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MS Anti-Trust Litigation - The Case For Standards
Ken Krechmer writes "Microsoft Anti-Trust Litigation - The Case for Standards is the title of an article which won first prize this year at World Standards Day. Since it offers a somewhat different proposed resolution of the Microsoft litigation, you may find it interesting. See http://www.csrstds.com/WSD2000.html to read and post if desired (it is available for free republication with attribution shown)." Not sure I agree with all of the conclusions, but the piece is very thoughtfully argued and constructed.
Here is what to expect: "If _I'd_ been running the show when the whole thing started, this never would have happened!"
Microsoft are not going to be rescued by Bush. Microsoft is slated to be the bad example- "look what happens when these left wing pinkos get their way!". I would be very surprised if Bush's people don't appreciate the potential benefits of allowing the (difficult to overturn) antitrust case to go through- they may possibly even be counseling the Supreme Court to go ahead and hose Microsoft rather than be partisan again on behalf of Bush's interests. It makes for potentially a very good argument to avoid breaking up or regulating _other_ monopolies that are less financially overextended, more capable of massive kickbacks. Microsoft is rationing freaking paper clips at this point: Ballmer is trying to instill a new culture of economy. Do you know what that means to Bush's people? "This one's empty- time to let it drop and start sucking on another"
That's business.
Get ready to start doing things without Microsoft, because they are in for a very _hard_ fall: I don't think they believe they will be thrown away like a used candy wrapper. They believe passionately, fanatically, in the _principle_ of full-throttle unregulated free-market capitalism. Unfortunately, politics is about expediency, and there are better monopolies to cultivate at this point, for a politician: ones with better public image, no nasty court record, more MONEY available to give to pols.
Bush is not going to cave to Gates: what's in it for Bush? He's only going to keep saying Darn it! If only I'd been in time! He's dumb but his people are not that kind of fool.
> This is weird.
/. like the following if you want people to think about what you write:
/. is simply because I got a business major and am paid rather well to consult organizations on
Wrong, this is a discussion. You post your opinion, you get a response. If you don't want to hear a different opinion, close your ISP account & get off the Internet.
Or at least don't write crap in your posts to
>> that said, i honestly think that the whole case and associted discussions should be marked 'redundant'. the government was too late, too slow, too
>> assuming and the whole affair is [score 0, flamebait] at best.
> Throughout your post you shred my statements and try to bend them as proof that I'm defending M$, when all I'm
> trying to do, is adding a different perspective to the rather one-sided views that are usually posted with a firm anti-M$ undertone.
That's a surprise to me. You're the one who repeated the inaccurate statement that Microsoft standardized the computer interface, or that MS software runs better than Open Source.
> I'm not pro M$ nor am I anti O/S. Bothe of which you seem to take for granted. But as you are taking my sentences apart and
> assuming that I'm trying to make M$'s case, I'll return the favour on a few selected items.
Quoting you out of context? I did drop the last sentence to your post, but everything else appeared exactly word-for-word in the order you wrote it. I guess my quoting one of your paragraphs, then responding to that paragraph took things horribly out of context.
But since you're only gong to respond to a selected few points of mine, you won't howl too loudly if I miss responding to a few points fo yours, will you?
> When talking about 'support' I didn't mean what the software supports, but that M$ is responsible for whatever support they give
> users.
Oh yes. I don't know what country you live in, but does MS do more than contract support to some sweatshop like Stream who hires any warm body off of the street at $11 an hour to repeat ``restart, reboot, reinstall, upgrade"?
You pay extra for support from Sun or Oracle, but at least the people there actually know something about computers, & have an inkling about how the software works. Most of the people at Microsoft have to consult third-party resources just to understand how their softwar actually works. (Andrew Schulman was surpised at how many Microsofties read his _Undocumented_DOS_ book.)
> You are gonna point out thousands of newsgroups etc, I'm siure. But who is responsible for the info they are giving? Our Linux
> people here spend hours after getting a 'tip' only to find out that it was non-sense.
And how are you going to be sure that the said low-wage phone jockey is going to give you the right answer? At least the people on the newsgroups & maillists have seen the software before. Microsoft fired all of their in-house front line support people in 1995 in order to increase the corporate profit margin.
