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Second Thoughts: Microsoft on Trial
Microsoft's gargantuan and controversial presence triggered a techno-social revolution over the last decade. Microsoft's dominance -- and as some describe it, predation -- helped shape the computer revolution and the new economy. It was also instrumental in spawning Open Source, Free Software and the related individualistic, decentralized media that may well have saved the Net from the corporatized fate of much of the rest of the non-virtual information culture.
One of the problems is that our media has become a mob, lurching one way, then the other.
Perspective and clarity is hard to come by.
For more than a decade, the popular press uncritically accepted just about every single thing Bill Gates and his company said or did. Big media were instrumental in uncritically promoting products like Windows 98 and in establishing the notion of Microsoftian omnipotence. Gates couldn't have done it without them. They slobbered over his bland pronouncements, his shamelessly excessive mansion, his inane books, and his company's workable but decidedly uninspired and proprietary software.
Now, by and large, they've turned, and just as uncritically accepted the notion that Microsoft is an illegal and predatory monopoly and that the company needs to be broken up. Gates' astonishing arrogance -- lying to a federal judge comes to mind -- is much to blame for this change. But monomania isn't a crime.
Some articulate federal appeals court judges -- the case is before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia -- appear to be challenging the finding in the Microsoft trial, although they've yet to make their ultimate findings. And they and others are raising some troubling questions about the conduct of Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, who has himself told interviewers he knows little about the issues involved and believes there are good grounds to appeal his ruling. (The transcripts are available from the Federal Document Clearing House, a private subscription service that is not online, and from various online news sites. They make compelling reading).
I was always uneasy about Jackson's ruling and posture. To me, Microsoft's crimes were arrogance, mediocrity and greed, the hallmarks of our corporatized culture -- none of them, alas, illegal in our business world. Much as people fault the quality of Microsoft's software and decry its practices, the truth is that tens of millions of people have used their products successfully to access the Net and the Web and run their PCs. And the idea that a Microsoft break-up would enhance competitiveness and creativity have always seemed dubious, even menacing. The Net has been so creative and explosive in part because the government didn't know enough about it to mess it up. That's a dangerous precedent to change.
I'd rather see MS challenged creatively in the marketplace, or by the generous spirit of movements like Open Source, than by a bunch of admittedly clueless federal bureaucrats, or an erratic judge. It seems clear that no one in the federal government from Congress to the regulatory agencies to the White House -- is in a strong position to oversee or regulate the Net or the increasingly disparate tech nation.
The appeal raises a host of complex issues, many of which fly well over my head. But the heart of the government action against Microsoft is clear enough: the U.S. accused the company of paying ISP's and OEM's (original equipment manufacturers) hundreds of millions of dollars to shut down Netscape's distribution channels. It also accused Microsoft of illegally tying its browser to Windows; of predatory pricing, and of exclusive dealing. But several questions about the government's case seem legitimate, even troubling, and it seems both fair and appropriate to launch an open discussion about them, to see whether they have any merit -- or not.
First:
Antitrust law says that for a company to behave illegally, it must establish a monopoly (not in itself illegal), engage in anti-competitive practices, and perhaps most importantly, harm consumers. Were consumers demonstrably harmed by Microsoft? If so, how?
Did government antitrust prosecutors actually prove that Microsoft prevented Netscape, or any other rival, from bringing new products to the marketplace?
According to unchallenged testimony in federal court this week, Netscape distributed 160 million copies of Navigator in l998 alone. At the time, according to the appeals court testimony, there were approximately 100 million Net users, which means every one could have acquired Netscape's product if they wanted to. Is it true that these users were not free to choose Netscape?
In ruling against Microsoft, Judge Jackson defined the "relevant market" that Microsoft controlled as operating systems and replacements to operating systems. He then found that Microsoft's admittedly aggressive tactics harmed Navigator. But Microsoft's lawyers have repeatedly argued -- correctly -- that Navigator isn't an operating system, and that Netscape had neither interest in nor means to supplant Windows. Was Judge Jackson wrong when he concluded that there was a direct link between Microsoft's bullying tactics and direct harm to consumers in the "relevant market?"
Judge Jackson also found that Microsoft had violated Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act by tying IE to Windows. Appeals Court Justice Stephen Williams sharply challenged that view in court this week. Whatever Microsoft's conduct was, he argued, "it's not tying." Several other justices said they were sympathetic to Microsoft's argument that it integrated IE with Windows because there was little or no real market for computers without browsers. Isn't that so? In this time period, as the Web was exploding, why wasn't Microsoft justified in integrating Windows with its much-hyped OS? Wouldn't doing otherwise prove corporate suicide? Was Microsoft really supposed to sit back and allow competitors to dominate this critical market, surely threatening Windows in the process?
The Justice Department has been struggling in the appeals testimony to respond to arguments that computer operating systems by their very nature might have to be standardized, and that as a result a monopoly was inevitable. If Microsoft didn't create one, its lawyers claimed, somebody else would have and at least some of those potential "other" monopolies had a vested interested in seeing a divided and weakened Microsoft.
Plenty of questions remain about Microsoft and its practices. Did the company ruthlessly, or illegally, discourage competition? Did Microsoft make it too difficult or in some cases, impossible, for consumers to remove IE from their desktops? Did Microsoft unfairly -- or, more to the point, illegally --wipe out or damage potential competitors? But there are civil, criminal and other remedies for this behavior, if it occurred, short of chopping up the company.
The truth is, there is a fine but important legal line between ruthlessness, avarice and illegality. There are also profound implications for the tech world if Microsoft does, in fact, break apart, especially if it happens for the wrong reasons.
Now there is also the question of judicial bias. Some legal ethicists -- including nearly all of the appeals judges -- have sharply criticized Judge Jackson, whose dislike for Gates sometimes appeared personal -- in one interview, Jackson linked Microsoft to drug gangs -- and who made critical comments about Microsoft and its founder to reporters while the appeal process is still underway. The appeals judges are so upset with Jackson that they are reported to be considering sending the case back to a different judge. Jackson's behavior is considered grossly unprofessional, especially in the federal judiciary. Something seems off about this judge. The final decision in the Microsoft case will shape software and new economy laws for decades -- the ruling ought to be credible and beyond doubt.
Another problem is the selective nature of the Justice Department's prosecution of Microsoft, which suggests the government is regulating predatory corporations when it certainly is not. In the Corporate Republic, the land of AOL/Time-Warner and the Disney Corp., is Microsoft really that unusual, or even particularly predatory?
Are other giant theme park operators really free to create new versions of Disney World, whose synergistic marketing "tie-ins" would seem to a non-tech layperson to dwarf the alleged linkage between IE and Windows? Can new information content and delivery providers possibly compete with the monster that is AOL/Time-Warner, a truly awful merger with dreadful implications for privacy, free speech and competitiveness; a link-up that the very same Justice Department only recently approved with hardly a blink? This is a company crying out for a break-up from the day it merged.
Microsoft appeals trial transcripts are available on almost all major news sites -- USA Today, CNN.com, the Washington Post and the New York Times. People can reach their own conclusions about the testimony, and the appeal court's questioning of lawyers for both sides. It's implicit that your comments are always welcome on this site, but your thoughts about these questions would be particularly welcome.
A dominant company, unchecked by any laws, is worse than an opressive government (assuming you're talking about the US) because the US government's behavior is constrained by laws, elections, and so on. So while we may not like what the government does, it still has to be responsive to the will of the people at some basic level. Corporations don't have even that minimal constraint -- they only have to be responsible to their investors.
As a former Corel employee, I can tell you that there were several occasions where Corel was shut out of OEM contracts for WordPerfect Office because Microsoft threatened to raise the OEM's price for their Windows license significantly. IE: Bundle a competitive product, and we'll shut you out of the market completely.
.net or Linux - it was all about the anti-trust issue. From the press release in October: "In addition, both companies have agreed to settle certain legal issues between Corel and Microsoft"...
If that's not anti-trust behaviour, I don't know what is.
That's *really* what the recent Corel/MS stock deal was all about, IMHO. It had nothing to do with
Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, who has himself told interviewers he knows little about the issues involved
...
The appeal raises a host of complex issues, many of which fly well over my head
Right - so if Jackson can be discounted because he doesn't understand the issues, remind me again why I shouldn't discount this article?
-dair
I don't know which way it's going to go. Naturally, many forms of media _are_ in Microsoft's pocket and entirely dependent on MS for revenues directly or indirectly- how surprising can it be that these sources uniformly see the appeal as a huge vindication for MS? Clue: the verdict is NOT IN. There could be surprises- they could be engaging in some heavy Jackson bashing to clear themselves of the appearance of partiality, just as Jackson released findings of fact to insulate his work from the expected ravages of highly paid lawyers! Every step of the way the judges have had to go heavily on the defensive.
The appeals court cannot have failed to notice Microsoft lies in court ("I'm sorry, I don't buy that for a second"- this from their big ally?)
The appeals court cannot have failed to notice Microsoft introduced FAKE EVIDENCE (the video evidence of 'identical' windows boxes, one without IE)
Perjury _is_ a crime and contempt of court can lead to getting booted out of the courtroom- and if it was any _normal_ criminal, the antics of MS defense lawyers would have led to charges. It's not a normal criminal- there's a bottomless well of lawyers that can be dragged in and instructed to behave with the same contempt and untruthfulness, so booting the individual lawyers WILL NOT WORK. The judges are forced to let acts of perjury and contempt go unchallenged so the process doesn't get completely clogged. This is not reliable evidence that they are going to find for the lying, perjuring, and obviously, baldly guilty defendant.
Everyone swore that Jackson was going to let MS go up until the last minute as well- the media was uniformly convinced that nothing MS did was hurting them, and that Jackson would buy into the argument that as software didn't exist in the Industrial Age, antitrust didn't apply no matter what the company's motives were or what it did to twist arms.
Well- again, I am _autistic_ and even I am not so pedantic as to be completely stupid about this issue. The fact that I could write a word processor is not the freaking point! The fact that I would have to be totally insane to expect to SELL it, is. Microsoft has consistently taken over ENTIRE SECTORS of software development and made it completely absurd for a market to exist in them. That is the problem in a nutshell. It's irrelevant HOW they did it- although they did it with armtwisting and APIs, it would still be destruction of a market even if they'd made the market similarly barren using only quality (and that totally ignores the relevant point of distribution, and that's where we begin to see armtwisting again).
The judges are hearing this 'en banc' which is not an accident or trivial thing- and it may be speculative, but I can identify one very very good reason for the appeals court to put up the APPEARANCE that they totally disrespect Jackson's findings and procedures. If I was them, I would want to know if it were TRUE. Was Jackson a loon, or is Microsoft really so far gone that they will lie to the judges, fake evidence, make no sense at all? If the appeals court defers to Jackson on anything, it is a warning sign to Microsoft, and if I were the appeals court, I would want to send NO warning signs. Let the biggest MS supporter say anything he likes to reassure the MS defense- his courtroom comments ARE NOT VERDICTS! The chance that the MS defense can be baited into replicating their embarrassing performance in front of Jackson is too important to miss- the appeals court MUST KNOW if it was a fluke, or if the defense is that contemptuous, and most importantly they must know if Microsoft will respect the court enough to comply with sanctions after a previous failure to do so. Only a position of complete contempt for the court and the verdict will justify a structural remedy, as Jackson well knew, and as the appeals court believes even more strongly- otherwise it's much simpler to just issue conduct requirements and leave it at that.
Whatever the makeup of the 'en banc' appeals court, I do not believe for a second that it is an accident that the MS defense is being invited to exactly duplicate their attitude and performance they gave Jackson. They're being baited, coaxed to throw caution to the wind and show just how arrogant they can be, reveal their true colors before a full 'en banc' court of appeals judges (I assume they can talk to each other as a jury would?). Only this can truly reveal whether they are incapable of respecting a conduct remedy- and the court MUST know that, above all else, before passing judgement on whether Jackson's conclusions of law were correct. Many people feel they were correct.
Microsoft is a monopoly, and probably illegal. It isn't about netscape though, because netscape has always sucked. I remember netscape 1.1n, and I hated it, used it only when required. I remember 2.0 was worse. Netscape introduced frames, something I cannot forgive them for. (lynx has been my browser of choice for years) Anyone with money to pay programers could make a browser that would work better then netscape did, proof: Microsoft did.
Ask the Samba folks to prove microsoft is anti-competitive. Ask the Wine folks. They have the dealings with microsoft to prove it. Ask anyone who is trying to build a word processor that loads docments created with a microsoft product. They are the ones being harmed, not netscape. There are quality word processors out there created by someone other then microsoft. They don't work with Word though (well) so noone uses them.
I think you need to take a look at Windows Media Player. It is quickly outstripping RA. And it is included with Windows. You can get free updates for it simply and painlessly with Win98.
Will RA be around in a year? Maybe. Probably not doing as well, I'd wager. Has WinMP killed their market? Yep.
Now what is the cause? Well, there it gets complicated. The bundling is a big part. It really is killing them. The other part, however, is total irony--Microsoft is trying to use more open standards. They release the specs for their codecs, and then drive the codec via WMP platform bundling. The MS ASF format is much better than RA's format--better compression, better quality. A good thing.
So is MS innovating or destroying? A little of both. And that is why they are sooo damn effective. Anyone who says MS doesn't innovate is a fool. But anyone who thinks they get there on technical merit is equally a fool.
The REAL issue in all of this is: do Microsoft applicactions get an unfair advantage by being created by the company that makes AND ships the OS? I think the answer is clear: yes.
Could RA get bundled with the default installation of Windows 98--I doubt it. And there is the difference. Yes, RA let down their guard and got upstaged. But how do they compete with the Juggernaut that is "comes with Windows 98 Free!" ? Support the format? No--that will only kill them. The real competition is minshare--and MS has the lock on that, because it is their platform. Yes, I use Linux. But I also realize that Windows is pretty much the only game in town for 95% of computer users.
"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs." -- Switchfoot, Ode to Chin
It's well-accepted word of mouth that MS vastly underplayed the importance of the internet at that time, and possibly still do.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
If you want to talk cheap then you are better off with PostgreSQL or even MySQL. Seeing as you already poo-poo'd Oracle and DB2 despite them being technically superior, proving that you are not interested in technical merits, you might as well pick the cheapest database.
These are databases, not e-mail clients. The fact that you consider "easy-to-use" a necessary feature for a database is ludicrous. Databases aren't useful by themselves. You additionally need the ability to program SQL and some variation of frontend language. This is PROGRAMMER TERRITORY, and so you should not be using the same criteria to select a database as you would pick an e-mail client or word processor.
This is a clear sign of the declining quality of computer professionals. You can read as much disgust into the emphasized word as you see fit. You apparently think the first criteria for choosing a database isn't data-integrity, robustness, transaction speed, rollback features, data-type support, customer support, or any other "true" criteria. You seem to think that the most important criteria is that you can click a mouse button and get a list of options. You have your priorities completely messed up.
I did say my purposes. Afterall, we were talking about databases, so in context I hadn't really thought that secretaries were the main issue here.
But on the matter of secretaries. Keep in mind that UNIX was invented so patent typists - i.e. secretaries - could enter information. My first computer-related job was in 1991 and involved upgrading an ISC system which had 10 VT100 dumb terminals hooked off a serial board. It was used by - wait for it - 10 secretaries who used vi and troff for preparing letters and invoices. I think people often underestimate the high intelligence required to be a good secretary.
I was of course talking about Word for DOS, which began to supplant WordPerfect because Word shipped "for free" on new PCs. This should have been obvious from my reference to MultiMate: the CPM/DOS word processor.
But your point is wrong anyway. There were WYSIWYG word processors in the 80s for the Amiga, the Atari, the Macintosh, etc. Microsoft even had a graphical version of Word on the Macintosh many years before Word for Windows appeared. And they certainly weren't the 1st WYSIWYG word processor for the Macintosh. Heck, I remember running some crappy WYSIWYG word processor on my C64.
I'm almost certain that GEM had a rather good WYSIWYG word processor as well, so that means you could have gotten WYSIWYG word processing on your IBM-PC before Windows even existed.
Quite possibly. I'm pretty sure the Apple II had a Microsoft BASIC. And the C128 definitely had a Microsoft BASIC. Grepping the C128 roms turns up "(C)1977 MICROSOFT CORP".
But the BASIC wasn't what made these computers sell well. The "killer" games and apps for these computers didn't use BASIC at all. They all wrote directly to the hardware.
This was what I meant when I said Microsoft played a small but non-important role in these earlier consoles.
Why? Why shouldn't Microsoft be able to say "if you want to use my property, you will sign this contract saying how you will use it. If you don't like those terms, don't use our software."?
They have a limited right to this, yes. What they DO NOT have the right to do is dicate what OTHER software they can do, both in interacting with their own software, and completely external to their software. This means that no, they cannot say you can use our OS, but not their applications. They also cannot say you can use our OS, so long as you *NEVER* use theirs..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Solitaire doesn't compete any more with commercial card games then Wordpad competes with Microsoft Word 2000 or Wordperfect..
Any OS needs to have basic tools. That does not mean that they should include fully fledged bundled packages.
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Releasing for free was not what they did wrong. Releasing it bundled for free with the OS is what they did wrong.
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
"I'd rather see MS challenged creatively in the marketplace, or by the generous spirit of movements like Open Source, than by a bunch of admittedly clueless federal bureaucrats, or an erratic judge."
So would I, BUT, the problem is that you are assuming that the marketplace is a level playing field where the consumer reigns supreme. This is NOT AT ALL TRUE. The marketplace is controlled, at least in large part, by the same large companies (Microsoft, RIA) and the same federal bureaucrats (DMCA, UCITA) and the same judges (Kaplan) that you say you don't want making this decision.
You say, "Let MS be challenged in the marketplace!"
I say, "Challenge the marketplace in court!"
From my perspective, all of the important battles (MPAA, 1-click patents, RIAA, DeCSS, UCITA, censorware, encryption export controls, GPL, carnivore, Napster...) will happen in the courtrooms and not in the marketplace. That's the sad truth of it.
Derek
My Point
Microsoft is forcing you to use their own Win32 Windowing system. You don't have a choice. You can't get it to load up with any other windowing system. Sure you can get shells that do a good job of pretending to be another system, and programs that bend the existing API to look like another system (Windowblinds), but you can't write your own window system to REPLACE win32.
So? Why did I buy windows95/98/ME/whatever? Was it for DOS? nope. Was it for karma? nope. Was it for the Win32 system? Yup.
If I want to replace Win32 (aka Windows) then fine, fdisk and Linux goes on. But why would I complain that I can't what I bought (windows) won't let me replace it. That's like getting pissed because I bought a Chevy but it won't let me put the oil filter and spark plugs from my Ford in it.
Should I also complain that I can't run Linux without running the Linux kernel?
Sure, on X, I can run Gnome/GTK/Xaw/Xlib/KDE/Motif apps, etc... but underneath they all are X windows apps that make calls to the Xlib layer.
The idea of the Windows product is to sell Windows - which *surprise* includes the windowing system built in. Should everthing now provide the ability to morph to something else? Should Word now be forced to let me use ispell? Should vi now support emacs keystokes? Should bash now understand setenv?
When I went from Bind 4 to Bind 8 I had to modify my named.conf. I guess Bind is harming people by having incompatiable file formatis between its products. I even had to make one or two mods to go to Bind 9.
The exploit in BIND was not written by bind, but the existence of the hole combined with the monopoly they have in the DNS "market" are what really caused the problem.
See...it works both ways. As for having to reboot everyday, the only time I rebooted my 2000 machine in the past few months has been to install a video capture card. The only reason I reboot my ME machine at home is because it gets turned off at night so I don't have to listen to the fans.
As for Office 2000, I run it because it works well, is a lot less buggy than any of the half-assed solutions on any other OS and has way too much functionality. Plus I like the little cat that does cute things on the bottom of my screen.
