, the drivers are often on the board in rom, so the thing at least *works* after install. Maybe not well, but it works.
I haven't used OSX, so I can't vouch for it, but from what I've heard, it is pretty much just as easy to integrate as previous MacOS versions.
A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both and deserve neither. - Thomas Jefferson
I use Windows at work and at home because in the former case that's what I learned oh-so-long-ago and because that's what the market I move in wants; in the latter case, I haven't got the time to budget for learning to use Linux. I want to use it eventually, but I have other, more pressing concerns right now. I hope that doesn't make me an idiot.
Despite this report, I really doubt that people would pay this much for Windows. At the point where the basic software becomes more expensive than the hardware, I'm sure people would think more than twice about buying the product.
At $1000 Windows would become extremely impractical, and the free solutions would definitely become more popular.
Seeing this as an opportunity, all of the mentioned companies (Adobe, Quark, etc) would definitely port software. It's common business sense.
Therefore, I believe that if Windows became so exhorbitantly expensive, its maker would have a very serious problem on hand (which is what MS is saying about the breakup anyway).
Am I right or am I right? =P
If ACT really wants to see a "fair" playing field unfettered by government invention, how about they ask the government to refuse to enforce MS's patents and copyrights? Keep that up for a period of say, 5 years, and the market should stabilize again.. and MS would be FORCED to actually innovate and stay ahead of imitators.
It's cute that you _think_ that Microsoft is despised by the public, but in fact that's not true. When the Microsoft ruling was first handed down, a survey by the Gallup Poll showed that people actually liked Microsoft. 69% of respondents had a positive view of Bill Gates, making him more likeable than either of the two presidential candidates.
What's most important about this case, however, is how few people outside of the whiny geek contingent actually care about the issue. In the poll mentioned earlier, a sizeable number of people responding to the poll were undecided. Most people who use Microsoft products are sometimes annoyed by the crashing and the cost of upgrading systems, but these are the same people who have used AOL for three years despite all of its technical problems. (The reasons for both cases: "everyone uses it, so there can't be something better" and "I already know how to use this, and I don't want to learn something new.")
In fact, according to the Gallup poll once again, the trend is increasing in favor of Microsoft. Try to convert a Microsoft lifer to Linux. The second he/she gets a link to a Windows Media Player or QuickTime movie, a cute EXE attachment like a video greeting card, or a Microsoft Office document for StarOffice to slowly beat to death, you'll have some 'splaining to do.
For more information, click here.
Win2k has not taken over the world and put unices out of business...
WinME has been an incredible flop...
Yahoo Mail has caught up to HotMail in numbers of users...
BizTalk, and MS's entire XML strategy, has yet to materialize...
C# was met with a yawn...
Linux keeps on rocking...
AOL continues to dominate entire swaths of the mediaspace, and Yahoo continues strongly on the web...
What happened to the Microsoft threat??
Any action now is more about the power of government as an exercise.
Have you ever tried to use StarOffice? It's enormous, takes forever to load the whole damn office suite so you can open one document, and the whole UI is just a poor rip of Microsoft Office.
At least MS Office on Windows has the good graces to hook itself into your OS, rather than slapping another windowing environment on top of it. An office of any substantial size would have incredible problems migrating from MS Office to StarOffice. I could even see people bringing in their MS Office CD's from their home computers just so they don't have to use that bloated sack of shit that is StarOffice.
For more information, click here.
Why PAY for it, anyway? There's a reason everyone has CD burners, you know. And if for some reason I can't get a warez version, I'll put linux on it (I only "need" windows for games, anyway). As for those poor computer-illiterate fools that like microsoft, let them pay for it! why should I care?
69% of respondents had a positive view of Bill Gates, making him more likeable than either of the two presidential candidates.
That's it! My mind is made up now.
Bill Gates for president!