> DOS was the standard not Windows, you say. Hey, the context of my Windows is the standard claim was clearly in regards to the
> end-user. How many companies did send their word processing people to DOS training courses?
DOS is entirely an end-user program. Almost no Sysadmins were ever injured in it's use.
Q: How many sysadmins does it take to run a computer running MS-DOS?
A: Five. One to do the work, four to keep him from formatting the hard drive & installing a real operating system.
Numerous GUIs were written to run over MS-DOS in the late 1980s & early 1990s. The success of Windows 3.1 has been attributed as much to the fact MS required it preinstalled on every computer that shipped DOS 5.0+ as to all the other causes combined.
> Warranties: long before the US came up with fancy laws, there was something like guild code back in Europe. People had pride in
> any 1970 models Mercedes on the road lately?].
Actually, I see lots of older cars out here. Pre-1970 Mustangs, for example. I was driving behind a late-1970's Camero today. We don't use salt on our roads here, so older cars can last for decades.
> It is a definite MUST for the industry to
> produce products with shorter life spans to sustain it's existence. If everyone would last longer then it would be a matter of time until
> markets are saturated and producers are out of busniness.
This is a stupid argument. ``We can't afford to have pride in our work, so we're going to make shoddy products" is what you are saying. And all along I thought Europeans had pride in their work.
> One of the main reasons I post at
> questions of practicality and workability, rather than coolness and cyber-rebellion. So, I'm trying to show different points of view to
> tech-heavy mindsets.
Oh. Well, that explains it. Pointy Haired Boss types are the same, the world around.
> Unfortunately, you seem to have taken me as someone on M$'s payroll.
Funny thing is, every ex-Microsoftie or Microsoftie-wannabe I've spoken to has said the same thing you have. No waffling about ``well, we gotta do it this way because of politics" as I have heard from insiders in other companies. And it's clear where they're coming from: one ex-MS employee I was winning an argument with ended up defending his former employer by saying, ``Microsoft makes money. Unlike other companies, like Symantec."
A MS employee ended a conversation with Edward Yourdon in his Rise & Resurrestion of the American Programmer about the resources MS spent creating a version of one of their products by stating that the software made MS hundred of millions of dollars -- who cares about metrics? It's only only one short step from not caring about metrics to not caring about bugs.
So MS employees have their hearts & minds on the bottom line. Not on creating reliable, robust software. Which is what we need.
> I'm also not Libertarian as you seem to presume. Heck, I'm not even American [PTL] nor am I in the U.S.
Well, I'm not a citizen of Germany but I did vote Green Party last national election. So which country do you hail from? One of those whose hineys we saved in the last World War? Or one of those whose hineys we kicked in the same conflict?
(If those last three sentences were too subtle for you, then parse them this way: You've demonstrated that you're a luser. Go away.)
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
> So, what does that make me? A tight-arse, pighead with an attitude?
If the shoe fits, wear it.
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
M$ is a monolithic entity. That is its Achille's heel. Breaking it up compounds the problem by forcing it on them and they'll try to force themselves on us.
I don't want M$ to start thinking out of the box. With luck, there'll never be a M$ product ported to any version of Unix (OS X) or Linux or to any other platform than the x86.
Keep M$ right where they are while the rest of the world goes past 'em.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
There is no way Bush will let the current breakup plan stand. And I don't think that he's going to be enthusiastic about regulating Microsoft in anyway. I think that this New York Times article which suggests letting Microsoft off with a huge fine is an all too likely possible outcome. The one saving grace may be that 19 states are also plaintiffs in the case, so as mentioned by another NYT article, the case may still go on even when Bush caves into Gates.
"That fat, dumb, and bald guy sure plays a mean hardball."
And I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners.
Berke Breathed
Office? This is before MS Office. Try the early 1990s (see the end of the article).
You want no drug regulation, and go back to when cocaine was in "soft" drinks and doctors died of heroin overdoses? Do the words "opium den" mean anything to you? Remember the first drug war, when the U.S.A. was trying to keep the opium flowing and was using gunboats in China? (Go look up the history behind "The Sand Pebbles" instead of just watching the movie)
You mean the same way MS Excel was using undocumented O.S. routines which its competitor, Lotus 1-2-3, could not use (was it in Windows 3.1?). I think Lotus won a court case about that, although it wasn't mentioned in the MS Antitrust case.