"Asked how small software companies could compete on products that Microsoft wants to fold into Windows, [Microsoft chief operating officer Bob] Herbold told Bloomberg News they could either fight a losing battle, sell out to Microsoft or a larger company or 'not go into business to begin with.'" - Newsweek, March 1998
Netscape's failure proves that it's impossible to compete against Microsoft if Microsoft decides it wants to have you out of business. Microsoft has near-infinite resources and near-infinite manpower; they can afford to develop workalikes for any company's software products then give these workalikes away for free until the competition is bankrupt.
I just priced windows Me...2 3& e=11016940
:(
http://www.bestbuy.com/software/Detail.asp?m=10
$89.95 for the WinMe upgrade. I paid $94.95 for the Win95 upgrade back in 1995.
How is that a price increase?
This is really the crux of the issue. Your facts are not facts at all, they are FUD. FUD intended to stir emotion.
The Appeals court on the other hand is worried only about the actual facts in the case. Not your Peter Pan fantasy dreams.
I'm amazed your post was rated a 5.
You people really need to get a grip.
Win98 was the same price.
Look, you can either prove that windows is more expensive today than 10 years ago... Or you can give up on the stupid argument.
Oh MY GOD!
Proof of a conspiracy.
They may have charged $4 more! I don't recall, I seem to remember Win95 having a retail price of $99, or it might have been $95.
This is a riduculous argument.
What we can count on now, as has been demonstated in the past, is that the press will not fairly report anything against Microsoft. The same is true for reporting on Car Dealerships in your local newspaper. With Microsoft the problem is only magnified. It all comes down to AD dollars. Mircosoft pays a lot of money to every major network for commercials. Expensive commercials. They also put a lot of money into politician's pockets. So not only has this case been grossly -under investigativly-reported, but the Federal politicians have no incentive to take on MicroSoft.
This case is a perfect example of AntiTrust. Microsoft holds monopoly control over the desktop and they abused that power in preventing competitors to provide competing products on that platform. OEM computer builders were required to install ONLY Internet Explorer on their machines, and in some cases they were required to pay for a Windows license for every machine they produced wether or not that Operating system was actually installed. Microsoft has hidden and continues to hide important API information making development on the platform very difficult for competitors and in some instaces actually modified the APIs to "break" competitor's products. The list goes on...
Microsoft controls the railroad and has prevented competitors from using that railroad to their detriment.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Microsoft deserves part of the blame for ILOVEYOU and Melissa. Their dominance has created a dangerous monoculture for the virus to propogate in. A most heterogenous network of computers would make it drastically harder for a virus or worm to propogate. Microsoft's consumer level operating systems effectively have no security, meaning that once a single user is infected, everyone on the machine is infected. This assumption of little to no security created an culture of programmers that assume that users have write access everywhere. As a result, lots of programs require Administrator access under NT. As a result, lots of users run under Administrator access under NT. So NT's security features are largely ignored.
However, this doesn't really count as harm for anti-trust purposes, making bad decisions in software design isn't against the law, just frustrating.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
It was very generous of Microsoft to keep prices down on all of those computers they sell. Oh, wait, Microsoft doesn't sell computers. In fact, the price of computers is low enough that the price of Windows is is a big chunk of the total cost of a new (low-end) machine. If you want to thank someone for affordable computers, thank Compaq for producing the first clone of the IBM PC.
What competition? How about OS/2, or DESQView? Many people were enjoying protected memory and pre-emptive multi-tasking before Microsoft chose to share it with us.
What is your evidence for Microsoft benefitting the economy? That they're big and everyone uses them? Standard Oil and AT&T were both big and everyone used them. The economy in both cases improved when they were broken up.
I trust you've tested your theory by comparing the economy with Microsoft to the economy of an alternate universe without Microsoft? We can't know for certain that Microsoft helped the economy. Maybe the economy would be stronger if there were many more companies all fighting against each other on more even terms.
Just compare Netscape 2 with IE 2. Microsoft didn't really have such a clear lead then. To give themselves the lead, Microsoft used their monopoly to take distribution channels away from Netscape. I don't see anything "fair-and-square" about threatening to kill Office for Mac unless Apple make IE the default Mac browser.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Exactly. You could pay MS a vast amount of money, and, if it decides that you won't be too much of a threat, it might let you use their Native API to create your own subsystem. Like that's going to happen.
Or you can code to their documented API (Win32) and use their GUI and front end.
If you actually read what I said, I said that some win32 API calls are actually wrappers around the NT Native API, I didn't say that they all are.
The difference here is openness. Anybody with a compiler can write a Win32 application. You try porting something like X to run as the native graphical front end (instead of an application on top of Win32). It just won't happen without a vast amount of reverse engineering & major hackery.
Yes, you can replace the Explorer shell, written to the Win32 API, but you can't replace the Win32 API, even though that is not the native NT API. NT does have a Posix subsytem built in, but you can't write your own, because they don't publish the API for it.
Am I getting my point across here?
My Point
Microsoft is forcing you to use their own Win32 Windowing system. You don't have a choice. You can't get it to load up with any other windowing system. Sure you can get shells that do a good job of pretending to be another system, and programs that bend the existing API to look like another system (Windowblinds), but you can't write your own window system to REPLACE win32.
-- Hulver's site
First time I ever say "Press CTRL-ALT-DEL" to login, I sat there laughing for a couple minutes while I tried figuring out what the actual way to login was, obviously this was an idiot-test that would reboot the machine. Then I realized they weren't kidding. Still not sure what I think of that...
The Windows 9x/ME versions of IE from 4.0 through 5.5 all run fairly well on WINE, and it's improving basically weekly. The only thing that can't be supported is Java, because MS cheats by running the JVM in a kernel driver. And we really don't want to let arbitrary Windows code run in kernel mode :)
In the market place (which is how we "get rid of" a corporation) my one vote is my one dollar, which competes with your 5 dollars and someone else's thousand dollars. That means that if that one person "voted" for a corporation to continue to exist, our "vote" against it would be meaningless. And all a corporation need to do to continue to exist is get enough "votes" to be profitable. It is easier to participate in the political process and effect political change (especially at the local city/county/school district level) as an individual than it is to modify corporate behaviour. The problem is that most of the crowd here is so wrapped up in their work-lives, that they never actually bother to look into how the public sector works.
Unfortunately the Fed missed the real opportunity to slap on something that Microsoft really wouldn't like, and it wouldn't be nearly so controversial as a break up. Force MS to support standard, open, and free file formats and interfaces.
In fact the government should ask the ACM or IEEE to come up with open and free standards for Word Processing, Spreadsheets, Presentation software, Databases, Boomarks, network file sharing, Scripting languages, and the like. These need to be of equivalent or better quality and capabilities than Microsoft's existing formats/interfaces. Then a ACM or IEEE standard is defined that states that to be ACM/IEEE xxxx.xx certified you must support these formats/interfaces NATIVELY, by DEFAULT, and as easy and similar to use as any proprietary formats as technically possible. Then force Microsoft to make their operating system and applications to be compliant with the most recent version of the standard.
This wouldn't stop Microsoft from continueing to play their games with their own proprietary formats and interfaces, but their products would at least get along nicely with any software that also supports these open and free standards.
Microsoft would always have to face the fact that as the standard evolved to support similar features to anything they added to their own proprietary features, they would have to support the standard implementation as well. This should over time make them want to just start supporting the open and free standard system, since they have to anyhow. They can then spend more of the effort making a better to use system, rather than a difficult to live without system.
Pete,
I hate to break out some bad news, but frankly, Linux in its current form is still not ready for prime time when it comes to the average home user. While setup has improved a lot in terms of ease of use, trying to do things like kernel upgrades and other code upgrades can still be a pretty tricky proposition at times. And I don't think the average home user wants to tackle the formidable command-line interface of Linux, which uses frequently confusing UNIX commands.
The Linux crowd really needs to support the likes of Eazel, which is developing the Nautilus GUI working under GNOME to substantially make it easier for the average person to use Linux. (It helps that Eazel has Andy Hertzfeld--who developed much of the ideas for the original Macintosh interface--working on the project.)
Once Linux has a consistent, easy-to-use GUI interface, the ability to easily update the OS code without a finicky kernel recompile and the ability to recognize and configure itself to use new hardware in a "hot docked" fashion over the USB and IEEE-1394 connections, THEN I will consider it a serious contender against Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP. In short, Linux is getting better, but it's still got a ways to go.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
I hope you run like heck before all the Linux bigots flame you. :-)
Personally, I think the reason why Microsoft is so successful is the very fact that it was Microsoft's inclusion easy-to-setup networking features in both NIC and dial-up form in Windows 95 that really kicked off the explosive use of the Internet as we know it today. Before Windows 95, setting up your computer to connect to a Internet Service Provider was a very tricky situation, what with the fussy setup of Trumpet Winsock for Windows 3.1x.
Netscape made a lot of money in the early Windows 95 days because they got their Navigator 2.0x browser to work as a WIN32 API application; it took Microsoft a year before they released Internet Explorer 3.0, which matched Netscape's efforts.
What really killed Netscape was the fact that Netscape could not keep up with the improvements in Internet Explorer; by the time IE 5.0 came out, Netscape was way behind the times. So far, Netscape 6.0x is nowhere as fast and is far more resource hungry than IE 5.5 Service Pack 1.
Microsoft has something that few other companies have, and that is an excellent Usability Lab that does research into how to make programs easier to use. Note that IE 5.5 SP1 has a very "polished" feel because of this, while Netscape 6.0x feels like a mish-mash of menus in comparison.
The Linux crowd really needs to back the efforts of companies like Eazel, which seeks to create an easy-to-use, "polished feel" GUI for Linux running under GNOME. The fact that ex-Apple developer Andy Hertzfeld (one of the world's most foremost experts in GUI design) is doing much of the work on the Eazel Nautilus interface gives me hope that Linux will within a few years be able to successfully compete with Windows in terms of easy of installation and use.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
I've always maintained that breaking up M$ is the dumbest thing to do.
M$ is and has always been a one trick pony. Their trick is see something that anyone else is doing and buy it outright or 'reverse engineer (can anyone say DMCA is a two edged sword?)' it and vanquish the competition under the elephantine weight of the leverage M$ has with its OS.
But they have proved completely incapable of competing fairly on the basis of product quality.
If you force them into competing fairly, they might be able to learn how to do it on other platforms and you've just metastacized the cancer of having to deal with an arrogant school yard bully onto the next generation of hardware.
Between the flat-lining of x86 sales, the competition with Linux and the arrival of the 64 bit hurdle onto the desktop, M$'s days are numbered (in surprizingly low numbers too, they have no assets beyond some real-estate,) as long as they effectively corrall themselves onto the x86.
Let M$ die with the x86 and it will merely have been an extremely expensive abberation and we can all get on with our lives.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Uh where did you get the line that M$ started anything about affordability? Linux and all the OpenSource stuff is FREE! Developped because somebody needed it and wasn't greedy with it.
Find me anything that M$ actually created that has not been an utter failure. Bob?
Pu-leez! M$ sees something and buys it outright (QDOS) or reverse-engineers it (Make it more like the Mac! -Gates) Before he acquired Express, there was MultiPlan, a VisiCalc clone. Want me to go on?
Gates is a pimp and a nasty bully one at that. Technology lets him have a bulding full of hos. But they're still hos.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Not the other way around. Its coming out to give M$ better XML capabilities.
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And now that there's no competition its going to come out as slowly as M$ can get away with it.
Look at the history of the business... IBM sold OS 360 well into the eighties on 360s and 370 because they could. Why did they want to when they had a better OS (MVS) waiting in the wings?
Because it was pure gravy . Zero development cost and zero marketing costs. Just pure gravy
Its not about you. Its never about you. Its about the bottom line.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
You don't use LT's gas. He open sourced a good formula for gas. Those people who wish to build the mini gas proccessing plant in their back yard can use this formula and get superior quality gas and miliage.
However, 90% of the people don't want to, or can't build their own plant.
They can still use his gas. RedHat will sell it to them, or they can get it at their local book store, or they can mail-order it from CheapBytes for $2 for a lifetime supply.
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And yet, I'm not using RR gas, I'm using Linus Torvalds gas, and have been since before Judge Jackson's ruling. Explain that.
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Which, I'd be willing to bet, means he would have his mechanic remove the engine and let you tow the car away. He keeps the engine for parts at considerable profit, charges you full price for the cars, and bills you for the labor.
Which makes my analogy perfect. Would we expect the government to step in and require him to sell you the car without the engine, at a discount?
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Your analogy is wrong because Microsoft doesn't sell computers. Just the "Engine"
Guess you missed the part where we were talking about buying the computer without having to pay for the OS.
You would have to make this world a place where people can swap out engines as easily as they do OS's.
No I don't, because that's the opposite of what we're talking about. OSes are easy to swap out, and the question of paying for the OS whether you want it or not is a matter for the market to settle, not the courts.
If you don't like Microsoft's policies, don't do business with them. If you make PCs, and you don't like Microsoft's policies, don't do business with them. If you're buying a PC, and you don't like the fact that manufacturer X won't sell you a computer without charging you for a Microsoft OS, don't do business with them.
Can't make as much money as you'd like that way? Well, I guess you're going to have to make a choice, aren't you? In real life, you don't always get to select from all the choices you'd like. It's not government's job to step in and force other FREE INDIVIDUALS to offer the choices you desire, even if those free individuals run multi-billion-dollar corporations that control the majority (not all, just the majority) of a segment of an industry.
You can buy a PC without Windows. You can buy a PC with Windows, and replace Windows. You can even buy a PC with another OS on it, and warranty support for both the PC and the non-Microsoft OS.
Anything else is unfair and unConstitutional interference by the government in completely legal free trade.
Microsoft management is a bunch of arrogant pricks; but it's not illegal to be an arrogant prick.
I remind you again that during the HEIGHT of Microsoft's supposed monopoly, it was still not only possible to buy a desktop computer without an OS, but it was possible to buy one with a factory-supported non-Microsoft OS. It was even possible to buy one with an Intel processor and a non-Microsoft OS. Indelible Blue predates the 1994 decision, and Sun, HP, and IBM have been selling Unix workstations forever.
Yes, they cost more; but it's not the purpose of government to force people to charge the same for all products in a market space.
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If you wrote something with the latest version of Word Perfect, you can't open it in Word Perfect 4.2, nor can you open it in emacs or possibly in Star Office (not sure about that but you get my point).
Yes, but if you wrote something in Word Perfect 4.2, you CAN open it in the latest Word Perfect.
If you wrote something in emacs 3.5, you CAN open it in the latest emacs.
If you wrote something in Star Office 5.0, you CAN open it in the latest Star Office.
The same is not necessarily true of Microsoft Word. You often have to keep the old version around so you can use your old documents, which can mean needing two computers if the new version can't coexist with the old one.
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But don't you think that computer manufacturers should be free to install Linux instead of Windows without repercussions from Microsoft? Don't you think they should be able to install an alternate web browser if they wish? Don't you think they should have control over what gets displayed first on their machines?
Yes; and I also think they should be free to sign contracts giving up those rights, if they think it's worth losing them in return for gaining access to somebody else's property, I.E. Microsoft's operating systems. I wouldn't want to choose that, but that doesn't mean I should have the right to force other people to agree with me.
Don't you think software makers should have the ability to make compatible software and use the same functions of Windows that Microsoft currently prohibits?
Why? Why shouldn't Microsoft be able to say "if you want to use my property, you will sign this contract saying how you will use it. If you don't like those terms, don't use our software."?
Is Windows a right?
If the license terms are onerous, don't use it. If that means people don't buy your computers, well, they have that right, too.
Before you accuse me of not being a Libertarian because I don't agree with you on this, you should perhaps check out the party's official position on the matter.
For those too lazy to follow the link, I'll tease it with the title from the press release: "Microsoft antitrust ruling: More costly than all the bank robbers in history."
This isn't a secret; we even made the front page of the Wall Street Journal with it.
The government should stay the hell out of this. The market as a whole, and consumers as individuals, should decide.
If you don't like the choices given you, make your own. If you don't have the skill to make your own, whose fault is that?
Not even your computer is a right, much less the operating system on it. But even if it were, you still have choices; run Linux. Run BSD. Or if you're just all fired-up set to pay somebody, run BeOS or Solaris.
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Well, actually, IBM was prevented from selling OS/2 by M$ when M$ said you can only get a reasonable price for W95 if IBM would drop OS/2.
You don't get it; that's only PREVENTING you from selling OS/2 if you CHOOSE to buy Win95.
IBM could have chosen to concentrate on OS/2 and blow off Win95.
They were free to choose. The market will make it's own choices.
Sometimes doing the right thing hurts. That's life.
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How can you claim they have a monopoly on a web site that is run on PC hardware using a non-Microsoft OS? One of many non-Microsoft OSes that will run on the hardware in question? A non-Microsoft OS that is sold preloaded on that company's PCs?
You have at least a dozen choices, and that's just on the particular hardware platform in question.
Microsoft doesn't even compete on most hardware platforms, and only competes effectively on one.
Monopoly? That would be like if Standard Oil had only operated in California and New York, but still got declared a monopoly.
Microsoft's "monopoly" is a joke that one judge agrees with, and a whole bunch of others don't.
If I don't pay for their crap, why do you think you are forced to?
As for IBM, they always have offered, and continue to offer, their own OS; AIX. It's superior to Windows in many ways. However, most consumers don't want it. This demands better programming and marketting from IBM, not government intervention.
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Sometimes doing the right thing hurts.
The retailers let Microsoft put them in that position, and they aren't all in it; there are several retailers who don't sell Windows with their PCs, and there are lots who sell both it and other OSes.
The fact is that you can choose to buy a computer and not put Windows on it, and that's the bottom line.
And yes, you've always been able to buy one with another OS preloaded. Sun, HP, and IBM have been selling workstations forever. Indelible Blue predates the web. VA Linux has a great reputation, despite being fairly new.
So it costs more. Is the lower price a RIGHT, or a consequence of economies of scale? I think the latter.
It's like trying to call Rolls Royce up and ask to buy one of their cars without an engine, so you can put your own engine in.
If Rolls says "sorry, no, we don't sell them that way", should the government step in and tell them they have to do it?
No, in the real world you have three choices; give up and buy nothing, buy the Rolls and remove the engine, or buy a Lexus. (Probably can't get them to sell it without the engine, either.)
Should the government then declare them a monopoly?
Microsoft doesn't make PCs. They don't make the only operating system available to consumers. They make a LUXURY, that is tied to another luxury.
If we were talking about General Mills securing an agreement with the majority of grocery stores that they would not carry any other brands of food, and would not sell any food to anyone without them buying a particular kind of food, you might have something, but we're not talking about food, we're talking about computers. We're not talking about removing all your choices, we're talking about reducing your cheap choices.
You aren't born endowed by your creator with the inalienable right to a cheap computer with a free OS on it.
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Well, under Unix someone with superuser access can replace /bin/login with a version that captures passwords, and that's not considered a security hole.
And that's what happened in the incident list. Some smart person got SYSTEM access through an IIS bug and then replaced the Gina with a password interceptor.
For an example of similar software that hooks into the gina, look no further than the Novell Client32 software.
The point of Ctrl+Alt+Del is that a unprivledged user that uses it can't be busted by a trojan on a uncomprimsed installation of the OS. Once you are owned, all bets are off. (Not to mention that you could create a 2-bit VB program that asked for a password and probably dupe 90% of the dupes, SAS or not.)
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
All MS needs to say is that it saw a trend and a new market emerging.