I didn't like the other candidates anyways, and I don't really like Bill Gates either, but if 69% of the population likes him then he must make a great president. Hmmm, Although, I'm sure that'd slightly tip the antitrust trial in his favor...
p.s. i'm not a troll, i like my karma (granted it's only 14, but i still like it), please don't mod me down
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
As for "I already know how to use this".... bullshit, what top-level user interface these days is NOT icon-and-mouse, point-and-click, drop-down-menu? c'mon, you can do better than this...
WMP and Orifice are part of the problem which will be solved when we split the 800 pound gorilla, leaving the apps company to go Open Standards or die. QT is an APPLE standard, exqueeze me? And thatTruth is you didn't ready the Motley Fool article and discover that M$'s business model is already fscked; all the DOJ lawsuit did was enforce that they stop playing dirty pool behind the scenes for long enough for their feet of clay to crumble. Ozymandius' statue is already beginning to lean badly; those in its shadow had best get out the way. Besides, it's not the soccer moms or the third shift losers or whoever else that's home during business hours to answer the polls that actually run the world. Who does is an exercise to the reader.
Doesn't this completely wreck this Economist's reputation?
How we know is more important than what we know.
The USDoJ's current plan is to split M$ into two parts: an OS company and an applications company. As I have stated before, the OS company _will still have a monopoly_. IOW, the OS company will be able to charge pretty much whatever it pleases due to lack of competition. However, if the USDoJ were to create at least two OS companies from the former entity known as Microsoft, there would be direct competition between the two. This would drive end-user prices down. Incidentally, the same thing can also be applied to the applications company.
=================================
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
The part not described by the word. The part where you throw Symantec an extra $300 so you can do exactly what he was hinting at. The part where you start thinking complete thoughts, and then following through with meaningful comments longer than seven words. I didn't like restating the whole question in 3rd grade reading comprehension quizzes, either, but it helps you learn to communicate without leaving your actual ideas in the [understood] part of your statements.
-jpowers
-jpowers
I aint paying 1000 bucks for Minesweeper :)
Well all the more reason to go for Linux huh...
Bahhh!!! I use Windows 2000 for work.. I was just kidding anyway..
Rapid Nirvana
This guy needs to recheck his intro. economics textbook! Let's think about a similar situation.
20 years ago, scientists said "We will run out of natural resources in 20 years!" Well, it's 20 years later, now what are they saying? "We will run out of natural resources in 20 years!" Huh? Did they miscalculate 20 years ago? No, it's just that as prices went up, there was more incentive for entrepreneurs to find alternate sources or to be more efficient in utilizing current sources. That's the beauty of that whole "supply and demand" thing. If Microsoft Windows all of a sudden costs $1000 per copy, there will instantly be 1000's of alternate solutions (linux/UNIX-based, PalmOS-based, MacOS-based, Windows emulation) OR, people will just not bother to upgrade the Windows version that they are currently using (you don't gain much except bugs anyways).
Come on, does this guy seriously believe that the current purchasing levels and consumer choices would even be relevant if Windows cost $1000 a pop?!?!?
Z'
...would be Apple. The report doesn't mention how Apple manages not to have to charge $1000 for its OS and can stay afloat (never mind <$1000 for both hardware and software with an iMac). Imagine the ads - showing a Bill Gates lookalike holding up poor slobs with a gun (OK, $1000 or your computer won't work). They would sell about a million iMacs the very day windows did that. Then we'd all be trembling in fear of Steve Jobs - he'd make everyone wear black turtlenecks or something.
Methinks Stan J. Liebowitz has been looking at too many of Ross Perot's pie charts.
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The truth is out th- oh, wait, here it is...
.. but because Milennium is coming out soon, I can't locate any links for the 98SE upgrade. However, here is a link showing the price of the 95/98 -> ME. $129.99. (The full version of ME is $279.99)
In short, I'm not a KarmaWh0re. I'm just stating fact.
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CitizenC
--
Jeeze.. i think MS is just as dirty as the next guy, but why is it that when someone says "Microsoft" on slashdot the apparent intelligence of the posters drops to about 7?
All up and down the thread i see "Ha! Do that and nobody will buy it!"