Microsoft stock price is less than half what it was a year ago. (Note there was a split recently, so double the $46 price to $92 to compare to a year ago)
This is a claim that because Microsoft made money they must be providing the best product at the best price. There is no other evidence provided of the quality of the product or the price. I consider this an Appeal to Common Practice or a Questionable Cause argument.
My obvious counterexample is the growth of the Virus Industries, which rely upon faulty Microsoft products.
Let me take a simple example. If the complete specification for Word's file format were published would anyone have any reason not to use Word Perfect other than the quality of the software? Not if WP's implimentation were 100% compatible. Then the choice would be based on WP's features vs. Word's features.
The key is enforcing publication, not enforcing particular standards.
I certainly don't. However, maybe a legal definition of what a "standard" is would be in order. That way Microsoft couldn't legally claim their products are standards compliant.
Or maybe some method of giving "standards" some kind of status similar to trademarks. Such that an organisation could be legally prevented from using the name of a standard if they didn't comply with it.
Read the MBR at bootup, and if it doesn't contain Microsoft's code, tell the user there's a "boot sector virus" and Windows won't start to save the user.
Actually that's a problem created by BIOS writers. The MS MBR abuse is the Win 9X installers which write their own code into the MBR quietly (like a virus.)
link 1
link2
how to dual boot with win2k...
tagline
... hi bingo
no, really, i'm interested in this one... what would MS do? on boot up, when the wonderful WINDOWS screen comes up, check the boot partition, and install itself everytime?
i cant see it happening...
tagline
... hi bingo
Somebody with a debugger who knows better would catch them at it sooner or later. I don't think even Shrub could save them from the fallout THAT would generate.
The government could insist that any technology of Microsoft's that it uses adhere to those standards. They could furthermore insist on having NO trouble reading and EDITING documents documents made with non government versions of their products. Otherwise, it's no fat contract for you. Or, even better, the government will refuse to use ANY form of Microsoft's products unless ALL APIs and file formats are exhaustively, clearly and CORRECTLY defined. This might embolden some of Microsoft's other large customers to insist on the same thing. If this played out correctly then Microsoft doesn't have to be broken up, subjected to government oversight, or reveal their source code that no one here would want anyway.
No, but the government can dictate that an "independent third party" define the protocols...like, say, the IETF, or W3C, or ANSI.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I agree. Governmental politics do not belong in the creation of standards, but that is not what scares me.
What I find most objectionable is a government agency taking on the premise that they (FBI,CIA,NSA) belong there, and thus are inherently endowed the right to define standards (PGP) along with the right to enforce them as governmental regulations (Since no "common man" would need open DVD standards, DE-CSS - ever).
Think about how much teeth this scenario could give to endeavors such as Carnivore, encryption craking statutes (DE-CSS) and encryption - prevention statutes (PGP would die)
Gah - my apologies, at a LAN party and another slashdotter at the party wrote on my machine while his was rebooting. (It's a damn good thing the contact information on here is nearly two years old, I don't need any flames.)
:D
Well, at least he actually made first post
The problem with this argument is that the software and accounting industries are fundamentally different in the dynamism of their standards.
Accounting is, due to regulation, history, and external pressures, a largely static and conservative field. If it were not, then there would be no faith in our economy as there would be no yardstick by which to measure performance. This would cause our faith based economic system to collapse. This is the type of industry the government can effectively regulate. They are great at enforcing standards on conservative industries in which the natural movements are measured in decades and not months.
The software industry on the other hand is fundamentally a dynamic, fast paced, and "next best thing" industry. Standards come and go with the wind as new technologies are developed, making things dreamed of only a few years earlier suddenly possible. Government does not work fast enough to keep up with this pace of change. Laws can't be passed fast enough and regulating bodies can't hold hearings quick enough to keep up. The system is too dynamic.
Government does a great job setting and enforcing slow moving standards like "how to measure a second" and "what constitutes income". The software industry however moves too fast for the government to remain relevant and act as anything other than a drag on progress. If the converse were true, we would all be programming in ADA.
I understand your point. However, why not let the market do this for us. Word is case and point. Nobody is going to store a word document in a database. Distributed computing will demand that the format be parsible and well-formed. When a business would like to catagorize, search-enable and archive its docs, they won't want to use MSWord.
Someone you trust is one of us.