Which is somewhat true. The launch of Windows 95 in Aug 1995 was all about connectivity via the "integrated" MSN client. By December 7 1995, Microsoft had totally turned around and announced that future connectivity would be via integration with Internet Explorer. It took them all of 3 months to flush millions of dollars of R+D and MSN hype down the toliet (not to mention MSN contributing to the Win95 schedule slip), and this was based almost purely on a limited understanding of Andresson's comment about Netscape turning Windows into "a poorly debugged collection of device drivers". In retrospect, small thanks are in order for Microsoft to at least have the sense to not to try to lock us into MSN.
What lots of Slashdotter's miss is that after Dec 1995, Microsoft immedately started acting as if IE was "integrated", even though it took 2-3 more years before it actually was. That's right -- a good chunk of the trial evidence surrounded Microsoft's behavior with Internet Explorer versions 2.x and 3.x, both of which were not a superior product and were not really integrated in any way. A good example is OEMs, who are perfectly happy with IE5, but rightfully thought Microsoft was crazy when they suggested that IE 3 should be the default browser instead of Netscape (which had the most features and a 70% marketshare at the time).
Furthermore, nobody questions that Zero Cost Browsers (or psuedo-Zero Cost Browsers like Netscape was) benefit consumers. However, what real benefit has "Integration" (real or proposed) given anyone but Microsoft.
When MS announced the plan on Pearl Harbor day, everyone knew web browsers were slow and crashed alot. For more than 2 years after the plan was executed, Microsoft had a "Integrated shell" that was slow and crashed alot. It's widely felt that Windows 98 (which really was nothing more than a $99 browser upgrade) was a downgrade to the OS as a whole, but OEMs and IT Depts didn't really have the choice not to use it and use Win95.
Browser Integration was one of the biggest farces pawned off on the IT consumer ever, and Microsoft and their monopoly instincts are nearly 100% to blame. This came out in the trial when a MS Exec got on the stand and testified that not one of their supposed "integration" features (such as Windows Update) really depended on integration from a technical standpoint. Perhaps in Windows XP, there really will be some new functionality to come out of shell integration, but that's 7 years after Microsoft announced the idea.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
News Flash -- OS/2 was DEAD in the market by the time Windows 95 shipped. In case you weren't aware, it had been for sale since 1987 and had plenty of chances to find a real market, which it never did.
Lots of people at IBM (including most of the PC Group) were in favor of dropping it as a standard configuration because it was a big expense that competitors (Compaq, etc) didn't have to carry. I worked at a big IBM PC shop in 1994, and IBM sent a rep out to personally apologize for the nightmare of their preloaded OS/2 2.1 / Windows 3.1 machines duel-boot machines.
Furthermore, the "reasonable price" you are referring to was $11 for a copy of Windows. IBM was getting that low price because they co-owned Windows 3.0. Do you think Compaq and Dell were getting anything near this price? So, of course IBM took the bait -- they were getting a significant rebate for doing something they were going to do anyway (drop OS/2 as a standard configuration).
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
People don't know that MS decided way back with the PC/AT's 80286
IBM/Microsoft decided that 286+ support would be in OS/2 and and DOS would be legacied. PC customers rejected that decision, and it set the state of PC software back for a number of years. OS/2 was such a loser in the market that Microsoft was pretty much forced to come up with the protected mode DOS hack that is Windows today. That doesn't mean that they weren't holding their nose while they were doing it (see Windows NT).
Trying to blame MS for the long life of DOS is a no-go. Blame the consumers for not buying OS/2 (or later, NT), or blame IBM for making OS/2 into a viable product until many versions later.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Microsoft have allowed this to happen. They could've laid down standards on how PC hardware ought to operate.
You really are suggesting this? With a 90% marketshare, the OS independance of PC hardware is already hanging from a thin string, and I don't think most people would like the outcome of giving Microsoft more control over hardware. (See the "Secure Audio Path" issue...)
Bottom line is that there's nothing Microsoft can do about some OEM stuffing cheap ass RAM into a cheap ass machine for sale for $999 at Office Depot. Consumers are going to have to get smarter.
Other points:
+ Windows NT hardware certification list was originally intended for complete systems. Guess what? Folks don't want to have to buy some overpriced Compaq or IBM Certified "Workstation" when you can get a screwdriver box that does the same thing for half the price, and folks will bitch if Win2000 doesn't run on that mystery box. So testing when to shit to get broader hardware support and more drivers.
Again, blame the consumer -- when people were bitching about their Not-MS-Certified GeForce drivers running on their Not-MS-Certified Athlon motherboards with their Not-MS-Certified IDE controllers and their Not-MS-Certified SoundBlasters on Windows 2000 just to get maximum Quake fps, it's totally unreasonable to yell "Save Us Microsoft!".
+ Microsoft's PC OS Tax is nothing compared to Intel's CPU tax. The problem is that people want a 1000Mhz machine for $1000. They won't buy a better 700Mhz machine for that price. So the OEM have to skimp on everything, or give people value that they can *see* (stupid stuff like volume knobs on the keyboard are the only way they can get their margin up). Intel or AMD takes all the profit, not the OEM and not MS.
+ PCI hardware detection is documented. Linux uses it. Microsoft does have some real voodoo for ISA legacy non-PnP device detection (eg: old Token Ring and SCSI cards), but that is 99% a non-issue with new hardware.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
"Marketing" as in "We'll sustain the enormous R+D costs of maintaining two very similar operating systems, and then making them 98% compatible with each other; because by doing so we can use our monopoly position to 'upsell' consumers to the version that actually works somewhat well, and therefore we make higher profits."
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Nobody is complaining about what Microsoft did in the mid-to-late 1970s. Microsoft became harmful much later, (somewhere around 1987-1989) when they began to use preloads and per-processor agreements to restrict customer choice. This was long after computers had become affordable.
So does everyone else. Whether Microsoft's product are "good" (in the absolute sense) or not is debatable, but one thing is for sure: in the relative sense, their quality is well below average.
An office computer today can't do a damn thing that they weren't doing 10 years ago. 10 years is a lot of time for computer technology to stand still.
OS/2, Mac, Amiga, commercial Unixes, etc. In 1992, Windows 3.1 was way behind the average state of the art. In 1995, Windows 95 was way behind the average state of the art. And ever since then, if Microsoft has started to catch up, it's only because disheartened and disillusioned developers have stopped trying to advance the state of the art, due to the knowledge that they will never be allowed to compete in the market. Except for a few idealistic fringe groups, the only people who are still trying anymore, are the Linux dudes, since they don't have to worry about markets.
People wasting money on busywork that doesn't result in production, doesn't help the economy, it hurts it. When someone spends $600 paying me to clean up a mess that was caused by a Microsoft product, then regardless of whether or not I made some bucks, that was economic damage. When someone is emailed a Excel97 document that their Windows3.1+some_old_Excel workstation can't read, so that they spend money upgrading their whole box just to cope with the situation, that is damage. If you believe otherwise, then you must love how much hurricanes "help the economy" by creating construction jobs.
That's flat out false. Most MS opposition comes from MS customers. It's just that it's the competitors are the ones who have the legal basis for going after MS in court, so they are the ones you hear about. The customers don't have any way to air their grievences -- you can't sue someone for making a product that sucks -- except to "vote with their wallets". But the monopoly keeps them from doing that too. Antitrust is their only hope.
Not damaging Microsoft, will damage the consumer even worse.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
1) Before MS .. now computers are cheap.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc? Sorry. MS didn't cause the price drop. The prices had been dropping wildly before MS ever showed up.
2) MS brought down prices?
Have you priced a word processor recently? Remember how much WordStar cost? This is flagrantly false, except in certain restricted domains and periods of time.
3) MS => good software.
Sometimes. MS Word 5.1a for the Mac was the best word processor I've ever used. Sort of killed off the competition. Funny, the Windows version still hasn't gotten that good, and neither have the more recent versions of the Mac MSWord.
MS is known to be able to produce some good software when it sees a very good reason to, e.g. there's a lot of competition. The rest of the time it tends to let bloat and decay set in.
4) MS has benefitted the economy.
How do you know? I can't say for sure whether it did or not, though I tend to think not. It certainly hasn't benefitted me, except by inducing me to move to Linux.
5) Nearly all opposition is from jealous competitors.
Seriously? I've never thought of myself as a competitor to MS, and I'm certainly opposed to them. I used to be a mild supported until our office switched to a Windows standard. Since then I've hated them more every year.
6) The fact is...
That repeating falsehoods doesn't make them true.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Netscape was driven out of business. They ended up getting bought out by AOL.
The persistence of the name doesn't mean the persistence of the business.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
One can generally find something good to say about anything. That doesn't mean that on the balence it is good.
I don't have definite feelings about ctrl-alt-del as a login though. It does seem that to circumvent it one might need to alter the boot tracks, and I have no idea how difficult that is.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
under existing laws, MS seems benign..the prosectution is so selective..
OK, I see your point -- I sortof missed it within the article. It's easiest for me to think of MS's abuses and points of the law I may have violated because I'm in this industry and I am more conscious of the touch of their influence than any other at the moment. And though I am outraged at the behavior of the NAB or Celera or whoever, it's harder for me to see which laws they are breaking.
But the questions becomes: how do we solve the larger problem?
I can see a couple of points of action that might be good:
1) Some solid refutation needs to go into the economic idea that "There is no God but Market, and profit is its prophet". I think this is probably the biggest contributor to the corporate economy (that, and corruption).
2) Especial focus might be on demostrating how laws that keep bariers to entry low could be useful. The problem with the corporate economy is that once a corporation gets in an entrenched market position, it tends to focus on erecting or keeping barriers to market entry. So they focus more on creating a need for its services/products (psychological or actual), rather than trying to compete on the merits of the product/service alone. So we end up with smoke and mirrors rather than an effecient market. Or they focus on erecting legal barriers to competition (patents on business methods). Or they focus on keeping essential infrastructure to themselves (Telcos). Can we introduce general ideas or law that would help these practices fall out of favor?
3) Highlighting current abuses of the system is good. I know we do that here on Slashdot, but it's sortof preaching to the choir (Hmmm. Sometimes, Jon, I think that your insights and abilities are somewhat wasted here).
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Tweet, tweet.
This might not hold up under law, but the main thing I've always been threatened about with MS was the sway they hold over default services installed with a PC.
1) You can't buy a new PC w/o paying for windows.
2) MS was trying to make it so that you couldn't buy a new PC with Netscape installed.
3) MS was trying to make it so that ISPs would have you install MS software. AT&T was the worst example of this: at one time, you couldn't sign up w/o installing IE and Outlook -- even on a Mac.
They failed at #3. They sortof failed at #2. I wonder if they would have tried harder if they weren't being watched.
I feel much better about the world w/ the presence of succesful Open Source solutions. I'll always have an alternative to MS stuff, now (at least until it's all illegal under the DMCA and/or copyright mechanisms in the hardware make it impossible to write open source drivers). But man, they deserve to take a shot for trying to control market channels by bullying rather than actually providing good products.
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Tweet, tweet.
There is also the point that with Unix you have to download it.. save it to disk.. chmod +x ... edit the first line so it'll run on your system.. and run it by hand....
Extention asside.. if Windows users were to look at AnnaKornikova.jpg.vbs they'd just feed it into Microsoft Media or some graphics viewer and get "not an image file" error...
Simply removing the single feature of feeding the file to the app (and Windows knowing what app to feed it to.. user not knowing) solves the problem...
Also alternitively... I do have kmail and it will feed files... but AnnaKornikova.jpg.pl will NOT be processed.. Becouse it is not a known multimedia format...
Anyway it's not that dumb of users... I think "dumb programmers" when I realise Windows is basicly feeding code sent by e-mail.. It shouldn't do that... Ok first time.. learn... FIX IT... No no we enchance.. now it runs code AUTOMATICLY... The user isn't being dumb to expect the software to know better... There is a huge diffrence on the software side between image files and executable files.
I don't actually exist.
This is getting a bit off-topic, but: Do you really mean good? I think a more accurate description would be just barely good enough for consumers who didn't know any better. The damage to consumers comes from this "just barely good enough" attitude combined with their monopoly position.
By the way, there is nothing illegal about being a monopoly (referring to the "although" in your comment). What is illegal is using that monopoly position to compete unfairly in new markets. The big squishy thing in this whole set of debates about Microsoft is defining the boundaries of these various markets. (Microsoft says everything is one big market; their competitors say that OSs and applications are different markets.)
Sure, but Linux consumers are quite a bit more discriminating than Microsoft consumers.
This is by far the worst Jon Katz article I've ever read. It's full of bad logic and misinformation.
It was also instrumental in spawning Open Source, Free Software
No, it was instrumental in perpetuating Open/Free software. Propietary Unix spawned it.
I'd rather see MS challenged creatively in the marketplace
Too bad MS' monopoly prevents free market forces from operating. That's why we need the government: to restore competition to the market.
It seems clear that no one in the federal government from Congress to the regulatory agencies to the White House -- is in a strong position to oversee or regulate the Net or the increasingly disparate tech nation.
How is forcing Microsoft, an illegal monopoly, into fair competition "regulation of the Net"??
Netscape distributed 160 million copies of Navigator
At the time [...] there were approximately 100 million Net users
I've gotta question numbers that claim Netscape had 160% of the market.
Is it true that these users were not free to choose Netscape?
Yes. Users were forced to take IE even if they didn't want it and were forced to download Netscape even if they wanted it pre-installed.
OEMs were not allowed to choose to pre-install Netscape instead of IE.
Jackson defined the "relevant market" that Microsoft controlled as operating systems and replacements to operating systems. But Microsoft's lawyers have repeatedly argued -- correctly -- that Navigator isn't an operating system
Repeat after me: it is a crime for a company with monopoly power in one market to use that power to influence/control a different market.
Several other justices said they were sympathetic to Microsoft's argument that it integrated IE with Windows because there was little or no real market for computers without browsers.
There's no market for computers without an email client. Should MS be allowed to "integrate" Outlook with Windows? Of course not. If they had simply *distributed* IE with Windows, and made it easier for OEMs and end users to remove, they wouldn't be in as much trouble.
There is NO technical reason whatsoever for this "integration". IE and Windows is the ONLY OS/browser combination that is "integrated", yet I can use several different browsers on several different OSes.
MS has a monopoly in desktop operating systems. A web browser is an application. Learn the difference.
Was Microsoft really supposed to sit back and allow competitors to dominate this critical market, surely threatening Windows in the process?
Repeat after me: it is a crime for a company with monopoly power in one market to use that power to influence/control a different market.
They can compete in the browser market, but they cannot use their monopoly power in OSes to help.
"The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance." -Thomas Jefferson
Katz....
None of those 'practices' would be illegal, IF THEY WERE NOT A MONOPOLY. But because they ARE, those things are illegal.
That's how antitrust works! That's the deal with monopolies! Once you become a monopoly, all the rules change.
Saying that lots of people successfully use MS products therefore it's not bad that they are a predatory monopoly means nothing... if they weren't around, they woudl be forced to cooperate. Microsoft has hindered the development of many cool things simply by keeping the barrier to entry for development of cool stuff for the world's most popular operating system high.
But NT 4 works well, and 2000 is even better.
Too little, too late. The mindset in the userbase is already established. And it's not primarily in the office, but at home. As someone else pointed out, users think it's normal to have to reboot. It's almost a reflex: BSOD -->> push button.
I agree that at work you should be using NT/W2K, especially if you have a qualified sysadmin to help to setup and maintain. But how many home users are going to know enough to setup an NT/W2K box? About as many as will be able to setup a Linux/*BSD box.
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
The government is BY DEFINITION involved in the market. The government awards corporate charters to corporations, awarding them preferential tax and liability considerations not available to private citizens, and corporations spend tremendous sums of money "educating" politicians...an activity again far too expensive for private citizens to engage in.
Capitalism may reward innovation (usually only when said innovation is accompanied by huge amounts of political wheel-greasing and marketing blitzes) but the government ALWAYS rewards the people who pay it. (hint...it's not you and me.)
So no, the government should not simply "laissez-faire", because the corporations spend money and effort to bias the government towards their interests (which is almost away from our own interests).
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
It's reasonable to think that throughout the 80's and early 90's the only way for a person to research a computer was to go down to the local retail computer store and ask. What would they have seen? Windows, and Mac. Maybe OS/2, and of course a few flavors of DOS. How many people knew how to update an operating system, though? The OS makers had to rely on getting their product installed by the computer makers if they were going to make any inroads. And MS closed all those doors with their predatory agreements.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
People don't know that MS decided way back with the PC/AT's 80286 to not use its hardware features to protect the O.S. from the applications. The virus industry enjoys MS' behavior.
People think that it's routine for computers to be unstable. As if it's somehow inherent in the metal. Not that "Support Staff" mind. Good thing they take more action about bridge design.
The biggest problem is the proprietary file formats. Data and documents belong to users, not to MS. But once the information is in an MS product, you're lucky if you can transfer it to something else. I dread having to access today's electronic government records in ten years -- who knows what MS Word 2010 will think of Word 6 .DOC?
I think the DOJ dropped the ball on that one. Whatever happened to the company, they should have required opening the APIs. Document the program interfaces, and document the data formats. Let others be able to process MS data formats.
"Don't let Microsoft control your computer. Use Bob's OS instead" But there was no choice.
:)
No kidding... Microsoft aquired that too. Remember MS-BOB? Sure sign of a monopoly when they aquire their competition (BOB OS) and then just repackage it with their name!
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
And the windows API ? Winsock ? The API where you need a hidden window to receive data on a socket ?
Not to be anal or anything, but I've got quite a lot of experience with the winsock API, and this isn't true, you don't need an HWND to use sockets. You can even write winsock console applications. I think that you might be confusing the low-level winsock stuff with those horrible MFC socket wrappers, that will do stuff like send you a message in the windows message queue to notify you of new data.
There are plenty of true reasons though why winsock sucks though (and the documentation is pretty lousy too), so why not just pick from the many of them? No need to use falseties! In fact, ANY Microsoft API has literally hundreds of valid things you could complain about. I've used Win32, Microsoft Frustration Classes, DirectX, WinCE Toolkit, winsock - they are all just brimming with braindamaged design and obfuscated, often outright incorrect documentation.
But to say "oog, I reboot windows every day" or "oog, blue screen!!!!" just shows ignorance and the inability to think objectively for yourself.
No it doesn't. It shows that the person uses Windows 9X (rather than NT or an NT derivative). The vast majority of people who buy PC's happen to be doing so because thats what came with their PC's.
To say that crashing machines and daily reboots are such a horrible problem, caused by Microsoft, is just a plain lie - or maybe you just haven't used anything Microsoft has made in the past couple of years.
The VAST MAJORITY of PC users are using Windows9X, which is PRECISELY "crashing machines and daily reboots". Forget about NT - only a small minority of PC users know about it. Microsoft's products have caused a HUGE amoung of damange to millions of people. It would be fine if this was some esoteric applications that a few engineers were using, but it isn't, it's Microsoft's *biggest application*. Go and learn what the Win16mutex is, and then try come tell me that Windows9X isn't a stinking pile of shit. Go do some Direct3D application development on Windows9X, and then try come tell me that Windows9X isn't a stinking pile of shit.
Yes, it does seem to be getting better. But how long should it take? Should it really take so many years to produce only slightly better versions of an OS? We should really be asking ourselves, what could it be like? Is it really acceptable that even in 2001 we still have MFC application toolbars that cannot handle more than 16 colours? It's ridiculously primitive.
I must say I also get the feeling that DOJ pressure is helping them put in a bit more effort, and right now most people would just be happy to settle for a little stability/quality in MS products. But do we really even want to settle for a stable, quality "operating system of the early/mid 90's"? Stable but years behind. I think we should be reaching a little higher than that. MS has had plenty of chances to "do the right thing", and every time they've just rejected it in favour of dirty underhanded anti-competitive tactics. We should stop giving them the benefit of the doubt. They've held computing back for long enough now.