--okay, pay attention now, this is the important bit--
That's The Freaking Point!
The whole idea here is that breaking up MS is a bad idea because it would drive the price of MS products up, causing fewer people to buy them, hurting the tech market by alienating customers. Now, before you say, "Huh uh! They'll just use Linux!" remember Grandma May and Steve The Jock whos idea of bleeding edge technology is AOL on their iMac.
Linux isn't for everyone. Now, before you flame me to north dakota and back, i like linux. I'm using linux right now. But linux can be a real pain in the ass sometimes. Yes, you can install redhat 7 in 5 minutes without knowing much about your computer, but do you really think that Grandma wants to learn the directory structure, or that Joe will be awed by the power of the command line? No.. they want to plug the computer in (with as few wires as is possible), turn it on, and have a bright and cheery GUI with nice big buttons staring back at them.
Much as i hate it, idiots are the majority in the modern world. When you think about things like the effects of an MS breakup on the market, you have to remember that the reason MS has a monopoly is that there are enough idiots out there to have put them there.
Dreamweaver
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
There is very interesting (as usual) piece from Esther Dyson on Microsoft breakup
here
"..don't you eat that yellow snow."
Cocaine don't have this effect. I bet he snorted baking soda or ajax.
Yes, I know it's a bad analogy (although the Gallup people used it too) but still it means that Bill Gates is a likable figure. He does things like donating lots of software to charities to score both PR points and tax breaks, and appearing in poor rural India with the prophetic statement that "Health is more important than technology" to keep his image healthy.
(Of course, when I say "he" I mean "his crack team of publicists, speech writers, and image consultants.")
For more information, click here.
On the other hand, Adobe Postscript is Unix based. (the interpreters and such) Seems like a contradiction.
I'll pay $1000 for Windows...
.. my karma .. falling .. falling .. must click .. Post Anonymously .. oops..
If Bill Gates will give me a rimjob.
I see
--
you are not what you own
it's a sig, wtf?
OS can easily be leased. I remember from the days when I was a mainframe systems programmer that the OS, compilers, runtime libraries etc were separately leased. Also you had to apply the updates, as if you were more than 2 versions behind, you got no support. The hardware was purchased, but with a maintanence contract.
YOu have to wonder.... why wasn't more given to the issue of piracy? A vicious cycle begins when a product is known to be overpriced... people find other ways of obtaining it. No matter what kind of copy protection or registration sceme the Microsoft folks could incorporate someone, somewhere, can crack it. If we have learned anything from Napster, it's that people will not pay too much for something they perceive as being over-priced. I'm sure there are people of the highest moral values (dare I say priests? nuns?) who use Napster. Not only that, but I'm almost certain that these same people have $400 to $500 software applications that they "obtained" from non-specific sources. The vicious cycle is this. Having to price an OS that has been accepted by many as the standard at such a ludicrously high-level will just increase piracy. People who would never consider piracy will now turn to it to obtain what they need. As the number of pirated copies grows, less legitamite copies are sold. This translates to reduced revenue, and more price hikes. The vicious cycle then continues, as Microsoft, unable to sell their product, keeps pricing themselves out of the market (anyone remember Apple? With their innovative products and horrid pricing?). I am not a fan of Microsoft. I was a grudging acceptor of my first PC. However, if the scenario that is painted in this article comes true, then I would make a stand that to keep things humming, Microsoft should be able to continue business as usual.
Orange Whip? Orange Whip? Three Orange Whips!
Wow. This guy's writing style bears a remarkable resemblance to a well-known columnist in PC Magazine.
;-)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
If Microsoft were to start charging $1000 for Windows, I'd still use it. In fact, I'd use it for the same price you linux users pay for your OS: $0. Besides, how am I supposed to get my hardware to work under linux other than booting to windows and checking how it has been set there? -Reuben
1 4M 50 31337!