I appriciate the arguement, and recognize its temptations. However, your example, Accounting, is a classic case against government enforcement. Accouting is the most convoluted, outrageous set of standards and priciples that anyone ever could have dreamed up. While they were implemented with the best intentions, the rules of accounting have become a beaurocratic nightmare far more frightening than Microsoft. I have a hard time diferentiating enforcement from definitions. Government writes the law and enforces it.
Someone you trust is one of us.
I wonder. Will the MS app development company really be interested in competing in open standards-based application arenas? Or will they attempt to drive everyone else out of the MS-Windows application market? I'm sure that the MS OS company would have no interest whatsoever in supporting open standards in application interfaces, except perhaps for show.
The information monopolies and their conjoined interests require new thinking, not just the "we'll break them up and let the market take care of it..." that worked with Standard Oil over a hundred years ago.
I think new thinking should be applied to the media monopolies that are developing. For example, I think the requirement that AOL open up AIM would do a lot more to level the media playing field than to just have AOL/TW divest of a few TV stations here and there.
I'll have to think about the article's proposals before I come to a decision. Government setting standards in certain areas can be a good thing, but there are risks of course.
---
MS Kerberos, while different from Kerberos to you and me, does comply with the Kerberos standard as defined. The Kerberos standard explicitly allows extensions of the nature that MS made to the Kerberos standard. Blame a poorly worded/written standard for that.
Mmmm.. Donuts
against the public good (say, raising prices to an unreasonable extent ... which MS has done.)
Please. The claim that prices have been raised to an unreasonable extent is ridiculous at best. Remember who the competition was? SCO, SunOS and Apple. Windows was always MUCH cheaper than the effective cost of either of those operating systems - and still is. Oracle software sells for millions of dollars v/s the hundreds of dollars that SQL Server costs. Would you prosecute any of those companies for price gouging? Classical economics fails for software because the supply curve is essentially flat. Yes, the software probably costs more than you and I want to pay for it but so does a lot of stuff. Just because it's not tangible (just bits on a CD) doesn't inherently mean it lacks value.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Now that Dubya won, er stole the election, the federal portion of the M$ case is a good as dead. They will quietly drop their appeal, and it will be up to the states to pursue it. In the meantime, many so-called experts (read: the punditocracy) are saying that the market has magically become more competitive, and a remedy of divestiture is not needed. It's total BS, as any economist worth his salt will tell you, but the public believes USA Today over economists any day...
I wouldn't be surprised if the case just goes away. If, by some divine act, it eventually ends up before the Supreme Kangaroo Court, I can just imagine what the current corporatist justices would do to it...especially if Shrub gets to appoint a few more Clarence Thomas or Scalia types...
"You done taken a wrong turn."
-Bill McKinney, in Deliverance
Getting changes to the standard approved would probably take much too long (how long has it been since the last revision of, say, Postscript, or the X protocol?). While there are definitely some good points for it, it also slows down additions of new features. Not always a good thing.
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Read the MBR at bootup, and if it doesn't contain Microsoft's code, tell the user there's a "boot sector virus" and Windows won't start to save the user.
Block everything else, market it as protecting the user -- has been done before.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
It's a good idea, but it has its problems.
What if YourOffice 1.0 adds a new feature that needs to be stored in the document?
Either you break the standard, or you extend it.
If extending it is allowed, Microsoft will abuse it by finding some excuse for storing everything in vendor extensions.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
We do have a government-approved standard. It is called Ada.
This would be just like Ada, except that it would cover every conceivable standard!
And, best of all, there is no escape!
The crux of the issue: Who controls the standards. Microsoft has yet to comply with any standard I know of. Microsoft instead uses "innovative" (yeah right Bill) alterations to exclude compatability (ie Win2K Kerberos). Microsoft even dragged its feet to get on board with TCP/IP (IMHO). What about the blatant failure to fully implement JAVA so as to promote their own software development. And most importantly, the supposed collaboration between Microsoft and INTEL on the PIII. Ask 3Com what they think of Microsofts "open standards development (ie NDIS). The only way to provide for a level playing ground is to split the Applications from the OS and provide true open application interface standards. The divorce needs to be so complete so that the only way the two can talk is through an OS/Application open standards organization (as yet non-existant) that would include multiple OS platforms and application developers. This could also preclude a future case with AOL. If there is any item that I've brought up that you don't have a background on then you need to do some serious research to understand the true insideous nature of the OS/Application monopoly.