Many people (you included) seem to think that Microsoft was the only company who ever wanted to try produce affordable software for the masses on consumer PCs. I've heard this argument a number of times before - basically, the argument is that if Microsoft hadn't been around, nobody would ever have had the "vision" to try develop anything in this market, and that we'd still be sitting with computers being expensive primitive mainframes.
This argument is, of course, completely ridiculous and laughable. Really - there were *hundreds* of people and companies who ALL saw that PCs were going to be BIG MONEY. Plenty of companies tried to get on this bandwagon. IBM was one of the big ones (but they had antitrust worries of their own back then.) But the fact is, if Microsoft had never existed, EVERYTHING that they have done, and more, would have been done by now by other companies - and most likely cheaper and better. Other companies would (and have, so this is a huge "duh") have made databases. Other companies would have made friendly GUI environments (and had (Mac), so this is another huge "duh"). Other companies would have produced cheap, easy to use spreadsheets. Other companies would have produced good word processors. Other companies would have come up with the "easy administration" thing long ago already. Microsoft is *not* the only company that ever thought these things would be big. Get real.
Yes, the Win16mutex is probably one of the most braindamaged things spawned by MS. I would confidently say that that #%$@#%$@$# alone has resulted in more than a week of my life wasted. In fact, one of the bugs happened to be winsock involved - I wasted about two days on it, eventually figuring out that winsock apparently grabs the Win16mutex, and I had a deadlock involving our network stuff and some GetDC locking on a DirectDraw surface. I began to suspect the Win16mutex at some stage, and I compiled the program on Windows2000, and voila, no deadlock. Geez was I pissed.
I'm sure we could make a veeery long list. How about the use of CR/LF pair for text files, wasn't that MS's idea too? And geez, somebody should explain protected mode to the Win9X team. I'm sure I could go on for days about the pain and damage that MS has inflicted on the computer industry. I must say though I'm a reasonably happier programmer now that I've started doing almost all of my work development on Win2K. It was not possible before due to the limited support of DirectX on NT. But when doing this sort of work on Win98, it is quite rare to manage a single days work without a reboot, and not uncommon to have the computer lock up more than 5 times in a single day. Problem with Win16mutex and DirectX - application crash between a lock/unlock? Sorry - hit reset. It is so fucking pathetic it is not even funny. When people start telling me "ah Windows isn't that bad" and "mine doesn't crash that often" or "mine never crashes" or "you must be doing something wrong", it drives me nuts, I wish I could force them to do months of DirectX development on Windows98. There is not one person on the planet who could possibly do more than a few months DirectX development on 98 and still come out not hating Win9X for the piece of shit that it is.
So by your narrow definition there, porsche has a monopoly on the car market, because they charge more than the majority of their competitors??
The price of a Porsche is not out of line from other luxury sports vehicles. The company charges more because they offer more. Sun can charge more for their OS/hardware because they sell reliablility with it. Microsoft is widely regarded as a producer of mediocre products in a commodity market. And yet they still are able to price their products independant of market forces.
BTW, it's not my definition.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
I agree that in the computer savvy world micro$oft products are not known as the best, though I wouldn't use the discription mediocre just that there are better solutions. However for the rest of the people out there, so many of them only know of micro$oft products or the ones that know of others actually think that micro$oft is the best solution.
..." and I'd like to see what some of the other definitions are.
... "Microsoft can do neither (Allbritton)."
And this situation has grown from their monopoly power. If M$ were not so efficient at killing any competitor before they've had a chance to make a name for themselves, people would have heard of alternatives. If the sale of office software was not tied to the sale of PCs, people would comparison shop and know of alternatives. The fact that they are a monopoly enables them to lock out choices before the consumer has a chance to decide for themselves, and in that vacuum call themselves 'good'. This is harm to the consumer.
BTW, it's not my definition.
Whose definition is it? If you've got a link I'd like to see it, mainly 'cause you mentioned that "First, a monopolist must be able to
This link has a quote from M$:
Microsoft explains, "A monopoly, by definition, is a company that has the ability to restrict entry by new firms and unilaterally control prices."
M$ claim they can do neither, but they restricted Netscape, DR-DOS, and OS/2 from entering various aspects of PC markets. (Before you claim they all hung themselves, remember exclusive tying deals and bought out developers all paid for with monopoly monies.) As soon as competitors are out of the way, M$ charges whatever they please. Why has the price of the OS increased even though every cost in the computing world tanks?
This link has a little more on the definition of a monopoly, as well as attributing the last quote to Gates in testimony before Congress. This article defines monopoly as holding more than 70 percent of the market (but that definition is no fun because it doesn't leave room for argument, regardless of the fact that it is the legally correct one 8*). The article also explains some of the exclusivity deals that M$ had to choke off Netscape.
This link claims that M$ would have to have no competitors at all in order to be considered a monopoly. Obvious proof that the ability to publish in a college newspaper does not immediately imply that one has a clue.
This link calls the court find of M$ monopoly power "...a legal no-brainer, once you accepted the government's narrow definition of the relevant market..."
But reliability is a lot more than just how reliable the software itself is, it's also support networks that are in place, how quickly patches are released, how promptly response is over known issues and those other aspects.
No it is not. A reliable car does not mean a car that the shop can repair quickly. It means a car that does not have to be put in the shop to begin with.
Then there is also that I don't need to go to micro$oft directly,
Which you can't do without paying out the nose. M$ doesn't even support their own products unless you are a very large customer. They shove nearly all problems off onto hardware vendors. The 'knowledge base' is a cheap hack that nearly every OS has in one form or another. What I find impressive is that they can get away with such a large knowledge base. Keep in mind, each entry implies something not working in the OS. Something that in most cases is a bug found by the customer after they have paid for a working product.
when I as a consumer purchase software, part of the reason I am paying that price is the expected support I will recieve
But with M$, you are not paying them for support, because they won't give you any with the purchase of the product. You are paying in order to play on the monopolist field, because that is where everyone else is playing. It's easier to pay the monopolist and just get along, than it is to buck the trend. If someone puts up a sign pointing to another green/flatter/bigger field, M$ will put up a wall to keep anyone from seeing the sign. The few people that are playing on the better field will not be able to convince many to come with them, because 'that isn't where the big game is'.
The problem is, the big game will never be able to move if M$ is allowed to put up a wall every time someone puts up a sign pointing to the next field. To say that software is reliable because a lot of people can fix it is, and that's all we have anyway, probably isn't the best argument.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
As to the judgement, a deeper issue that you don't mention is that antitrust law itself is a tangled mess of subjective criteria to begin with. Monopoly is a concept solid enough to be fairly useful in economics, but not quite solid enough to be objectively definable in law.
Here, you are wrong. The definition of a monopoly is quite well defined by laws and by precedence. First, a monopolist must be able to have the power to set prices far above what a competitive market would command. Seeing as how nearly every other competitor in the x86 OS market is giving their software away, and yet MS can still charge $200US, I would say they have a monopoly.
Good try at subtle FUD, though.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Thus, M$'s own actions demonstrate the threat Netscape (and Sun) posed to Winduhs.
Yes, but it's not necessary to make the browser unremovable - there was testimony that significant segments of the market do not want a browser for security reasons, or have specific needs which M$IE does not meet, and that making M$IE essentially unremovable or unavoidable did that segment harm. The continued existence of Navigator and Opera prove that the browser need not be "integrated" into the OS or even the desktop. There's nothing wrong with merely including M$IE with Winduhs, any more than it's wrong for GM vehicles to include Philco radios; there is a lot wrong with "welding" either pair together.
It seems to me that POSIX is an OS standard which has done a lot for application portability but little thus far for the reunification of Unix... Many (all?) industries have had interop standards without reduction to monopoly; in fact I argue the opposite happens. Look at the competition in appliances, telephones, answering machines, televisions, VCRs, stereo components, dry cells; the selection in lightbulbs, the way railway rolling stock can travel the continent, screw threads, socket wrenches... just about anything you can name has one way or another thrived with competition because of interoperability standards. Why would OSs be any different, when the much-touted Web example exists only because of the predominance of interop standards?... I guess I've said enough to chew on for awhile =)
No it doesn't. I know cause I got that and I saw the .vbs extension and laughed at it and then deleted it. Please, stop making things up!
To be more precise: yes Windows hides the default filename extension but you still see the .jpb.vbs part on an incoming email. The hiding is in Explorer.
Agreed. Well... The parperclip annoyed millions of users...
On the contrary, there is a good reason for ctrl-alt-del. Unlike any other command keystroke and key combination, ctrl-alt-del cannot be caught programmatically. This means that on NT/2000, you cannot invoke a login prompt unless you are at the console or use something equivalent. This means that there cannot be some program placed on the system that will programmatically invoke a login prompt and brute-force attack the administrator's password. It's arguably more secure than linux's passing of runlevel at the lilo prompt (single mode).
However, once you get past the login prompt, the rest of your day may suck ;)
Winmodems are a product of the consumer, not MS. Have any of you seen a Microsoft-branded Winmodem (not the certification)? The reason winmodems are so prevalent is that they are cheaper. Microsoft provided the ubiquitous desktop. OEMs figured that the everyday user would use anything but Windows... and they were right. Who knows, maybe something good will come of them. Check out http://linmodems.org/.
Now now. Bill Gates didn't code any of the above except for BASIC. He bought or employed someone to write everything else. He's just responsible for BASIC. er... ACID BATH!!!!
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
You are absolutely right. Administering a windows 2000 machine is not easy or simple. Your average user is simply unable to cope with all the tricky things you need get your machine set up and working correctly.
For your average joe user or your mom or day windows 2000 is not a good choice because as you point out it requires a lot of expertise.
I would recommend the mac for most users and windows 2000 for power users or experts who can competently manage a complex operating system like windows 2000.
War is necrophilia.
[statement of mundane, well known fact]
[state easy and common observation]
[rant rant bitchity-bitch-bitch rant]
[introduce generic, repetitive solution]
[heedless filler (cherry flavored)]
[conclude utopianly]
-------
CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Moff Jerjerrod: Bill Gates is releasing IE 6.0?
Darth Vader: That is correct, Commander. And, he is most displeased with your apparent lack of progress.
Moff Jerjerrod: We shall double our efforts!
Darth Vader: I hope so, Commander, for your sake. The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am.
Moff Jerjerrod: For great justice!
Darth Vader: All your base are belong to us...
The first 2 paragraphs of the post I'm replying to are an excellent description of the benefits of the AT&T breakup, BTW.
Best Slashdot Co
Well, I can't find the quotes now, but there are two quotes (the second by founding fathers I'm pretty sure): one says that capitalism inherently tends to destroy itself by devolving into monopolies...it is just simply the most efficient; the other says basically that corporations will always be driving for profit at the expense of the worker and consumer.
The free market isn't some magical panacea. And yes, it is the government's business to mess around in the marketplace.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Now I have a machine that I've been running for almost a month, with apache/jserv/mysql on it for development (no, it's not serving 100s of users), plus using it for a game of Unreal now and then, as well as EMACS, Outlook, and god only knows how many browser windows.
So all in all, I would say that the system has become pretty stable if you compare it even to NT4.
Ñ'
Plenty very doubtful statements here, but I'll just bring up a very glaring one.
Sql Server, which is at least on a par with Oracle
I don't think you can find anyone doing serious DB work that will agree with that. SQL Server does have it's uses, but it's way behind Oracle in both quality and features.
But there are one or two things M$ does that I think should be criminal in a libertarian society. Ironically, they don't seem to be in this one.
The big one is that they, by controlling the OS, can and do make any competitors sowtware stop working at any time. I can't see why that should be any more legal than to burn down your competitors factories. But our legal notions of what's right and wrong in the world of software are still too confused to really get this. I think this is the big reason behind their success. everyone knows that it is impossible to compete with them, so they own all the interesting SW markets, where they make their real money.
Also their repeted and blatant theft of both ideas and source code is something I'd like to see them punished for. Rumor is that for many years Apple was referred to as the "M$ southern researh campus" within the company. I know, there are some thorny issues around intellectual property and what's really right and wrong there. But I want them dead for it.
None of this changes that the government is doing this to grab more power to itself, of course.
Read "Start Up" by Jerry Kaplan. It shows some startling insight into the way that MS is paraniod to kill off a product just in case.
Kaplan had formed a startup to try and produce PDA's - long before Palm. As a condition of the funding he received he had to look at using Windows CE. MS made him sign a very one sided NDA and IP form.
Several months later, Kaplan was on the verge of signing a massive contract with an Insurance firm to provide these PDA's to agents. It would have ensured the survival of his company and allowed him to expand his operations.
Suddenly found that this customer was no longer willing to buy his product. Why? Because MS had approached his customers and sold them on an MS PDA solution.
Kaplans company tanked because venture capatilists were no longer willing to invest in a company that was trying to compete in the same market space as Microsoft.
If this doesn't highlight that customers haven't been harmed, I don't know what does.
How are you gentlemen?
It appears that Microsoft did a moon-shot effort, created a web browser that competed on the same ground as the established favorite, and were fairly successful.
(opens dictionary, flips to "product")
product n 1: commodities offered for sale
- Internet Explorer is not a product. A product is something you sell. Microsoft has spent over $100 million developing and over $30 million marketing IE, and it is free. You cannot "compete" with a product if you are not a product. You can, however, "undercut", "hamstring", or "destroy" a product if you are almost as good and are free.
The process of flooding a new market with free or ultra-low-cost alternatives is called "dumping". It's illegal. It usually eliminates the market.
Mission accomplished!
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
5. Nearly all opposition to MS comes from jealous competitors.
.xls) documents that I get from vendors, co-workers, etc.
This statement is demonstrably untrue. I am not a competitor to Microsoft - I write embedded software for optical switches. I never use microsoft software, except on the dedicated machine I use to keep in touch with the rest of the world. I am forced to keep this second machine due to the closed standards (.doc,
Almost everyone I know in the computing field - my co-workers, our IS guys, our vendors, everyone hates Microsoft. They hate them so much that the very mention of the word makes them shake with anger. None of us compete with Microsoft, nor have we ever. We're embedded programmers, we're agnostic. But we're also good software engineers, and we know when we're having poorly designed, shitty software shoved down our throats. Like, say, vxworks. The difference in the embedded market is that we have a choice.
Why don't people talk about the real venom? Why don't they talk about the hidden viruses in windows, or the blatant plagarism in DOS 6.2, or the masses of forced non-interoperability in IE 4+ to push their server. or the faked videotape they showed a judge!
People with no vested interest in competing with Microsoft hate them. Not because they are jealous, but because they are not stupid.
This case is obvious to anyone who understands software.
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
>>Why? Because MS is a monopoly.
And thats Microsofts fault? No, its the fault of the ignorant consumer.
It's the consumer's fault that Microsoft is a monopoly? Perhaps. Was it the consumer's fault that Standard Oil was a monopoly? That the railroads were monopolies?
Could you tell me which consumer, in particular, forced microsoft to build stealth viruses into their code?
I'd like to talk to that consumer.
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
"I can't define p0rn, but I know it when I see it."
... and the anology will become clearer:
Now before you moderate this as offtopic, flamebait, or troll, hear me out
The general consensus is that Microsoft is a monopoly that "abused" it powers. For the record, I agree that M$ should be broken up, but I can't put my finger on exactly what it did that was wrong.
Can anyone specifically say what Microsoft did was wrong? (Aside from Gates lieing and falsifying evidence. Yeah, that will go over real well with the judge.)
It's funny that Microsoft "dumped" IE onto the market, when Netsacpe was doing the same thing with Navigator (free for non-commercial use.)
Bloat-ware has inherent problems; no matter how good a release is, the next feature-patch is capable of breaking 50% of everything because of shared bloat-ware libraries.
Ops. Didn't mean break.. I meant to destabalize. Obviously it would be broken out-right or they wouldn't have shipped the patch.
-Michael
-Michael
To be fair, the MS "enhancements" in their Java VM did not break any existing *pure* Java code. Instead, they changed how the interface to *native* code worked -- replacing Sun's JNI with something called J/Direct. I personally thought that J/Direct was more sophisticated than JNI; its only real sin was the lack of platform independence.
The difference between theory and practice is that, in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
Nope, sorry. DirectInput lets you trap all control sequences with the exception of 2 (maybe just 1).
-It will not allow you to trap Ctrl+Alt+Del
-It will not (I think) allow trapping of Alt+Tab.
These are trapped at a lower level than DirectX, specifically for the reason given above.
Oops...posted under the wrong thread:
Nope, sorry. DirectInput lets you trap all control sequences with the exception of 2 (maybe just 1).
-It will not allow you to trap Ctrl+Alt+Del
-It will not (I think) allow trapping of Alt+Tab.
These are trapped at a lower level than DirectX, specifically for the reason given above.
WTF? What does it matter if it's Microsoft's fault that they have a monopoly? Why do people keep returning to this and say they got there through no fault of their own?
THAT DOESN'T HAVE A DAMN BIT OF RELEVENCE IN THIS CASE!
What MATTERS, is what they have done SINCE they gained their monopoly position!
In short...
1. Bribed/blackmailed OEMs into NOT shipping competing products
2. Paid large sums of money to ISPs to use their browser instead of netscape
3. Included IE in their desktop after agreeing NOT to bundle products in this manner
4. Doubled/Tripled/Quadrupled prices for OEMs that shipped competing products...
and during the trial
1. Lied
2. Forgot
3. Lied
4. Created false evidence
5. Forgot
Anyone who still insists that Microsoft doesn't deserve to be broken up is smoking some potent crack.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
The code of conduct for the judiciary states that a judge must not appear biased at all, throughout the case, even throughout the full appellate process. The appeals court cannot now in good conscience remand the case back to Jackson, which would be an option that was open to them before now. So Jackson has screwed up the appellate process by showing bias now, even if he wasn't biased at the beginning of the trial.
[
"Open Source" fits in with capitalism nicely (though RMS would disagree).
No, he'd agree that "The Open Source Movement condones the mixture of proprietary and non-proprietary solutions, whereas the Free Software Movement has more ambitious goals to ensure freedoms by making software free of proprietary controls." (Paraphrased from his last letter re: Allchin and the American Way.)
Not that I agree with RMS's goals, but I try to at least understand his argument more clearly.
[
Microsoft provides a LOT of hooks in their operating system specifically to encourage third-party opportunities. It's just good business to let third parties write cool stuff to extend your platform. Those competitors who don't take advantage of the documented ones always cry about how there must be a lot of undocumented ones that give Microsoft the advantage. Walking through your arguments...
Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer (the file management program) [...] look and run the basically the same. For example, if you are running IE, you have the ability to browse AND MANAGE your local hard drive, just like in Windows Explorer. Now since MS also include that crappy My Computer program in their OS too, why did they allow their web browser to MANAGE FILES/FOLDERS? Explain this to me with a straight face please.
Norton and many other companies have long made complete rewrites/replacements for the shell. It's a documented registry/win.ini setting, and has been ever since HP wanted to replace the Windows 2.0 shell. "SHELL=EXPLORER.EXE" That's so hard to change to "SHELL=NAVIGATOR.EXE"?
Let's say that Netscape didn't WANT to compete with the integration with Explorer. Okay, another hook provided by Microsoft is the SHELLOPEN function that can hook "filename conventions" like "\\smbhost\smbshare", "http://host/page", "ftp://host/page", "file:///d:/path/file" and so on. Netscape could have provided any of those hooks, and been able to offer its advantages there, too.
This is not an exhaustive list. There are literally hundreds of hooks that Netscape could have used, but they decided to use the DoJ as a hook instead.
Secondly, in regards to the "freedom" that someone would have to install navigator onto their OS, that task requires the ABILITY to find, download and install the program in question . Out of those 100 million net users, how many do you think could have accomplished this?
Let's see, how many newbies are competent enough to download and install greeting card programs? Print shop programs? Email messages from Hotmail? The Melissa virus? Newbies are these app-makers' bread and butter. People download stuff all the time, and it's a mark of a competent software package to make that installation easy for those newbies. If Netscape found that the newbie was the barrier, that's Netscape's fault, not Microsoft's.