I still have my Windows 1.03 that came with my (kickbutt) 10MHz 286 box! Five 360K floppies.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Remember the old battle cry, "It (DOS) ain't done until Lotus won't run!"? I've been saying it's not kosher for your OS company to make applications for years. Need an OS API call tweaked to make your app run better? No problem! It's a bonus if it breaks the competition! And they could do it because they're Microsoft and are just being "competitive" and "innovative."
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I wouldn't download windows if it were free. I use no microsoft products. (well, except for at my high school, because that's all they have, set up a Debian box awhile ago but that's gone now, 386 anyways ;) I have an OpenBSD box as my main OS, but I plan to get another box for possibly BeOS.
If you think you know what the hell is going on you're probably full of shit. -- Robert Anton Wilson
If you think you know what the hell is going on you're probably full of shit. -- Robert Anton Wilson
jdube is who
Don't you mean an extremely SMALL grain of salt?
Just wondering.
ope
---- http://www.opedog.com/
Yeah, for 300 billion bucks you won't have anyone in the world buying that sack of sh*t.
Didn't these people studing Macro Economics? I mean, hell, that's the first thing you learn is that cost like that would kill off windows sales, second potential revenue like that breeds competition, and for those bucks there would be regiments of drooling marketing types to get a piece of it. This would also shift all new development to the alternative operating systems. Steve Jobs would look like such a damn genius his head would explode from ego overload.
Even on the surface it's laughable. Just like the rigged demo in front of judge Jackson. These people crack me up, truly. How can comedians even compete...
--
Chief Frog Inspector
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
You say:
"It's cute that you _think_ that Microsoft is despised by the public, but in fact that's not true. When the Microsoft ruling was first handed down, a survey by the Gallup Poll showed that people actually liked Microsoft."
If you cared to check your facts more carefully you'd know that the poll was checking popular opinion of Bill Gates, *not* M$ as a company or its business tactics. Yes, John Q Public has a favorable opinion of him as a businessman.. but the a large majority have a lower-than-favorable view of M$ as a company.
That lil tidbit shouldn't suprise anyone.
Do not taunt Happy-Fun Ball
Microsoft would own the market again if they priced Windows at $49. People WOULD buy Windows 2000 for that. How many people do YOU know that have Windows 2000 that DIDN'T pay for it BECAUSE it was $200!??!?!! Now they would even CONSIDER $2000? Now I would estimate 1 out of 10 copies of Windows was actually PAID for, if it were $1000, I would say 1 in 100... At less than $50 a pop, you would get closer to 1 out of 3 or so paid for. You do the math... ;-) Obviosly THEY can't...
This is standard marketing stuff.
The idea is basically that if you double the price of something, and lose less than half your customers then you still increase revenues.
In Microsoft's case $1000 is many times the average OEM price of Windows and so if you set the price at that level then you'd still retain enough customer base (although much smaller) to see an increase in profits, but it depends critically on how many people will continue to use Windows at the inflated price.
The biggest flaw with the arguement is that Windows would no longer be as dominant and it's long term prospects would be seriously diminished. Sure you'd increase revenue but very soon you'd find that most other desktops would run an alternative and you could no longer use your dominance to force standards issues or driver issues.
It reminds me of the tale of the village idiot who is given a choice. People regularly offer him the choice of a dollar or a nickel. Every time he is offered the choice he takes the nickel and get's laughed at. The real joke is on the people making the offer though, because the idiot is smarter than they think. He knows that as soon as he takes the silver dollar the offers will soon dry up.
This is Microsoft's position, they are trying to tell the court, "look we're not greedy, we're only taking the nickel.". The truth is they know that charging $1000 for windows will not deliver long term growth, but instead bring their bandwagon to a screeching halt.
Second: In the "behavior modification" of the ruling, Micro$haft has to share code... thus other companies may implement a Win-whatever API without Micro$haft flooding the amount of APIs for that particular platform, bringing down the price, even though the original implementation is copyright Micor$haft, it doesn't mean it can't be reverse-engineered or another implentation can't be done ;)
Third: Whoever said that the $1000 version of Winblowz would work or not break interoperability?
Karma whorin' since 1999