"Microsoft has been willing to relinquish control of some interfaces (e.g., Interactive Messaging, XML, Universal Plug and Play, etc.) to expand their markets."
How does Microsoft have control over any of these interfaces?
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
Specification of standards should be - and is - available for anyone who needs them, and everyone should be - and is - able to use them in their own implementation. Standard formats specs should be reviewed by an independant organization to ensure implementation-independant comformity. Therefore MS document formats cannot be considered "standard".
It is in most peoples interest that the information they intend to make public is accessible to everyone in their target audience - regardless of the platform they choose.
This is increasingly important as the internet grows older and the wealth of information increases. There will be more documents and information in old formats laying around. It is in most peoples interests that old information which may still be of value and importance is accessible without having to pay someone for deciphering.
Just my 2 cents worth..
Basically preventing Microsoft from calling `MS Kerberos' Kerberos. There would need to be some indication that it was different. We can descend into largely useless debates about whether or not Microsoft's implementation is within the scope of the standard or not (as that arguement CAN be made), but I don't think that it moves the discussion forward. The Kerberos issue may not be the best example, but it comes readily to most trying to have this discussion.
You do run into problems with enforcement in cases like the SQL standard. Nearly every RDBMS or ORDBMS expands on the SQL standard or fails to fully implement it. As it is common practice in that application industry, it is taken for granted that special care be needed to make code portable. HTML is another issue in much the same case as SQL, though I don't seem myself complaining about mandating that browsers support w3 standards.
-fp
I don't believe that Microsoft has tinkered with any of the other standards I mentioned. ASCII and UTF are supported by Microsoft in their original forms. HTTP obviously. XML was co-authored by Microsoft, so their support for the standard is implicit.
I understand that MS development tools have not fully embraced the ANSI/ISO C/C++ revisions, but then again, neither has gcc.
On the whole, it doesn't really appear that Microsoft is any better or any worse than their competitors when it comes to the key protocol standards.
They made no such claim.
For what its worth, RTF has already been consigned to the dustbin of history, and MS itself is pushing XML for the type of applications RTF was once used for.
From what I can see, they support all the important standards. What standards of note would people see Microsoft operating systems support?
Maybe a little Off the immediate topic but..
Does anyone else get the idea that Linux will be the number one defense M$ will have when trying to defend itself from the anti-trust advocates?
Im sure M$'s market position would have even allowed them to embrace/extend/extinguish Linux in some way (making dual booting impossible would be a good method to slow/halt adoption for private use...)
Does anyone else feel now that the BSA has elected Republicans which are even greater corporate $whores$ than their predecessors - when the Anti-Trust suit gets dropped we will expect to see M$'s real reply to Linux.. weather that be a Linux Compat. Layer, or a M$ Linux distro (*shudder*) or ?????.
What Im saying is this is basically the calm before the storm for Linux...
How long did M$ take to marginalize OS2 - and OS2 had the full backing of IBM... I recognize that GNU/Linux has strengths that OS2 (and Windows) will never have (using the present proprietary SW models) but M$ will surely think of something... what will that be? Dont say this dotNet crap...
Under Bush, Wintel will be broken into two seperate corporations: one which monopolizes the hardware, and one which monopolizes the software.
There. That should remedy all those monopoly problems.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
There's nothing wrong with a monopoly. the problem is when that monopoly is used against the public good (say, raising prices to an unreasonable extent, or leveraging the monopoly to a different market sector--both of which MS has done.)
Splitting up MS will divorce the interest in the different markets--thus eliminating the abuse that the government has found. "Windows, Inc." can be a monopoly all it wants--but it can't use its justly owned monopoly in an abusive manner. After all, they can't help it if no one can compete. *grin*
that some of the 'standards' do need to be made open in order to encourage competition. If Microsoft isn't required to open up some of these standards, how are competiters supposed to compete?
If the only company that knows the 'best' ways to interact with the OS is Microsoft Applications (or whatever the company is named), then you might as well not split the company up.
Eric Gearman
--
Atomic batteries to power! Turbines to speed!
Remember, there is a big difference between having some organization stamp it's approval on a piece of software and claiming that it is a "standard" and having the programing community actually use your software (which is where real standards show themselves.)