Finally, all of you who manage Win98 boxes know how friggin difficult it is to get rid of that IE program. I'm not talking about deleting the shortcut off of the desktop--I'm talking about annihilating the sucker off of the OS. How many places does that program hide in the OS?? Let me count the ways... On the desktop, notice that the IE shortcut sits right next to all of the other Win essential programs like My Computer, Network Neighborhood, whatever. This is on purpose. MS designed Explorer to be considered as an essential part of the OS (for the average users they covet)--make no mistake about it.
Hm, when I set up a recent laptop, it had Adobe Type Manager pre-installed. I pulled the shortcut out of the startup group. Same goes for the greeting card program, the Encarta shortcut, and about five other icons I didn't need, too. How many icons does RealPlayer add to your desktop, startup menu, personal folders, tray, and context menus? Geesh! Now, I could have gone through and eradicated the files, if I cared. I didn't care, I had tons of space left over. It was *functionally* gone. I'm sure one of those "cleanup" utilities would have found 50MB to reclaim.
Now, if you never show an address bar in your tray, and you never type a URL in the File,Run... box, and you never click on the IE, and you use Netscape for your daily web browsing, how is the IE's presence in the OS or on the disk really hurting you? It's *functionally* gone, even if it has files and hooks all over the place which you never use.
If you don't smoke, do you remove the ashtray component from your car? No, you either leave it idle or you put coins there. If you don't like Da Vinci, do you have to eradicate the museums who "waste space" or "waste your taxes" on those works?
So, please, tell me how free the average PC user was to choose Navigator instead...
Um, I dunno... how about "put cd in drive, press OK a few times"?
[
I don't understand the uproar over the Judge's comments, at least those after the trial. It is universally conceded that MS engaged in massive lying, including obviously fradulent videotapes, during the trial. In a venue where all are required to swear to tell the truth, why would anyone have anything except contempt for this behaviour? The judge heard the facts and saw the lies - why is his expression of distaste, based on this, such a big deal?
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
Bloated == Has More Features
Get a computer magazine from ten years ago, and look at the ads. The biggest feature in word processing software of the day was search and replace.
Ten years later, the same program will do every part of the document development for you.
It's called progress.
4. Microsoft have benefitted the US economy. It really has. Compared with the UK, for instance, the strength of the US IT industry is vast - and much of this strength is due to Microsoft.
Indeed, the collapse of NASDAQ coincides almost exactly with Jackson's ruling (more precisely, with the growing sentiment up to the ruling that Microsoft and the government would not be able to settle). Almost everybody predicted that the economy and market would collapse if the ruling was against Microsoft. And it did.
Isn't it time the DOJ and Jackson took the fall for the faltering economy, instead of Greenspan?
Without Microsoft's monopoly, there would be many, many companies competing to be the best, and doing everything and anything required to get their.
Not really. Without Microsoft, it would be Scott McNealy's head in the borg suit, and everybody would be complaining how slow Sparc's are, how much they hate Java, and how difficult it is to delete a file named "-l". At least Microsoft controls just the software, and not the hardware. It could have been a lot worse.
As I understand it, IE for MAC shares almost no code with IE for Windows. If one looks at (say) CSS support, objective tests put the big 4 in the order: IE/Mac, Opera, Mozilla, IE/Win.
>>witness Real Audio's continued existance as evidence that just Microsoft monopolistic power isn't necessarily enough
RA is still around is as a direct result of this trial.
In 1999 Real Audio was hurting. Microsoft was offerring to set up free servers with tech support to popular websites. Many people thought that Real Audio was a thing of the past.
Then right when the trial was in full swing microsoft lisenced their codecs for Real to use in their clients.
Some people thought it was generosity on Microsoft's part. But I maintain that it was because of the trial.
So why is Word dominant today? It certainly isn't because Word was a better product
:)
Word is dominant today because it was easy to use for the average consumer, so they gobbled it up and made it dominant. It may not be the best product quality wise, but for the general user, it did everything they needed without problems. On the higher level, the more advanced users may start running into difficulties.
And that's the same with Windows. For the average consumer, for the general user, the majority of the market use it because it's easy to use and it does everything they want it to do. Microsoft didn't make themselves a monopoly single handedly - the consumer, the general mass market gobbled it up and made it a monopoly! SO - Microsoft products - to the advanced, more experienced user - are not necessarily the best products. But to the mass market, generally any regular person, Microsoft has accomplished what no one else has. Whether it was ethical or not, the consumers gobbled it up and wanted it. If it didn't do what they wanted it to do, they wouldn't accept it, and find other alternatives. So for the mass market, it WAS and still IS a good product. You can't say no one can do better or have a better product, because no one has come close. If someone wanted to overthrow Microsoft, they would have to convince the mass market, and maybe even unethically partner with Microsoft only to hitchhike on their compatibility to gain the mass market, until they can jump off and take the mass market with him. To beat Microsoft, you've got to be Microsoft, or use them against themselves, or act and grow in the same manner that they did.
Otherwise, you'll end up like Linux - growing fast, but no where near gaining mass market appeal - general, average users. Because it's not easy for them (when most people still don't know how to open their email program, let alone get connected to the internet), and it Windows has the most appeal. Until Linux can enter a standardized and compatible market with Windows, it will never gain mass market.
If you taunt Microsoft, they will stomp on you. If you befriend them to eventually turn against them, you can stab them in the back. That's just one way of gaining good cometitive ground in the mass market.
Plus, remember that the general consumer doesn't necessarily want a realistic and viable choice in OS's or any software for that matter. They will go to what is easiest and cheapest to use - together. If Linux and Windows had equal market share, it would NOT last long. Unless they were compatible with each other in the same market, people would readily accept one over the other, just so they don't have to worry about compatibility issues. Just like NS / IE. Linux and Windows will always be different, but they have to be compatible enough for most people, and everyone will more readily use the OS more geared to their requirements (eg - server, desktop, terminal, etc).
Linux and Windows NT/2000 probably have a fairly competitive marketplace... so obviously if you add in the desktop Windows 98/2000, Windows will have dominance... because Linux hasn't got the marketplace for average desktop users. And it never will until it (the extremist Linux user bunch) stops the blatant anti-MS, rebellious attitude. If someone likes MS over X, you've got to win them over, not make them sound like an idiot because it's so obvious X is better. Mass market will be insulted and generally not accept a product whose creators appear bigoted against what they like, since it seems unfair. So in a way, 'embrace and extend' - agree (gasp) that Windows/Microsoft have done a good job, and are a good product - because it's the truth, for the general mass market - and give them reasons, applying to them, why X is a better choice... but right now, X does not have the features and quality over Windows that the mass general market requires.
That's the end of the story, sorry if I seemed repetitive
Before MS, there was Lotus 123, Lotus AmiPro, WordStar, Borland and such. What happened to these guys?
There was a good WYSIWYG wordprocessor then, before MS. It was called Lotus AmiPro. This word processor won the PC Magazine's award for the year's best software. I used it for a senior thesis, with its equation editors, spell check, everything. This was in 1994/5. It took until 1997 (Word 97) to catch up to the feature set offered by Lotus AmiPro. Office 2000 still has numerous quirks, and is still not as consistent as AmiPro was about document formatting.
Did government antitrust prosecutors actually prove that Microsoft prevented Netscape, or any other rival, from bringing new products to the marketplace?
No. Any company could have brought any product they wanted to market, but it would have failed if it competed with MS since MS had everything tied to their OS.
Is it true that these users were not free to choose Netscape?
Sure, they could have chosen Netscape, but what percentage of computer users go out of their way to get a better product if a similar one is provided with the OS? Microsoft should have been required to provide IE for download from the MS site only (not on the Windows 9x CD). Tieing IE to Windows 98 was unnecessary, anti-competitive, hand illegal.
Why wasn't Microsoft justified in integrating Windows with its much-hyped OS?
Because IE was and is a seperate product unrelated to the OS. Regardless of what MS claims, IE is not a necessary part of Windows. See Win98Lite (a program that will let you remove IE) if you think it is).
Microsoft has been a predatory monopoly which needed legal intervention since the days of Windows 3.1. Anybody else remember when Lotus and Excel were first being put on Windows? MS "accidentally" neglected to notify Lotus of a minor, but fundamental, change which caused early versions of Lotus on Windows to not work (and significantly harm Lotus business). Since that time, there have been many similar instances ("oops, did we delete those files that that application needs?", etc).
IMNSHO, Microsoft needs to be broken up into at least 3 companies (one OS, one Office, and one Internet) and these companies need to be closely monitored to make sure that they don't keep pulling typical MS tricks.
Alternately, I would be satisfied if MS was forced to adhere to published standards (HTTP, Kerberos, etc) and other remedies so as to prevent abusing their monopolistic power to force users into MS-specific products (which seems to be what .net is intending).
If we lock up this bomb-throwing terrorist, another will just come along. Case dismissed!
Remember, once the gov't is entrenched in an area, disengagement is rare.
What is interesting is how other "market" forces (namely, Open Source) are making inroads against the monopoly that Microsoft holds. Could the gov't ever remedy the MSFT monopoly as well as the vast legions of Gnu developers? No way.
If the current ruling stands what will happen to KDE for "tying" Konqueror to its window manager? What about Gnome with Eazel and Mozilla? Please keep the gov't out of my $HOME.
Yes, I own MSFT stock. I bought it at $90 and $70. Yes, I'd like to see the price back up at $119. No, I don't think it ever will. But, not because of this ill-conceived ruling but rather from the changing market conditions. The latest Netcraft survey shows Apache gaining and IIS losing. IDC reports that Windows server installations grew by 20%, while Linux grew by 24% last year -- that's after the big Win2K release. Other analysts point out that Win2K adoption is slower due to Linux. These factors cause me to doubt MSFT shares will rise to previously-hyped levels.
We don't need a gov't remedy to MSFT's monopoly. What's better will win.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Um, actually I can think of two ways to do this:
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Hardware companies could not sell DR DOS and MS DOS because MS would not allow it.
Stacker won their lawsuit over having their compression algorithm stolen. They had been basically out of business for a couple of years by the time they got this couple hundred million. A small cost for MS wipe out a competitor.(Okay, so disk compression is irrelevant, MS didn't know that when they wiped stacker out.)
Borland made the best compilers but every time MS upgraded DOS, and later Windows, there was a six month delay for Borland to rewrite their compiler because they didn't have access to the OS as early as the MS compiler teams did. This is a pattern with all software MS makes. Remember Word Perfect? Lotus?
Apple could turn itself into a competing OS except MS would pull its Office software. Windows would not exist if Apple was not forced to sign over some OS patents with the same threat.
All of these competitors are gone or minor now. It is impossible to say what any of these companies would have done if they were competing on a level field but their existence alone would give everyone more choices which would mean everyone would find a choice closer to exactly what they want. This is the harm MS has done to consumers
For starters, it's 9x that hold all the legacy code that is supposed to make DOS programs work. The whole *point* of 9x is to move DOS style applications to NT style applications. I think that MS would've been overjoyed if it could've dumped DOS & 9x all together long ago, it has a far superior product in its hands (NT).
So why is Microsoft charging twice as much for NT as for 9x? And why couldn't they have just done more work in the DOS virtualization department? For example, Windows 2000's VDM chokes on 32-bit programs that conform to the DPMI spec.
I'm not sure if Linux is suffering from the same problem (having to maitain compatability with legacy code, so you can't solve problems the most efficent way)
Linux has a legacy (POSIX; Single UNIX Spec; X11) but it's a quite well-designed legacy. DOS is nice as an embedded OS, but anything complex is ugly.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The ILOVEYOU virus ... breaks what law?
Computer tampering is a crime, at least in the United States.
Incompatible file formats ... breaks what law?
The Sherman Antitrust Act. The fact that important data cannot be read because it's under a layer of (weak) encryption (i.e. an undocumented file format) harms both competition and consumers.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I need file compatibility with the maximum number of people
If that's your biggest reason for choosing Office, have you considered HTML or LaTeX? HTML can be viewed or printed using any Web browser, and LaTeX can be edited on any machine with Emacs (includes Windows), compiled into a PDF, and viewed or printed on any platform that has an Acrobat Reader.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
the software equivalent of the FDA might be necessary
That would completely destroy the free software movement, as software would become a controlled substance. Pretty much everything would be patented, and you would need to wait 20 years for a generic, and even then your favorite software may be "by prescription only," with Microsoft colluding with licensed IT practitioners to get them to prescribe Microsoft software instead of its competitors'.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
a monopoly itself IS NOT ILLEGAL
Granted, but under the Sherman Act, a monopoly that practices anticompetition and harms the consumer is illegal. Consumers are harmed every time a Windows 9x box BSODs and no other pre-installed options (not even Windows 2000) are available at Wal-Mart or Best Buy because of Microsoft's exclusive contracts with all the major computer manufacturers.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
To an extent, Microsoft (the first major closed-source provider) did inspire the so-called "Open Source" movement. But the movement for free software explicitly for freedom's sake has been around since the early 1980s when Microsoft's influence on the industry was already great.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
How is it Microsoft's fault that Quicken 2000 or TurboTax 2001 won't run on thier P100 with 16 megs of ram and Windows 95?
Not Microsoft's fault. It's Intuit's fault for not targeting the machines that the target audience (consumers with hand-me-down computers) uses.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
If click-and-drool was the reason for going to Windows, then they went the wrong way. They should be in Mac OS
Blame it on Lotus. People wanted to run Lotus 1-2-3 (and other software from the office) at home but also run a click-and-drool desktop on the same box (back then, boxen were expensive). At that time, PC emulation on Macintosh computers (then called SoftPC) was not usably fast.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
There is also the not minor factor of very different code bases at the root of each system. One has its roots in DOS while the other derives from VMS.
What's so important about that? Let me rephrase: "The biggest reason that the Windows OS sold to consumers in fall 1995 was built around DOS and not Microsoft's VMS clone is because of marketing." That sound better?
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Recently Microsoft has been claiming that the Judge was biased during the trial, because afterwards he said a few choice words about the company. Their Lawyers are trying to use this to wriggle out of the judgement, however the simple fact is that once the judgement has been reached by due process in a court of law then the judge is allowed to be predjudiced - he has to sentence them, after all.
Well, he also said a few choice words _during_ the trial as well, from what I understand. Apparently he had an agreement that those words not be published until after the trial.
But it doesn't just boil down to that. There are arguments that Jackson's idea for a breakup really didn't have any backing behind it. And now there's talk that MS was really doing what the consumer wanted by putting the browser in the OS. Apparently the idea is that there is no market for a browserless OS, so MS wouldn't supply one.
The issue has a few more colors, apparently.
Their Lawyers are trying to use this to wriggle out of the judgement,
That's their job. They're lawyers. They are paid to get people off. No, wait. That's prostitutes. Umm... same thing.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Ok, some minor editing where the "..." appears, but Katz really does say that above.
I believe it's a well known fact that RMS started the Free Software movement in 1984, when Microsoft's size was anything but "gargantuan". It's true that Stallman's goals were a response to proprietary software licensing restrictions, but Microsoft wasn't a significant player back then.
The concept of Open Source was born just a few years ago, but the only thing "instrumental in spawning" open source was a common negative reaction to Stallman's rhetoric. The goal was to bring the software to a larger audience, which had previously been turned off to the concept.
Are Stallman's tactics a failure? Does open source undermine the ultimate goals behind almost two decades of RMS and the FSF's hard work? Is it "ok" to say Linux without prepending a "GNU/" to it? Those are tough questions to answer.
Was Microsoft's monopoly "instrumental in spawning" either Free or Open Source Software? That's an easy one to answer, and as usual, Katz rambles on and ends up saying things that are obviously wrong.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Would it be as bad or worse if some other company was doing the same thing? Of course, but that only strenghtens the argument against allowing a single company in *any* industry to leverage a position where they are easily able to crush any competition, and the innovation that would have came with it.
________
The positive things in the computing world happend in spite of microsoft, not because of them.
Anyone who pretends for a minute that we would still be using punch cards if it wasn't for the tactics of Microsoft... just doesn't get it.
Innovation is not spawned from monolithic companies with control over everything, innovation is born from competition, and thrives on it. Without Microsoft's monopoly, there would be many, many companies competing to be the best, and doing everything and anything required to get their.
the over-used, but appropriate example is the telephone company. With a monopoly, there was no competition, no innovation, the customer could expect very little, and get less. Once the phone companies were broken up, competition reigned, prices plummeted, the industry re-invented itself to be better, cheaper, more efficient, more reliable, all because it needed to to survive the competition.
There is little doubt Microsoft would have been broken up long ago if it wasn't in a technology area, which our justice system is completely incompetent and unable to regulate properly.
________
This trial isn't about morals or ethics, it's about competition in the computer industry so that consumers can get better products. It's about economics, the foundation of a capitalist country! MS isn't getting split up because they look like a big bad evil company. They are getting split up because they are disallowing competition in the market with their barriers of entry to the computer market. The government is doing their job in trying to allow more companies to entry the computer market. America is not a true capitalist country, we still have the goverment to come in and try to solve business problems.
Without the goverment, how else are you going to end a monopoly? The only other way is through educating the consumer about his/her other choices, but this is difficult to near impossible to do. This is why we have the goverment interfere with our economics.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Since I have lived in Britain for a few years, I have come to think that in affairs like this expediency is often the best way. Idealogy should be left to students and High School pupils - there is no place for it in the grown up world, because it leads to a divorce from reality.
Ideology is divorced from reality. As in, men should have no coherent philosophy or framework in which to ground long-term goals and behavior, and should instead lurch from case to case on the "expedience" of the moment?
No thank you.
why wasn't Microsoft justified in integrating Windows with its much-hyped OS? Wouldn't doing otherwise prove corporate suicide? Was Microsoft really supposed to sit back and allow competitors to dominate this critical market, surely threatening Windows in the process?
They are fully justified in creating a browser that competes with Netscape. They are not justified in tying their browser to their OS and then using the monopoly status of their OS to turn their browser into a monopoly also. This is the heart of the case - you can't use a current monopoly to create for yourself a new monopoly. This is exactly what MicroSoft has done.
Of course, the ironic thing is MicroSoft probably didn't have to do this. Their browser now is arguably better than Netscape. If they had just competed fairly it is quite conceivable that they would have won the browser wars on technical merit alone. As it turned out, they got scared, they cheated, and I sincerely hope they get punished for it.
Judge Jackson ... who made critical
comments about Microsoft and its founder to reporters while the appeal
process is still underway.
I think it was The Register that pointed out that Judge Jackson didn't start making his provocative comments until 4 days after MicroSoft filed it's appeal. At that point in time he no longer had control over the case, it was now in the hands of the appeals court. Technically, Judge Jackson did nothing wrong, I think the appeals court is mainly having a personality conflict with Judge Jackson. (An old legal joke is that the way to increase the average intelligence of the appeals courts and the trial courts, at the same time, is to appoint a trial judge to the appeals court.)
Are other giant theme park operators really free to create new versions of Disney World
Actually, yes they are free to do so and are doing so successfully. The Six Flags and SeaWorld franchises are two competitors that immediately come to mind. All over America you will find local amuzement parks that, although not necessarily of the same size as Disney, still provide viable competition.
--
Don Dugger
VA Linux Systems
Don Dugger
"Censeo Toto nos in Kansa esse decisse." - D. Gale
Punishing the winner when he takes steroids and shoots the other competitors sounds reasonable to me.
In KPPP, enter username, password and phone number. Click Connect. Wait 2 minutes. Open Konqueror and start browsing. Hardly the stuff of nightmares is it?
Intel has already done a deal with the DOJ to behave without all this waste of time and money. Perhaps because Intel is run by someone pragmatic not megalomaniacal.
What does my argument have to do with the Soviet countries in the 1980s? I was saying that if it sells well then there's little economic incentive under capitalism to improve the product. If it sells well then there's no interest in making it better.
Until very recently Japanese and German cars were streets ahead in build quality and reliability. But still people bought Fords in their millions, proving my point. It was only when Ford started losing big to the likes of Honda that they started reviewing the 'don't worry be crappy' policy.
One day Americans like you will stop believing that any system but laissez-faire capitalism is totalitarian Soviet communism, but I doubt I'll be alive to see it.
Why the NRA of course.
You bring up some interesting peripheral points, but in the end, these don't matter much.
The REAL problem is this:
Microsoft brought an end to the term "computers don't make mistakes" Computers are unreliable as hell in most people's eyes, and rightly so. I get a little upset when I can't get my phone hooked up because the AT&T customer rep tells me that she was just typing in my info and now the screen turned blue.
Microsoft has designed a user interface that allows any idiot to use a computer instantly, without learning anything about what they are doing or how to do it right. They make every effort to get users using computers so they can buy products, but they make NO EFFORT to help people avoid the pitfalls of irresponsibly using a computer.
Microsoft software is not easy to use. It is easy to learn. Word is the most difficult program I have ever used. I love it when I'm writing a technical document and it tries to help me write a letter to grandma. There's a lot of software out there that is difficult to learn but easy to use, a good example of which is Photoshop: it's not intuitive, but once you learn to use it you can be extremely productive with it.
Microsoft has created the need for programs like Virus scanners, uninstallers, disk repair utilities, and all kinds of kludged utilities that let you "roll back" your system state to when it was once stable. They've created "self-repairing" software.... why should software ever break with a good package management system...or just good protection around core shared system libraries?
Microsoft has created an IT industry that spends billions every year working around the massive shortcomings of software that doesn't work.
Microsoft denies all of this.
Is any of this illegal? NO!
Oops, but wait, Microsoft maneuvered into and maintains their monopoly position illegally. They broke the law and action must therefore be taken against them... regardless of what anyone thinks of their software.
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Your anecdotal evidence of MS stuff working can be easily countered with my anecdotal evidence of MS stuff not working. All our Windows boxen run the latest updates of Win2K with SP1, and I have not seen the types of uptimes you have. The reason we moved to 2K is because NT4 was just that bad. The NT4 boxes crashed constantly, even though they ran on high-quality Dell servers and were very well maintained. Today another 2000 machine blew up when we applied a security fix... it now boots to a blue screen.
The Linux environment at work has never had any problems that were not found to be hardware related. Our Linux IT cost is virtually zero by comparison. All our development machines run on it, and their constantly running very much untested software yet their rate of failure is orders of magnitues less than the creative departments machines that run Photoshop and the administrative machines that use Word and ACT, all on up-to-date w2k installs.
At least with Win2K I don't get woken up at 3am just about every Saturday morining when the NT4 IIS boxes blue-screened (and didn't reboot, even though they were supposed too) due to the backup software running.
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Well, demonstrably is indeed the big problem here. If you blow your opponents out of the water before their product had a chance to mature (for instance Windows for pencomputers), it is indeed not possible to prove that consumers have been hurt.
Indeed; and before PC's in every home there were also Amiga's, Commodore 64's, Sinclair spectrums, Apples etc. in lot's of homes. So there already was a movement towards having computers at home. The pc, and certainly Microsoft, where not the first on that market.
Capital owes no allegiance to anything but itself and its imperative to acquire/accrete more capital and expand its markets... that is, unless regulatory control is exercised upon capital to make it behave somewhat responsibly.
I used to think this was odd too. But then I learned the reason for it. As I understand it, in Windows Ctl-Alt-Del is always trapped by the OS, never by a user program. So pressing Ctl-Alt-Del at the login ensures that the login screen you are seeing is actually the real OS login, and not a user program written by a malicious attacker who wants to deceive you into revealing your password.
As far as I can see, this is an improvement over standard Unix login procedures where the only you can determine its authenticity is to reboot first.
BH
BH
Fools! They laughed at me at the Sorbonne...!
rr
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
You make a good point - however if Slashdot were to publish their server logs it would show something like 70% of their visitors use windows. (I believe one of the admins or possibly Taco once said something to this effect) Kind of throws the whole unified community theory out the window.
I do agree the editors should try to be consistent though. A better argument is that Slashdot shouldn't have posted this from Katz given that they have posted several pro-breakup articles in the past, rather than just mindlessly bashing MS, even if it is consistent. Or at least come forth that they are changing their editorial postition on this specific matter.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Whatever you think of MS, they were commonly seen as the bellwether of tech companies. A strong Microsoft spurred investment into computer companies in general, whereas Nasdaq took a dive riding on Microsoft's coattails.
The reality is, the stock market is driven by psychology. And what that means is, to paraphrase Alfred Sloan, is that whats good for Microsoft is good for the tech industry in general(in regards to stock prices) And vice-versa. People are fickle and tend to make sweeping generalizations about the computer industry.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
No one is preventing other companies from creating products that can open and save to Microsoft's proprietary file formats. I submit that Open Source software like Star Office and Linux itself will thrive and continue eating up MS's mindshare and market share as they become easier to use and people realize they have a high quality product that can communicate with Windows systems and is also free.
Microsoft indeed does have competition; the dogs of Open Source are nipping at their heels. They will forever be forced to creating products that people perceive to have monetary value and is just going to get harder and harder. The average person will realize they can get all the they need in a computer for free and still be able to communicate with Windows PC's for the most part. Microsoft will be forced to continually supply the very latest bells and whistles to sell their software. Open Source will force them to be innovative and creative, otherwise their dead.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Jon, walk for a bit in my shoes (currently, they're size 8 womens LL Bean big-ass snow boots, but I digress...). I'll demonstrate to you why people were not free to choose Navigator.
First, MS designed the Explorer program to be integrated into the OS in methods that you are grieviously omitting. For those of you who don't know this, the same basic "explorer" program engine (for lack of a better word) runs both Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer (the file management program). The programs look and run the basically the same. For example, if you are running IE, you have the ability to browse AND MANAGE your local hard drive, just like in Windows Explorer. Now since MS also include that crappy My Computer program in their OS too, why did they allow their web browser to MANAGE FILES/FOLDERS? Explain this to me with a straight face please.
Secondly, in regards to the "freedom" that someone would have to install navigator onto their OS, that task requires the ABILITY to find, download and install the program in question . Out of those 100 million net users, how many do you think could have accomplished this? I thought that PCs and the Internet were supposed to be "easy to use"? Isn't that in itself a huge disincentive for consumers to use Navigator instead???? (And to you /. folks, don't give me the bull---- line about "they should know how". I'm talking newbies, not 31337 folks like you.)
Finally, all of you who manage Win98 boxes know how friggin difficult it is to get rid of that IE program. I'm not talking about deleting the shortcut off of the desktop--I'm talking about annihilating the sucker off of the OS. How many places does that program hide in the OS?? Let me count the ways... On the desktop, notice that the IE shortcut sits right next to all of the other Win essential programs like My Computer, Network Neighborhood, whatever. This is on purpose. MS designed Explorer to be considered as an essential part of the OS (for the average users they covet)--make no mistake about it.
So, please, tell me how free the average PC user was to choose Navigator instead...
This is another view of the world.
Microsoft RULES!!
Dirty Pirate Hooker
"... once the judgement has been reached by due process in a court of law then the judge is allowed to be predjudiced ..."
It is impossible to be prejudiced after a trial. That's postjudice. Seriously, much of our society has come to view almost any opinion as "prejudice." That term is not appropriate for informed, reasoned opinion.
Comment 1:There's no way that Megacorp or Ultra-rich are the norm (*the majority*) in our country.
Comment 2:They hold the majority of the dollars, the capital.
Is "One dollar == one vote" the future of American democracy?
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
I may be wrong, but I was under the impression that Opera was small, fast, and compliant to HTML standards because they built thier own HTML renderer. I use Opera 5 for windows and I love it, I'd hate for it to loose it's current speed and flexibility. In addition, from what I understand, Gecko is an increadible HTML renderer it terms of speed and compliance and IE might be a better program if they used Gecko.
I agree with the concept, however; MS might have more of a leg to stand on in my opinion if they were claim that HTML rendering was a integral part of the OS rather than claiming the entire Internet Explorer application was an integral part of the OS. The difference is probably hard to explain to the average user...
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
and so you will have a group of computer builders that cower before microsoft and don't sell anything else. if microsoft's product is super wonderful, then everyone will be happy. but when microsoft gets lazy - because they have the monopoly and don't have to compete - someone will get frustrated with only having one option. he will think, "you know? I can build a better computer" and he will. if it is really better, then is will challenge microsoft and perhaps upset the balance of power.
now i don't like microsoft either. but just because i think they suck is no reason to grant the government more power than they should have - or that they're permitted to have by the constitution.
capitalism rewards innovation. we've seen it happen to ibm, apple, and others. we'll see it happen to microsoft too.
wishus
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Yes, in GNU-world there is a very big difference between Open Source and Free Software. RMS is not fond of Open Source because it is not free enough, and while he insists that people can make a living from distribution and support of Free software, he believes that all software should be Free.
I understand his arguments perfectly, but didn't care to expound on them in my previous post. I mentioned RMS as more of a joke than an argument, but I probably shouldn't have mentioned him at all.
wishus
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Do you realize the federal government of the United States of America operated for over 150 years without an income tax?
Do you realize if the federal government got its ugly head out of the market once and for all, all money spend "educating" politicians would be a waste?
The government could go back to governing the people (the DEFINITION of government) according to the Constitution, and capitalism could reign unhindered in the marketplace, and we'd see a better country for everyone.
wishus
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Actually, most of Netscape's income came from its server, not its browser.
But, assuming that Netscape's only product was a browser, and people were not willing to pay extra to replace the browser that came with their OS, Netscape deserves to fail. Either (1) their browser is not better than the one that comes with the OS, or (2) their browser is better, but people are not willing to pay money for a better browser.
Lets say I create a super file manager, that's way better than Windows Explorer. I try to sell it, but no one buys it. Do I deserve to have the government come in and bail me out?
wishus
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AmiPro was a better word processor in its time than Word will ever be. I suppose there's not alot of us left who remember when 123 ruled the PC spreadsheet market. I get all teary thinking about it..
wishus
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You're right, he does hate Bill Gates on a personal level.
/. reader.
:)
You see, he's a
Go ahead, mod me down.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It'd be great if you were correct, and if you only look at the most recent history, you are.
Please re-examine Microsoft's attempts to eliminate DR-DOS and their approaches to OS/2.
Any OEM is not free to sell computers with whichever system they choose. If an OEM chooses to sell computers with Windows, and make the option for a different operating system instead of Windows available, then that OEM is subject to Microsoft's whim about whether to raise the cost of Windows for that OEM.
I don't blame the OEM's, they attempted to stay in business in the face of Microsoft charging them for using anything other than Windows. Please don't tell me that nobody wanted anything other than Windows PC's, you ignore DR-DOS, Os/2, IBM PC-DOS, desqview, and later, Be. OS/2 is only the biggest and best example, because it was Microsoft versus IBM. No infrastructure for ordering alternative software loads on oem hard drives? IBM had os/2 as an option, until they folded under pressure from Microsoft.
Yes, the Microsoft tax is much discussed, and misunderstood by many, but please don't deny the existence of people who wanted anything but Windows, and please consider history before you tell me how wrong I am.
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
My initial reaction is not printable in a family oriented medium.
There's a saying in techdom about Microsoft: Don't moon the giant. Crossgain mooned Microsoft every which way. First, the ex-Microsofties poached some of their former colleagues to join them at the startup. Then they raised $10 million from investors, including The Barksdale Group, a venture firm run by Microsoft's chief nemesis at the antitrust trial, former Netscape Communications Corp. (AOL) CEO James Barksdale. A few months later, Crossgain named Mitchell Kertzman, an outspoken critic of Microsoft's business practices, a director. Kertzman is CEO of Liberate Technologies (LBRT), an interactive-TV software maker that competes fiercely with Microsoft interactive-TV technology
The last straw was Crossgain's decision to base its technology on non-Microsoft software. Instead of using such Microsoft products as the Windows 2000 operating system and SQL Server 2000 database package to develop its service, Crossgain opted for software made by rivals. ''It doesn't look very good for Microsoft if a company run by its former vice-president of developer relations is using software made by Oracle,'' says a former Microsoft executive.
With a potential lawsuit looming, Microsoft offered a deal, according to Crossgain and Microsoft. If Crossgain committed to building its service with Microsoft products, the company wouldn't pursue the noncompete claims. Crossgain sources say Microsoft specifically wanted to preclude the company from using Oracle database software. Microsoft sources deny that. Switching to Microsoft technologies meant huge delays and the loss of months of work for Crossgain, which hopes to launch its first service in March. But the deal also meant avoiding months, or perhaps years, of litigation with one of the wealthiest companies in the world. Crossgain execs thought they could win the litigation, but the time and expense to do it would be a huge drain.
[RANT]
It looks like what MS is doing my not be illegal, but that is only saying that the corporate equivalent of being a serial killer is not illegal. MS can intimidate, kill off, and consume their opposition because there is no law against being a monster. And the nicely legalistic judges say sorry, but they have to go free. Year after year the carnage goes on.
It is starting to look like MS is the Corporate Equivalent of Hannibal Lecter, in my opinion. And being rich, with all the lawyers, can make sure that such mass corporate murder and cannibalization is never made illegal. Again, in my opinion.
[/RANT]
Thank You for Your Support
Sounds like a good idea for a site, given the freshness of the movie in the minds of the public
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Open source/FSF folks need to worry about the precedent that is set if the court finds that giving something away for free is predatory and/or harms consumers. What company (Red Hat? VA Linux?) or individual(s) (Linus? ESR?) will then be fed into the DoJ woodchipper?
1) Microsoft makes money charging for software.
2) Netscape had grand visions of a browser-centric model of computing.
3) Microsoft gives away IE. This is a money-losing proposition. It doesn't make sense if you're playing "fair" - not trying to manipulate the market
No, it goes more like this:
1) Netscape realizes that browser features are going to be key to all operating systems going forward, decides to be "the" operating system of the future, but conveniently forgets that there's a great deal of software in between them and the hardware.
They then start giving away copies of their browser on the theory that if they give away enough of them, then folks will want to buy some copies, too. (???)
2) Microsoft also realizes that browsers are important (belatedly) and starts making one of their own. Realizing that Netscape is probably right about it being a key OS feature, they start incorporating it into their OS shipments for free, because they know that OS shipments are already a money-losing proposition where the only point is to get first chance to sell the user APPLICATIONS.
Meanwhile, as the MS browser slowly catches up with and then beats Netscape's browser in features and performance, the Netscape browser becomes an unstable, pork-filled mess. Whereas Netscape started the browser wars effectively driving the HTML standards process, in the end they found they could barely keep up with the latest standards. Microsoft's standards compliance is, err, creative as well but they manage to stay ahead of the curve more of the time than not.
3) Netscape finds out the hard way that there's no money in OS software, either new or old, and slowly spins out of control. All the while, they invent new "business models" of the week, each smaller in scope until finally they claim to be just a portal and are bought and stripped down for parts.
Microsoft is hardly angelic in this story, but if making fewer mistakes than your challengers is a crime, then I fear we'll have no businesses left.
ok, I'm only 20 and I remember when netscape wasn't free. Netscape navigator wasn't free thre 3.0 Gold, unless you were a student or a member of a non-profit organization. It only became free when Internet Explorer(which was free) started to gain merit.
(on a side note)
I really miss netscape 1.1 It was a nice piece of software.
Humans are slow, innaccurate, and brilliant; computers are fast, acurrate, and dumb; together they are unbeatable
If they get broken up, some other megacorporation will grow to take its place.
More of the same.
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One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
Well unless we are all hypocrites, if we think its ok to do this to Microsoft, then it should be ok for the government to do this to any technology company who adds features to their own products that in turn make other products unsellable. I have split feelings on Microsoft. I think their tactics of trying to tell IBM they cant market OS2, or their office products if they want to buy Win95 at the same price as everyone else, is bullshit. But on the other hand, I believe in Microsofts right to include features in their OS, I believe its ok for them to create a web browser and give it away for free, and to include it in their OS. I'm not sure if anyone remembers the Lantasitc days. Lantastic sold a networking adon for Win 3.1. Well Lantastic got mad at Microsoft when MS came out with Windows for Workgroups. Lantastic, figured no one would buy their product is MS did that (and they where right) so they sued and lost. I do understand where Lantastic was coming from, but I believe in Microsofts right to include networking in their OS (could you image Linux without networking support simply because someone wanted to sell a networking addon?). I think the same goes for web browsers. Static HTML files are replacing everything from readme files, to help files. Is it fair for the government to tell us "No sorry, a web browser can not be included with the OS, you must purchase it separately if you want to read your help files"
So MS's biggest advantage was timing. When they began to create (and dominate) the PC desktop OS, they also made sure that no other company could make inroads (remember DR-DOS?). This has been their modus operandi from the beginning--the only thing that has changed is that they have decided to forego any further innovation.
By the way, you mention in your article:
Gates' astonishing arrogance -- lying to a federal judge comes to mind -- is much to blame for this change. But monomania isn't a crime.
No monomania isn't a crime, but lying to a federal judge is.
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Gort! Klatu Barata Nikto!
I disagree that everyone is using MS products because there isn't something else. Have you ever tried to setup a 50 year old dial up customer who has never touched a computer in his life? I wouldn't bother if they didn't use Windows. I have to tell them whether to do one click or two, right click or left click. Can you imagine them trying to walk them through a pnpdump and setup eth0? (actually I have no idea how to setup dial up on linux, so Im comparing with LAN) And what if they are running Joe-Schmoe distrobution, do they use debian like packages or RPM? Because of the microsoft ease of use and huge market I can remember the setup on 4 versions as compared with this type of linux satire
Because they don't even know that other options exist, for the most part.
Why? Because MS is a monopoly.
And thats Microsofts fault? No, its the fault of the ignorant consumer. If you don't research your options you're going to have to put up with what you're given. For the 'average' user at home Windows is the best operating system.
It IS Microsoft's fault because (back before the DOJ investigation) Microsoft would not let a computer supplier sell Windows if they sold another OS. They did the same thing with IE. They told manufacturers "you cannot sell windows if Netscape is on the desktop." So because of Microsoft using its monopoly, consumers could not buy a computer with an alternative OS. Nor could they buy a computer with an alternative browser. That is why it's harmful.
Secondly, what good is research if you can't buy an alternative product preinstalled anyway? This is where the Microsoft tax came from. You couldn't buy a computer for use with Linux/FreeBSD/*NIX without also buying a copy of Windows, regardless of whether you actually USE Windows or not. Now do you still want to talk about fair?
I'm not going to argue 'who' is to blame in terms of MS being a monopoly.
The issue at stake is that they *are* a monopoly, and they have use said monopoly in ways that hurt the consumer, and in the process have also done illegal things to boot.
Even without the monopoly, those two things can be dealt with, but with the monopoly, they are much graver issues.
'For the average user at home Windows is the best operating system'
Did you forget the fact that there exists a system called Mac OS?
For the average user at home, perhaps the 'cheapest' system is a Windows OS with an Intel PC. But there are plenty of non cheap WinTel systems that put them in the same price range as the Mac OS. What then?
Then the fact that most people couldn't install Linux. Most people can't even install Windows! The cute thing is that those same people *can* install Mac OS. Not that I've done it (I can install Windows or Linux, btw), but it's supposed to be as simple as dragging a MacOS folder from a bootable CD onto the Apple machine, or something like that.