Microsoft has consistenty fought against true standards with it's "embrace and extend" strategy. Microsoft simply has the muscle to get it products declared a standard before it's competition can see it coming - hence Netscape's JavaScript is considered proprietary (even though it is open souce) and Microsoft's JScript is considered a Standard (even though it is closed source).
What's more, having your programing languages declared a standard by the ECMA is totally meaningless to me. I don't live in Europe.
Microsoft? Adhere to standards?
FAT CHANCE.
You'd be better off just leaving Microsoft alone... they will kill themselves off eventually.
The article looks great. Really it does. But unfortunately, you would have to be absolutely ignorant of the way that Microsoft does business in order to even begin to believe this proposed "solution."
Open standards are great. They are wonderful things. They are also very common and popular things that are supported by just about every hardware and software company in existence. Including Microsoft.
Take for example the web browser. MSIE supports all the open standards regarding html, Java, etc. But then they go one step further an add additional functionality to the standards to create their own brand of "standard." Just look at the MS/Sun Java case. Microsoft's policy has always been "embrace and extend." Embrace the standard and extend it to meet their own ends. One could create an open standard for every Windows API, but that wouldn't stop Microsoft from extending the API ahead of any standards. (and while we're at it, isn't an API a standard anyway?)
The problem with standards is that standards bodies are usually too slow to react to rapidly changing market conditions. Even if you propose it yourself, you could end up waiting many months or years before a standard could be created and approved to deal with your specific issues or needs. In that same time, you could have written something to do it "your way" and gone through a couple revisions (especially with software). Is it really practical to have to always wait?
But ASS-uming that this suggestion of enforced open standards actually COULD have some effect, it's not the effect that we want. So Microsoft has "open standards and API's" and now everybody can write compatible code (as if they couldn't now). How does that address the real issues of the monopoly abuses? Access to undocumented API calls was just a small slice of the pie. MS would still have their dominant position. They would still be bundling products. They would still be forcing vendors to sell a Windows license with every PC sold, They would still be threatening vendors not to pre-install the competition's software. The proposed "standards resolution" does nothing to prevent all but the least significant of abuses brought forward in this case.
It's almost as if these two profs are arguing that if there were open standards created for everything in Windows that somebody would sit down and code a 100% compatible "windows clone". ASS-uming that there were a 100% compatible "windows clone," who would buy it when you're stuck paying for Windows and getting it pre-installed on your system anyways? If the the two OS's can do the same thing, then there is no incentive to switch, is there? IBM produced a version of OS/2 that was completely compatible with Windows (in fact, it basically had all the Windows code built-in), and how much of a market force did that become? It was a niche product at best.
> frankly, i think the 'article' raises some interesting points, and most /dotters don't understand them.
Frankly, your response is exactly what any Microsoftie would say in response to criticism of MS. Let's analyse your arguments.
> let's see. most of the comments here immediately take the 'force M$ into O/S' position, others keep more in line with the article regarding 'standards'.
>well, how about crediting M$ with making the computer revoltion possible in the first place? how many of us would have our type of job today if it
> wasn't for windows spreading computer use globally? sure, standards and lower hardware prices play an important role as well, but if M$ hadn't
> set a standard all by itself [Windows], then we'd still be battling with interfacing VAX and NIXes and apples [mcintosh platform] would be
> sparesly spread in some well to do households.
The usual argument is that by creating *DOS*, MS created a standard. This poster points to one of the GUI interfaces for DOS as being the standard-setter, which is odd: by that point, the de facto PC hardware standard had already been created, based around an Intel processor, ISA bus, either IDE or SCSI peripheral intefaces, & the limit of 16 IRQs. This was not only MS's choice, but also a certain computer company known as IBM.
Then again, the software APIs did change somewhat between standalone DOS & Win 3.1, then again with Win 95, & again (most noticeably) with Win NT. But it has been documented that every time MS changed the API, another group of independant software vendors writing to the DOS/Windows API went out of business, unable to make the port to a new API & compete with MS at the same time.
Whether this was the intent of MS's upgrade has been hotly debated.
And what's so bad with VMS or UNIX, anyway? Both are reliable, robust OSes that banks & industry have used for years. And people with minimal training use every day.