Microsoft does have a rival. The fact that people don't know about it is Apple's fault for being too stealthy in advertising. What if Apple advertised on all the strengths of their platform? I dunno what would happen, but I would think Macs would be more popular and common, and due to economic volume, cheaper and higher performance to boot!
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
Just because someone or some thing is the victim of a witch hunt- that doesn't meant they're not a witch.
Click here for more information on the legal preciedence of the Nobody Likes Me Defense
Laws exist to maintain the idea of justice in the eyes of the public. If people think OJ did it, they don't think the 'system' works.
So, public flogging of unpopular business figures will be held on the Capital steps in D.C. on the first of each month. The "winners" will be chosen by secret election. You cannot be flogged more than twice in any given year (kind of like TRL).
Sure, it's curel. It's unusual. But did you ever hear of an over-arching operating systems monopoly when the Puritans ran the show?
I think not.
begin voting now for whom shall be flogged first
You've made one misstatement, and that concerns what people like to call the "Microsoft tax." In fact, there is no such thing. The OEM process works like this:
OEM predicts they will sell 2 million PCs this next year. Microsoft says if you buy 2 million licenses, you can pay $x. OEM agrees and buys the licenses.
Now the kicker comes when you want to order that new PC w/o Windows... until the recent build-to-order crazy, most companies had no infrastructure for managing customizations very well.... all of their Hard Drives came preloaded with their software.
At any rate, they just take the cost they paid for those 2 million licenses and divy that up across all the PCs. This is just the standard they use for management simplicity, and is NOT SOMETHING ENFORCED BY MICROSOFT. ANY OEM IS FREE AND CLEAR TO SELL PCs WITHOUT ANY OS CHARGES WHATSOEVER. This has *always* been the case.
In effect, you are blaming Microsoft because the OEMs were too lazy to deal with shipping PCs with no (or alternative) OSes installed. Besides... before the most recent times, the overhead with that sort of thing would negate any additional profits... until Linux became a buzzword, nobody WANTED PCs without Windows.
If you don't wanna get a PC with any software preloaded, do what I do and build your own.
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The IHA Forums
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
You are confusing several things here.
the NT kernel provides an API, called the Executive. It is usually hidden from most programs, for portability reasons, as well as logistical reasons. The native set has less than 300 APIs... most of the legwork is done in the individual subsystems. Win32 is *NOT* a simple wrapper to the Native API set....
There are several "subsystems", each of which talks to the kernel in its native API. The Win32 subsystem is the most common, and the one that the shell is based on. You also have the Win16, DOS, and POSIX subsystems.
Why couldn't IBM port PM to NT? They could, quite easily. Any company can sign agreements to get access to the kernel code; Executive software did that on NT3.x b/c that version of the kernel lacked defrag APIs.... ES signed with MS and gained the rights not only to get the code, but to modify it and distribute an updated kernel patch.
As it stands, anyone can replace the standard Explorer shell with something else, written to the Win32 API, or any other API subsystem. The graphics interface is also overridable... just look at Stardock's Windowblinds. The latest Version 2.x series is super fast (I can't tell the difference between it and native), and has few compatibility issues (mostly with apps that draw their own borders or widgets.)
It would be quite possible to design a *nix compatible subsystem/API, and Microsoft sells just such a thing called Interix. Why there isn't an Open Source project for this purpose, I don't know. If I were better at C++, I might just take it up myself.
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The IHA Forums
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
I don't think that Judge Jackson completely understand the implications to the industry if Microsoft were in fact broken up. This man, (I use the term loosely) has visions of cheap software, the glorious emergence of alternative OS, and happy users all over the world. I also thing that this guy has visions of his picture on the cover of every magazine in the world.
Judge Brown is after fame, period.
Don't get me wrong, I get as frustrated as anyone when I have to run a separate Win98 box to just collect my email but the software solutions that MS provides solutions for the ordinary user and they seem pretty happy about it.
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
And you know, there are always two sides on the coin. I had HUGE problems with various Linux distros some time ago on my desktop machine at home. It would freeze every once in a while (maybe every 2-3 hours or so) under X, no matter what I tried. I changed hardware, changed my motherboard, CPU, memory.. no change.. Finally I installed Windows 98 on it and I had no problems. Sure, typically it would be the other way around, but if you have had 100 blue screens of death in one day on a Windows box, remember that there are people who have had similar experiences with other OS's. It's nothing Microsoft specific.
Switch distros. I had several problems with my hardware under RedHat 6.2. So I copied all the data I wanted to keep onto my Windows drive, and started over with Debian. Worked much better, but I still had minor issues with my soundcard. With RedHat 7 I have no problems at all, every piece of hardware works as well or better than under Windows. Total cost to fix problems? Nothing.
This is proof that competition works when it exists. IMHO, the improvement between RedHat 6.2 and RedHat 7 is vastly greater than the improvement between Win95 and Win98. And in much less than 4 years. Sure, the inital release had a lot of bugs, but most of them were fixed faster than Microsoft can issue a press release declaring a bug to be a feature.
This is the beauty of having to fight over market share - distros improve rapidly to avoid being beaten up by the other guy. Not so much the case with Microsoft. They're afraid at how fast Linux has caught up with Windows in all areas. They don't know how to turn out good software quickly. As the useability gap closes they have to be very afraid.
On the other hand, I downloaded the All YOur Base video and tried to play it under Windows. It freezes my whole machine hard - can't even reboot. Straight out of the box, my Windows 98 machine needed a reboot once a day to keep it happy. Can someone tell me where I can download a different version of Windows? I suppose I could shell out loads of money for Win2K but there is no guarantee whatsoever that it will solve my problems. I doubt MS will refund the purchase price when I tell them that my NIC still stops working randomly.
If your a Linux user with problems you can always try something else for relatively little cost when nothing else works. If you're an Windows user you're gonna have to wait for an upgrade (which means upgrading your RAM, HD, etc. to deal with this round of bloat), pay in advance and then hope it resolves your problems.
To me, Microsoft's crimes were arrogance, mediocrity and greed, the hallmarks of our corporatized culture -- none of them, alas, illegal in our business world.
Correct. However, the case in question isn't about what Microsoft's crimes were 'to you', but what the court found. And what the court found is that Microsoft violated the monopoly laws.
Much as people fault the quality of Microsoft's software and decry its practices, the truth is that tens of millions of people have used their products successfully to access the Net and the Web and run their PCs.
Much as people fault the tactics of the Mafia, the truth is that tens of millions of small business owners have run their businesses successfully. Of course, had the mob not taken their cut, those same small business owners would have been much more successful and happy. Similarly, had Microsoft not held progress back, imagine how much better those tens of millions of persons might have had it when using software. Can't imagine it? That's the problem: we'll never know what could have been had Microsoft not crushed rivals into the ground.
I'd rather see MS challenged creatively in the marketplace
Me too. Unfortunately, every time this happens, Microsoft manages to crush, buy out, or co-opt that creative competition.
Antitrust law says that for a company to behave illegally, it must establish a monopoly (not in itself illegal), engage in anti-competitive practices, and perhaps most importantly, harm consumers. Were consumers demonstrably harmed by Microsoft? If so, how?
By making it harder for them to have free choice. Note, I didn't say it was impossible for them to have free choice, for as you point out they could always get ahold of a Netscape disc somehow. But it required extra effort on their part.
A virus hits. Businesses have to take time to fix it. Media claims billions of dollars in damage in the form of lost productivity.
Microsoft forces Netscape off computers in the factory. Businesses have to take time to fix this by installing what they want instead. Yet this same form of lost productivity isn't 'damage'?
Did government antitrust prosecutors actually prove that Microsoft prevented Netscape, or any other rival, from bringing new products to the marketplace?
Microsoft did force Netscape to stop charging for its browser by giving its own browser away. When Japanese chip companies did something similar years ago, Washington was up in arms about 'dumping'. Certainly what Microsoft did caused great monetary damage to Netscape. Microsoft had the financial ability to absorb this loss, knowing that Netscape didn't.
Look, I'm not in favor of the government breaking up Microsoft, for I want the government to stay out of the way. But to pretend that Microsoft didn't violate any laws when they, say, blackmailed Apple into dropping Netscape is ludicrous!
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Private Essayist
However, there are two sides to ever coin. Behind the nice facade they put up, there is a ruthless company that's pretty much willing to engage in any nasty business practice they want to defeat competition. We can never forget that. And while it's true that we bash M$ religiously here, that kind of opposition is important. There always has to be a strong or at least existent counter-force to any entity (everyone needs a nemesis). What better and more willing people to do that than us? ...or the government?
I'm getting to the point... almost there.
The "Slashdot Community" as we call ourselves, should stick to our ideals. If we identify something as being bad, be it MS, AOL, Starbucks, or any other big corporate entity with a monopoly on their market delivering shady products and engaging in shady practices... we should not hesitate to bash them - provided we've thought about why we're doing it.
The rest of the world will look at our words and make up their own minds. No lynchings will occurr - we're not going to accidently wrongly sour the minds of the whole population with our ideas if they're too rash. We have our point of view. Everyone else has theirs. Everyone acts for their own reasons.
Okay! I'm at the point!
If the government has alterior motives for their cause, but their ideals are parallel to ours, we should not hesitate to 'take advantage of it' so to speak. It may be a little disturbing that the government can get its way, but we need to look at their acts as a step in the right direction. I stated earlier that MS are a ruthless company. Being that this is the case - my belief as well as others' - then I think it's acceptable for the government to be equally ruthless in dealing with them. It's the Golden Rule. By principle, Microsoft has done Bad Things to other corporations - unfairly playing hardball, and stifling them. They had to know that sometime, a bigger fish was going to come along and do the same to them.
It's been argued that the government is stepping out of its bounds in decided what's right, regardless of the law. Well, Microsoft have broken the law - repeatedly. And we shouldn't feel sorry for them. They'll get whatever they deserve, and on top of that, I assure you they'll be alright. They have deep pockets and large spheres of influence. The buying and selling of politicians will enter. They'll convince others to aid them. You get the idea. All and all, they're just being tripped up a little.
First off, unless something radically changed in 2k, MS recommends rebooting after performing almost any serious install.
I don't know of a single product install under w2k that asks for a reboot. This was a huge problem in NT4 (change the IP? reboot time). But because of the work that went into 2k any software application that tells you it needs to reboot is simply stupid, lazy or outdated. No MS product asks for a reboot of Win2k on install and no 3rd party products should.
Next even NT is highly volitale. Least we forget the blue-screen-of-death?? My favorite is when this happened at Bill Gates' presentation.
When was the last time you saw a BSOD on your NT machine? NT4 properly configured is very stable. I run whistler (beta) and freebsd-4.2-beta on two machines at home. Freebsd is less stable than Whistler.
The consumer windows versions (9x and ME) are pretty unstable, of course. My personal opinion on this is that MS should have ditched the 9x line and merged in the NT kernel a long time ago. But those of you who bash MS and cry about your OS being unstable should try running NT not 9x. And next time you get a win2k blue screen that is not the fault of some poorly written 3rd party driver you installed, send it to me.
You're assuming your situation is common. Your hardware configuration is relatively unique since there are so many possible configurations. One NT server and one W2K server do not make for a good review of the OSs. Your success with them may or may not be typical. MS products still have really shoddy stability. Every product they release has more documented bugs than the prior version. Do some research and find that non-MS OSs are almost always more stable. But then you probably use their servers because of their monopoly and wouldn't see much of the competition anyway...
Developers: We can use your help.
Look, I'm not going to bullshit here. I'll just give you the facts.
1. Before MS came along, computers were unaffordable. Now we all reap the benefits of a computer in every home.
2. MS have consistently brought down prices - they cut prices in the spreadsheet market; they are producing software that is cheaper than what was their before. And they're still doing it. MS Sql Server, which is at least on a par with Oracle, is much cheaper than it, and thus benefits consumers that way.
3. Believe it or not, Microsoft actually do produce good software. Certainly Windows 3.1 wasn't very stable, but in 1992 what competition was there? Certainly not Linux. And even given that, if you ask me if I want my secretary on the current state of the art Linux, or on Windows 3.1 and Word 2, I'll bet you a dollar to a hundred that she'll be more effective on Windows 3.1
4. Microsoft have benefitted the US economy. It really has. Compared with the UK, for instance, the strength of the US IT industry is vast - and much of this strength is due to Microsoft.
5. Nearly all opposition to MS comes from jealous competitors. Netscape have been beaten fair-and-square by MS, for instance - just compare Netscape 6 with MSIE, for instance. This just backs up my point - Microsoft software is of exceptional quality. They hire the best programmers because they can afford to, and they release top software. Word beats anything else on the market, and as a usable OS, so does Windows (and on stability, Windows 2000 ranks pretty highly to). Combine this with easy administration - the idiot in my office is in charge of DNS administration, which he can easily do using MS DNS manager, because it's just point, right click/properties. He'd have no chance with Bind.
The fact is, for a small business with not many staff, Microsoft software allows them to compete with the big guys - they can offer ISP provision, because they don't need highly paid admins. This is great news for the economy and great news for them.
6. The fact is, as I have stated, there is a lot of jealousy and resentment out there - whereas the truth is that Microsoft produce damn fine software, and their very low prices (believe me - just check the price of a spreadsheet 20 years ago), mean that although they have a monopoly, that has come through selling good software at low prices and therefore high volume.
Damaging Microsoft would damage the consumer. What do you want people to use? Star Office?
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Hi!
Sure there are. That is, there are other OSes out there that don't consider the browser to be built-in to the operating system, and rather bundle it as a separate application. New MacOS machines include IE as an app, and various Linux distributions include Netscape and other browsers. Just because people connect their machines to the internet doesn't mean they need an OS with an embedded browser.
"In the Corporate Republic, the land of AOL/Time-Warner and the Disney Corp., is Microsoft really that unusual, or even particularly predatory?" Yes. It has about 90% of the desktop OS market, which is well within the legal definition of "monopoly". AOL/Time-Warner, etc., doesn't have 50% of any one market. One more merger could change that--but that would be illegal. (I am a bit concerned that they might buy the Justice Dept. so they can get away with it.) Until they do attempt that last merger, there is no legal basis for anti-trust action. IANAL, but I think the legal side of this argument is just that simple.
On another note, if you don't like AOL or Disney, just don't buy from them, and don't watch their movies and TV channels. You don't lose anything but time- and mind-wasting diversions. Likewise, it is possible to avoid using MS OS's. But MS has used 18 years of guaranteed income and name recognition (at least) from it's OS's to gain almost as big a lock on the office software market. So if you are in business, you will have customers and vendors sending you data in Word documents and Excel spreadsheets, and you've got to be able to decode those formats. To some extent you can use third party software, but this was created by reverse-engineering Word and Excel files, not by using published documentation. When MS changes the format, it will be a year or so before other vendors can catch up, and probably some obscure features will never be properly interpreted. And so virtually every business in the US winds up buying at least one Windows box and MS Office, and buying it again every few years, because you can't afford to risk faulty communications with your customers.
Of course, that doesn't seem to be what Judge Jackson focused on. Trust the federal judiciary--even when they do the right thing, it will be for the wrong reason...
I remember when I got my first computer ... sometime in the 80's. It ran MS-DOS 3.10. Their was really no other choice in operating systems at the time so I was stuck paying the Microsoft tax of $50 or something like that so that my computer would do more then just beep. My next computers were a little better with DOS 5.0, DOS 6.22 with Windows 3.11, and DOS 7.10. Each time, I was forced to pay $50+ dollars for each new computer so that I would have the "latest and greatest" microsoft product. Their was really no choice in the matter, most consumers use what comes with their computers. I've owned several computers since then, continuing up until my last computer, which I built myself, and each time I payed the Microsoft Tax. I discovered Linux '98 and only payed $5 for it on something like linuxmall.com, and again $40 for a version of Mandrake. Amazing enough, this is less then I originally paid for DOS 3.10 in 198X. With respect to inflation in a non-monopolistic environment, a $50 product 15 years ago at 5% would approximately be $103 yet I'm paying much less for an equivalent product. Tell me this hasn't harmed consumers.
You stupid bastard, you don't have no arms left. It's just a flesh wound.
Oppressive government:
1) seeks back doors into encryption products
2) wants to be able to execute warrants before serving them (8th paragraph). Whole bill here.
3) Wants to track e-mail & browsing habits with out a warrant.
4) Carnivore. 'nuff said.
Neither did Mr Katz article address the accusation that Microsoft included booby-traps in its operating system code -- booby-traps that would make competitors programs fail. It is well-known that windows 3.1 was booby-trapped to fail if it detected it was being invoked form DR DOS, not MS DOS. Microsoft did settle their case with the owners of DR DOS out of court -- for nine figures. That is a pretty damning admission of guilt I'd say. Bill did pass the reins to Ballmer a couple of days later. Some have suggested that this was one of the clauses of the secret settlement.
Is this programming practice a typical one for Microsoft? Yes, I am ready to believe it is. When I heard that the source code for Windows 98 was fifty percent longer than that for Windows 95 I thought to myself, "what is that extra fifty percent code bloat doing? W98 is not 50% better than W95!" I suspected that much of that 50% code bloat was due to booby-traps.
Ok, this is my first post so hopefully I won't start a flame-war, BUT ...
/.ers.
1. While I have an MCSE and the money I earn comes directly from supporting M$ products, I DON'T agree with their predatory market practices.
2. I don't hold with a lot of people's views that one OS or another is the END-ALL-BE-ALL of OSdom. I think (and so do a lot of the people I work with and have worked with) that each OS has it's strengths and weaknesses that place it within a certain market niche. Microsoft fills a LOT of those niches and requirements with it's various OSs.
3. I DO think that, despite Microsofts claims, that they do hold a significant monopoly and do maintain business practices that are unethical at best and market insensitive at worst.
My position is as follows:
1. Microsoft should be broken up.
a) The company should be broken up
VERTICALLY into 3 separate companies. A
lottery would be held to RANDOMLY assign
all current employees to the new
derivative companies with a limitation
set that NO employee can be cross-hired
by any of the other two companies. This
would extend from the lowest janitor to
Mr. Gates himself.
b) The software assets of the companies
should (up to Windows NT and Windows ME)
be placed into escrow and if another
company wants to be able to compete,
they can purchase a licensed copy of
the complete source code with the
limitation that it is not to be
publically disseminated/released.
c) All APIs for any MS derivitave OSs or
applications will be PUBLIC. NO HIDDEN
or unpublished APIs will be allowed or
tolerated from any MS derivative company
or licensee.
This, I think would be the ONLY way to truly even the playing field for all competing and also be fair to the shareholders of Microsoft stock. Of which most of you out there probably are if you have a 401(k) or have ANY technology related mutual funds.
Any comments? Over to you
It was written:
I feel that I should say something strongly worded and possibly obscene, but I really bare you personally no ill will; this misunderstanding is easy enough to make (once).
The fact is, though, that this is simply and utterly as untrue as saying that rot13 is encryption. For the actual MS documentation on how to write a logon replacement window, see the msdn site. For some preliminary information on a windows NT rootkit observed in the wild which intercepts the login screen, see the archives of the incidents mailing list. (Some of the followup posts are very helpful; use the thread index)
One thing I do hope is that Microsoft can be forced to admit that the little helpful info tip they give on Win2k logon screens about keeping your password secure with Ctrl-Alt-Del is about as close to a total lie as is possible.
You're a piss-poor Libertarian then, who has chosen "temporary safety over liberty" and thus "deserves neither", if I may be excused the Ben Franklin mangling.
Microsoft never prevented me from choosing, even on the x86 platform.
OS/2, DR-DOS, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, BSD/OS, Solaris, SCO, BeOS; that's just the choices I've used, there are others I haven't. Most of them (all but one, in fact) are still available, and OS/2 can still be used although of course it's a little difficult to find.
What Microsoft did was arrogant, immoral, and in the long run will be futile, but it was very rarely illegal. They pay a ton of top lawyers to help them NOT be illegal.