> give M$ some credit, for chip's sake.
For what? MS does not innovate, it merely sees which way the industry is trending, then runs hard to make it look as if they are leading -- but leading in their own, twisted way. Remember artificial intelligence? Back in the early 1990's, this was supposed to be the Next Big Thing. MS got into this in & produced . . . Microsoft Bob, which was later salvaged as the paperclip in MS Word that everyone hates.
MS Kerberos & the brain-dead implimentation of DNS in Win 2000 is only the latest in a long line of puzzling design choices.
I find your typo ``computer revoltion" in that sense very apropo -- MS has made this indeed a computer revulsion!
> that said, i honestly think that the whole case and associted discussions should be marked 'redundant'. the government was too late, too slow, too
> assuming and the whole affair is [score 0, flamebait] at best.
Another typical MS response. ``This is boring, nothing insightful, nothing to see, it's all past history, let's move along with our lives."
I find it hard to debate an issue with someone who is too arrogant to even acknowledge you have a right to a different opinion on the matter.
> think about it. if the purpose was to shake M$ and scare them into rethinking their strategy, then the mission is partly accomplished. but breaking
> them up now, where new technologies and the internet give them a run for their money anyway, is somewhat childish.
Another typical MS response. ``Okay, we know we shoulda listened to Big Government, & now they have our attention. So let's knock off all this talk of punishing us. We just want to innovate & create good software."
[Yes, I know this poster didn't write that last sentence -- but Bill Gates did say it in response to the Antitrust case.]
> will the o/s-linux community come up with the next big thing? will they spend billions on developping and supporting [especially supporting] a
> standard setting innovation that is available to non-nerds at a low price?
MS has never innovated. Gates was asked point-blank once what innovation MS ever created, & he could only answer feebly that only their business model was an innovation. I guess if your business model is to gut your competition over creating a better product, this might be an innovation. But governments have done this in times of total war since history was first written.
As for supporting a standard, Linux & *BSD both support the next generation of TCPIP & SMP already. MS is just making promises that they will.
And I won't touch on how MS implimented Kerberos or DNS.
> M$ certainly has it's flaws and bullying is never a good thing. But now, the public/states are using M$ strategies to force changes that are not
> necessarily beneficial to consumers. Or how would you call the use of state monopoly on power to inflict changes on a company - and millions of
> users?
Another typical MS argument: ``Private industry makes mistakes, but would you trust the government to make the right decision?"
I find it interesting that frequently, after finding private industry has mismanaged delivering services to the public, the state has had to step in time & again to enforce standards. Or would you like to go back to the days before the FDA was created & use medicines laced with opiates, milk of unknown purity, & other products misrepresented as being good& beneficial for the consumer?
And I find it ironic that all of these apologists for Microsoft are avowed Libertarians when their boss Bill Gates is clearly a Limousine Liberal.
> finally, who is holding car manufacturers responsible for the fact that things start to break down and need replacement just as the warranties run out?
Before the government cracked down on them, car manufacturers offered no warranties at all. It wasn't that long ago when if you bought a new
car, drove it off the lot, & the front wheel fell off, all you got from the dealer or manufacturer was a lot of sympathy.
In case you don't understand, a warrantee means the purchase will last for THAT set amount of time. It will start to degrade after that time. you are arguing over a very stupid point.
> shipping software with bugs and making money on service packs is what pays the high development costs in redmond. nobody forces anyone to run
> with faulty new M$ software.
I haven't heard that argument from any MS apologist before. Probably because it is true: if MS released reliable software, they would make less money. It is to their benefit to write substandard software, & make the public debug it for them. No apologist would unwisely make a statement that could be turned against her or him.
> I convinced management at our company to run Win95 OSR2 on desktops and NT4 IIS4 on servers.
> no blue screens in months.
I guess you avoid that by rebooting & reinstalling frequently. And reinstalling when some cracker roots your webserver.
> given development times, all you gotta do, is wait for M$ to release SP3 or 4 and then upgrade and you got a reasonably stable platform to work
> with. our three linux nerds in the trial department are too busy messing with the o/s to really produce anything else for them company.
This is a non sequitor, at best a troll to get people to respond with how reliable Windows is over Linux. I should ignore it, but I can't help myself.
Yes, there are incompetent Linux admins. Yes, it can be installed wrong, insecurely, & run inefficiently. And there are inappropriate implentations for Linux -- sometimes Solaris or *BSD are clearly better solutions. Given the number of idiots out there, msiuse of Linux somewhere is inevitable.
But in my experience, it is far easier to diagnose & fix problems under Linux or any UNIX variant than under Windows. Vague error messages, incompletely documented interfaces & applications, & millions of lines of spaghetti code that functions thru amazingly weird kludges only lengthen the diagnosis process. And MS's own support people are either $10.-- an hour sweatshop workers who have no idea of what to do beyond ``Reboot, reinstall, blame the hardware" -- or MSCEs who know their books better than their computers.
If you haven't had Windows crashed on you, you haven't pushed it at all. And I speak as someone who spent several hours getting _The_Sims_ to work on my wife's computer yesterday -- about as long than it took me to get sendmail to function, for God's sake. And sendmail hasn't crashed my Linux box once, where this game locked her computer several times.
And if you are happy with MS solutions, then you are in a minority. Studies have shown that Linux & BSD installations are growing in both number & market share. And Apache has 60% of the web server market share to IIS's 20%. All of this without any organized marketing push.
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
The most important point the paper makes is this:
Hence the popular argument that splitting up MS may accomplish nothing. MS is a monopoly, but the solution is not the traditional solution. A new type of monopoly requires a new type of resolution.
...and a very well written paper.
It could have done a better job addressing the primary Microsoft strategy towards open standards:
embrace, extend, destroy.
1: Embrace: fund the standard (perl, kerberos) and make it a vital part of your OS. Get a large user base to follow you.
2: Extend: create "extensions" to the standard which are trade secrets, which no one else can implement.
3: Destroy: Leverage your userbase, using your new extensions, to destroy the old userbase. The standard is now closed.
This is a very difficult strategy to implement, and Microsoft is a master at it. Don't say they don't know how to innovate- they are brilliant criminals. Look at the AARD detection code! A self-modifying, debugger-defeating virus built into an OS. Now that's innovation!
The point here is that Open Standards are not enough. Microsoft has a lot of brilliant developers, and even if you have a nice open standard, it doesn't help if Microsoft releases a new "open standard" - government approved, mind you - every week. This is called "churn", and it means introducing artificially new technology every two years (95, 98, 2000, blah blah, new paperclip) and forcing your users to upgrade (subscription model). If you can develop new open standards faster than the world can keep up, you've beaten this system.
Never underestimate Microsoft. The world is littered with the corpses of companies that did.
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
I have been using PCs since the early 80s - the CP/M days and even before. The major drag then was 'no standards'. You could not transfer a document from one OS to another - forget it, you could not even move a floppy from one machine to another. Or a casette tape. Or address a serial port in the same way on two machines. Etc.
When Wintel appeared and became popular, this changed - big time. Suddenly we could all share commands, floppies, documents, code... it was great.
And this is still the case. At work, all our tech guys use Linux machines. But they run VMWARE on top, because everything you do in a business environment involves MS.
When someone sends you a resume, it is in Word format. A spreadsheet, in Excel. A presentation, in powerpoint. A database, in access format. I work with people all over the world and it's simple, this is the standard.
People want standards. Me too. Sure, I can accept a Wordperfect resume, and spend an hour cursing trying to convert it to some other format - inevitably this takes and hour and only partially works. So do I want to keep life simple, or spend that hour? The former: all resumes must be in Word or ASCII format.
In Linux too: do I want to stick with RedHat or use a 'better' distri? Go to deja and ask a question and 7/10 answers are about RH. So that is my Linux standard.
What I am saying is, standards are good, becasue they enable faster growth - and they are made 'de facto', not by committeees. Don't knock it: people will always take the easiest way.
Michael
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Do we really want our government defining and enforcing protocols and standards for operating systems, desktop software and networking protocols? I'm no fan of Microsoft, but keep the government out of protocols and standards. I don't want to "elect" the best operating system, the best network protocol, the best script language, etc.
Someone you trust is one of us.
The government decided that there had to be standards after the 1920s fall, AND they do it intelligently--they have the various people in the market get together and agree on the standards, and then they enforce them.
And in software, we wouldn't be choosing the best method, we'd be choosing the standard method. If you have a better method, use that and convice people to switch.