I don't think anybody should buy Microsoft's crappy products, and I won't buy them myself. However, I don't go running to Big Brother to force them to run their corporation the way I want it run. I'll start my own if I want that.
-
You're making generalizations based on these two experiences? As a developer working closely with admins of 100's of NT boxes, I can tell you that your experiences may be typical for small servers running all MS software and being "hammered" on by one person. Put, say, Sybase or Oracle on them. Allow 100,000 people to hammer on them. You'll have to reboot them almost daily, or they will eventually DoS themselves. Blame Sybase and Oracle, you say? Nah, Sybase and Oracle run rock-solid on Sun. There are weaknesses in the OS that allows these things to happen.
But to say "oog, I reboot windows every day" or "oog, blue screen!!!!" just shows ignorance and the inability to think objectively for yourself.
We reboot our public Web servers every day. We have to, or services will mysteriously stop, or stop responding, among other things. Yes, we've worked with MS and the other vendors involved ad nauseum. I don't think this is ignorance or the inability to think objectively.
-bp
bp
In the heat of the browser wars, it was MS who pissed me off. The anti-trust case focuses on the integration of IE into win98, but let's go back a little bit. Before MS could get win98 and IE4 out there was a time when every single microsoft product would require you to install IE3. If you didn't install it, you couldn't install the program, even though the program didn't need IE and had nothing to do with the internet. I remember one case where a guy found that all you needed was one of the dlls from IE to be able to install Excel (if it wasn't Excel, it was some similar office program) and he got in trouble for distributing that dll so others could avoid installing IE3.
Forcing the consumer to install a program they may not want and generating artificial dependencies for other software on that program is NOT beneficial to the consumer. Especially since in these days lots of people didn't have an extra few megs harddrive space for some unwanted program.
The court issues may be with win98, but I think the real important, possibly illegal events were in the lead up to win98 and IE4. If we could go back and look closely at MS's distribution of IE, I think we'd see some pretty shady activities.
He said, "You'll be able to tell your grandchildren that you helped assemble the first NT supercomputer," and I cringed.
Libertarianism obviously means different things to different people. I do consider myself a libertarian (small l), but this doesn't blind me to the fact that it requires some features to be viable. One of these is a relatively level playing field. One of the legitimate purposes of government is to break up destructive monopolies. And nearly every monopoly, including government, has a tendency to be destructive. This is because people always put their own perceived interests first. This is neither good nor bad, but rather one of the rules of the game. A properly designed social system is designed to take this into account, and ensure that all players have a reasonable chance for a reasonable level of success. (FWIW, I like to play games on the Easy level. This probably shows through.)
Please remember, not everyone wants to play the same stupid games. A social system that is so designed that not only must everyone play the same games, but so that many will feel that it is rigged against them ab initio will have a lot of discontent. This does not contribute to social stability.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The problem as I see it is that Microsoft reduces personal choice for me. I can choose to run MacOS only because Microsoft has chosen to keep Apple around. A few years ago, Microsoft could have just let Apple fall into bankruptcy and today you'd only have Linux and Windows as reasonable choices. Today I use Linux, for many reasons, chief amongst them being that I want to preserve my right to have a choice in the matter. Sometimes doing things under Linux is more of a challenge and sometimes things can't be done at all, but I make that choice because I want to have an alternative to Windows.
So really, my Libertarian side is looking to see Microsoft smashed so that competition is restored and to insure that I will always have a choice about what OS, browser, and office software I use.
---
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
With the Open Source movement, there are plenty of non-MS alternatives
Maybe today the situation is approaching something you can call "choice", given the existence of projects like KDE and Gnome. But back around the time this whole netscape/IE thing was brewing, I remember still having to recompile the kernel just to get my sound card to work. That doesn't even begin to compete, for average computer users, with Windows95. Gnome did not exist, and KDE was an early alpha obscure blip on the horizon. Apple at that time looked like a seriously dying company, IBM had all but completely pulled out of the OS market, and the only other "platforms and altervatives" were the extremely expensive Unix mainframes, such as the SGI's and SUN's. SGI only fairly recently began to produce "affordable" computers, and this trend is still slow to take in big Unix companies. Alternatives? Hardly. The situation is starting to improve. Apple is back on its feet, and Linux is really getting there in terms of applications and usability. But the situation was quite different when the antitrust problems began. The damage has been though, and the law broken. Of course the new IE beats the old netscape - but that is exactly because of the damage inflicted by Microsoft. Many people look back now and say "oh IE is now better, so that must be why it beat Netscape out". Puh-lease - IE 3 stunk like shit, and IE 4 was as unstable and shitty as netscape 4, I remember using all of them. By the release of Netscape 4, though, Netscape was pretty much already dead, and couldn't afford to put the same development effort into NN. IE 5 is basically IE4 with bugfixes, which is hardly groundbreaking given the number of years it has taken them to do only that. That is what happens when a competitor uses cross-funding from other products to drastically undercut your main products pricing - no income, no programmers. No programmers, crappy software (NN4).
Its better to not look at this from a moral standpoint. M$ has a clear history of not playing nice with other software and systems, and only do so when market demand forces them to. However, this is their right. Do we really want the government mandating exactly how software should be designed?
The browser integration was a poor issue to use as a major point in the case. Its M$'s decision to integrate it. We in the UNIX world prefer a modular design. M$ does not, and any programmer can see that the integration _does_ offer some benefits, at the expense of other things. M$ has the right to choose this approach.
However, the real problems in my mind are:
MS has practically never "invented" anything. Every core idea was copied, stolen, or bought from someone else. Their innovations have been small asides amidst a vast sea of other companies/peoples ideas
MS shuts people out of the market. I don't know where the line is. If I owned a commercial software company, I would see great benefit in working with a Dell/Gateway like company and selling my software more cheaply in the interest of more sales. However at some point MS became more of a bully, making it difficult for these companies to NOT sell MS software. I'm not familiar enough with the laws to explain where the line is, but practices like this clearly harmed consumers, who had to pay for this software whether they wanted it or not.
Its also clear that MS has taken specific steps to hamper other companies software from working well on their systems. This to me is a fairly clear line. Its one thing for MS to take advantage of the fact that they make the OS and the software in order to design things well; this is their right. Its another to take effort to break other peoples software.
What MS calls "innovation" is really a combination of vast resources to quickly buy or copy other peoples ideas, and a huge market share to compensate for shortcoming in their software.
I hear repeatedly about all the things MS has given us, the boost they gave our economy, etc. If they were making all these innovations themselves, perhaps this would be the case. Its not. The wealth and economic push MS has been a part of is taken at the expense of all the other companies that could be part of the market but are shut out.
Perhaps you look at your windows environment and think, "Look at all they have given us". Instead, look at it and imagine all the superior products which could not suceed due to MS bullying resellers or sabatoging developers.
I don't know where to draw the lines or what the consequences should be, but it is clear that they have harmed consumers and hampered innovation.
The better solution would be a more enlightened public, but the technology can be hard for the average person to understand, and the lack of interoperability can make it hard for consumers to choose non-MS software. This is really the core of MS's talent - getting themselves in a position of doing little original work and having consumers buy it up. This market setup, just like MSs other "innovations", is of course nothing new in the economic world.
You can say what you want, but I believe that this improvement in quality is caused by the DOJ hearings, at least in part. With the world spotlighting their practices and software quality, MS simply has to put its best foot forward.
Would the people benefit if they get split? I think so. After all it's always better to have a company focus on one thing instead of many product lines. I don't really want features going into my OS that will make it easier for Word to run, but not WordPerfect for example.
Let MS::OS make the best possible windows, and then MS::APP try to build the best possible Office Suite on top of it. If the two product lines stant on their own, they will have to be of better quality.
Ñ'
Good thing, too, unless you missed the first paragraph where I explained that I'm just passing along info I heard somewhere else, and that I don't know what the original intentions were...
Besides, I never said it was good or useful. I totally agree that, if that explanation's right, it's just as silly as encryping your bank records with ROT13. But it's the only good explanation I've heard for why MS would pick Ctrl-Alt-Del -- the traditional "reboot" key sequence -- as "login".
--
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
If you speak to people who work in marketing (you may never have met any, but they're nice friendly people in general), they'll tell you that the easiest thing to market is a good product. Given the choice, they'd always work with marketing a good product than a bad, since it's a much easier and more rewarding job.
Obviously, I'm not PHYSICALLY harmed by an operating system (with the possible exception of STRESS).
Am I harmed by an OS that doens't have any competition? I don't know. If you assume that Windows is the ideal operating system, and that, if there was a competitor, they would be equal in quality, price, and features, then NO, I guess I'm not harmed.
Conversly, was I harmed by a telco that charged me $0.25/minute for a 'local toll call'? As soon as the opened up the 'local toll call' business, I found out that I could pay $0.10/minute. Wow, I was being harmed, and I didn't even know it.
So, from the fact that I don't have limited CHOICES, and that Microsoft is trying to LIMIT my choices (I couldn't buy a PC w/out Windows until this trial came up), I would say that until there IS competition, you will never know to what extent you are being harmed by a monopoly. Necessity drives innovation and competition drives necessity. Without them, I think I am DEFINATELY being HARMED.
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
I think that the order to break up MS was wrong, not because breaking up the company is a bad idea, but because of the way it is to be done.
The order would break up MS into different companies with different products. The new companies would not compete against each other, because they are in different market segments. This would NOT help competition. There would STILL be a big OS company, a big APP company, etc. MAYBE information would be more available to third parties who wanted to write competing apps compatable with those of MS. However I think that a horizontal break up of the company, similar to what happened to standard oil would better help consumers, not the vertical breakup proposed.
Simple then - get a new judge.
What part of 'remand to the original judge' didn't you get?
Sure, Jackson could be recused, but if he weren't already biased (or tainted with the appearance of prejudice), then remanding to the original judge has a lot of benefits: the appellate court can have the original judge clarify or repair portions of the ruling without starting from scratch.
A new judge below the circuit court would have to start from scratch. Do you think that another two years on this case is good for competition and legal clarity on the general monopoly issues, or good for the consumers potentially harmed in 1996?
[
Is "One dollar == one vote" the future of American democracy?
No. It's the present. Otherwise, we wouldn't have laws such as the Bono Act and the DMCA.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Capitalism rewards innovation.
Yes, but capitalism rewards control even more. Being a monopoly means never having to say you're sorry.
question: is control controlled by its need to control?
answer: yes
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
They where certainly hurt financially. Do you think that the upgrade-race of recent years doesn't force people into buying more & more now apps and computers? My parents use one of my older computers, but it's a bit hard nowadays to buy software for it, because the machine is too slow, and the software too bloated. Conclusion, buy a new pc. Through this 'embrace' people pockets are being emptied at an alarming rate
The government is trying MS as a monopoly on the wrong grounds, and so are you guys who point to incompatible file formats, viruses, and crashes as proof of a monopoly.
The proof lies in how they killed OS/2.
The proof lies in how they killed DR-DOS.
No Dr-dos machines can easily run win3.1 or newer.
In fact, the install for win3.x checks to see if you have DR-DOS and complain if you do.
Similar issues for IBM PC-DOS.
the proof lies in how they punished small and large oems alike for what apps they chose to bundle on the computers they sold (no smartsuite, no netscape or you pay more for windows.)
The proof lies in how difficult it is to purchase a computer with anything other than Windows. Want os/2? tough, IBM has to pay for Windows for the machine shipped with os/2 or else Microsoft raises the cost of Windows for IBM.
Want Linux? tough, same rule. Microsoft even used to say, no other operating systems allowed or we'll either sell you Windows at so high a price you'll go under, or we won't even sell it to you at all.
Microsoft is a monopoly, but bringing them to court for greed and ancillary issues that came from them being monopolistic is not the proper path to justice.
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
You got my point.
The problem is that there were always be some monopoly/dictator/evil empire.. what can we do?? Pass laws? Limit freedoms?? No.. people need to be more educated and aware in order to protect society in general from this sort of thing.
--
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
Capitalism sometimes rewards innovation. The problem is that it some practices allowed in a totally unregeulated market don't demand on capitalism's benefits. They are alternatives to producing the best product and selling it at the best price.
Pricing games are the best example. Netscape's only product is a browser. Microsoft has many products, one of which is a browser. MS can give away the browser without going bankrupt. Netscape can't. You can't compete unless you're already in the business - innovation is prohibited in effect, though not in theory.
But that's only one of the anti-capitalist tricks in MS's bag - bullying OEMs into using only Windows, using vaporware like there's no tommorrow, tying products together, using its applications monopoly to prop up its OS monopoly, none of these tactics are based on market forces - they're dirty tricks to subvert market forces.
Actually, Katz is refering to a brief comment made in Neal Stephenson's "In the Beginning was the Command Line." Only Katz got it wrong.
Microsoft is directly responsible for the creation of Linux. Because of Microsoft, computer hardware became standardized to the i386 platform and hardware prices dropped to where a young Finnish college student could afford a computer to tinker with.
The only meaningful way to split up Microsoft is to put their marketing in one company, engineering in another, and forbid all contact between them.
It would work! Engineering would be forced to make products with MERIT, and marketing would be forced to hire a new round of engineers (and probably destroy themselves by being a well-funded dotcom with all hot air and no product). And in both cases, we get what we want - an opportunity for third parties to move in and reclaim market segments that were lost to questionable MS tactics years ago.
Obviously this will never happen - it's too likely to work, so no one will have the nads to attempt it.
~ radiographite: art by john shepard
After all, Microsoft didn't use threats of increased prices and delayed shipments of Windows stop OEMs from making new systems start with Netscape as the default browser instead. Oh, wait, they did. Microsoft didn't use their monopoly position to demand that ISPs remove references to competing browsers from their literature and web sites and limit the percentage of users using Netscape or risk losing access to the Windows Referral Server. Oh, wait, they did too. Well, Microsoft certainly wouldn't use their monopoly position to force the exclusion of Netscape browsers from web sites on the IE Channel Bar. Oops, I guess they did that too. Well, Microsoft couldn't have threatened to kill Microsoft Office if Apple didn't make IE the preferred brower on Macs. Oh, they did that too?
Gosh, I can't see any possible reason why customers lacking knowledge of options is Microsoft's fault. It's not like they orchestrated a campaign to deny information to consumers.
Check the Findings of Fact. Especially the section Excluding Navigator from Important Distribution Channels.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
If you don't remember how consumers were hurt, reread the findings of fact, especially section VII, "The Effect on Consumers of Microsoft's Efforts to Protect the Applications Barrier to Entry. It's a remarkably readable document and the reasoning is easy to understand. In short, Microsoft took choices away from consumers and OEMs who wanted the choice.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
In this time period, as the Web was exploding, why wasn't Microsoft justified in integrating Windows with its much-hyped OS?
:)
No doubt I'm going to get jumped on for pointing out a logical error in this article, but this line made me think.
Why wasn't Microsoft procescuted for requiring Windows to run on top of it's OS. They don't give you a choice of Window manager. You only get one choice. Microsoft Win32. What happened to Desqview for NT? Why couldn't IBM port Presentation Manager to NT, along with the PM API? Because MS has used a secret API (the Native NT API) and only allowed people to use the Win32 Window Manager and it's API (which in Many cases is just a wrapper to the Native NT APIs.
We should sue
-- Hulver's site
Katz has IMO missed one or two things in his summary. The key to Microsoft's guild is, I think, in the motive.
One could suppose, as Katz put it, that any company that didn't try to tie it's browser to it's "much-hyped OS" would be committinc corporate suicide. Fair enough. The real question is not "Should they be allowed to do it?" but rather "Why did they try to do it?".
The key to that question is not to try and answer the question through hindsight. We have to put ourselves in Bill's shoes when he made the decisions he made. Let's break it down back in 1995 or thereabouts:
Which brings us more or less to today. It's easy to look back and say "Well, Microsoft should be allowed to integrate the OS and the browser, it's an obvious step." Sure it is. Of course, Microsoft probably stumbled onto it by accident, and it's ludicrous to decide that they should never be allowed to do this natural step just because they did it orginally for malicious purposes.
But that's the point! They did it for malicious purposes! They tried to use their existing monopoly to destroy a competitor. That's an anti-trust violation. It all comes down to motive. It's like an old legal riddle. If a man tries to fire a gun at you but doesn't know it's filled with blanks, what is he guilty of? He's still guilty of Attempted Murder even if he couldn't have suceeded becuase in his mind he was trying to do the deed. Simillarly for Microsoft; there may have been no actual threat (not really) but they sure tried to quash it and they should pay the price for their abusive actions.
There are, of course, other issues in the trial. The OEM licensing thing is IMO a damned good illustration of abuse of monopoly in and of itself and was part of the trial but doesn't get the coverage to the same degree that Netscape or Sun does. And at the end of the day, the truth is the trial demonstrated that Microsoft makes use of all its applications and software to defend it's OS monopoly. Although breaking them is hardly an ideal solution (even IMO), it would at least divest their OS division of an arsenal that it's been using to stave off the slightest bit of compitition. Which creates new products and ideas (I will not use the dreaded I-word if I can help it!) which is good for consumers. And if you don't take that into account when deciding if Microsoft's monopoly is good for consumers, you're just not seeing the whole picture.
My (long-winded) $0.02
Wood Shavings!
Wood Shavings!
- Godai
Think back to the AT&T breakup example. When AT&T was the only long distance provider, the system ran on copper. AT&T and Corning had invented fiber optics years before, but were in no hurry to role it out. After AT&T had competition from Sprint and MCI, fiber started be planted in the ground like it was going out of style. When you think of the major internet backbones, how many of them are (or were) run by AT&T? Few, if any. All of the major high speed fiber links were run by MCI and Sprint. (If my memory is correct.) Fiber is what makes the Internet possible today. AT&T's monopoly may have caused us to still be using 28.8 connections, with slow backbones, had they not been broken up.
.net means your web browser is now a platform. How many of you really believe Microsoft's .net products will work just as well on third party browsers as on Windows/IE?
Also, think of all the features offered today on your phone line. Compare that to the standard applications that come with windows. Call waiting, three-way-calling, caller id, etc., can be compared to "paint.exe", "wordpad.exe", etc. Since Microsoft has a monopoly on the consumer OS market, what incentive do they have to improve any of the feature already included with the opperating system. When is the last time and upgrade to windows included a better paint program? They've had since 1995! In six years, they should at least be able to upgrade it to be a mini-photoshop, much less handle more than one image at a time! If AT&T had not been broken up, whether we would have these inovations in telephone technology is a real question.
Look at KDE and Gnome. Even though they are not commercial products, they keep up with each other in terms of many of the "core" features. There is incentive to expand on the core features because there compititions has offered an enhancement. Microsoft does not have any of that incentive in the desktop market.
Also, the statement that Netscape had no chance of becoming a platform is dead wrong, and Microsoft knows it. It can be explained in four characters...".net".
Lastly, the punishment is not set in stone. I have heard lawers argue last week on CSPAN that it was never intended by judge Jackson to stick. A remedy needed to be entered for the trial to go on to the next step. The appeals court has the option of saying "we disagree with finding of fact A and D", therefore a trial must be held to come up with a new more fair remedy. More importantly, if they disagree with A and D, then B, C, and E are no longer open for discussion, since two courts have upheld them.
With that said, I would just like to say that the lawers in court right now have no clue what the case is really about. Get them off of their bullet point items, and they have no clue what their arguments should be. At least in many cases this is true for both sides of the case.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
Using that key sequence to bring up a login dialog effectively prevents the "false login screen" style of password sniffers.
Control+Alt+Del only pulls up a login screen in GUI mode. Recent versions of Windows NT (4.03 and later including 5.x) include a technology called DirectInput that lets programs easily read the keyboard as a set of 104 buttons (which is how games prefer to read the keyboard). For example, if Control and Insert are player 1's and 2's fire buttons, and Alt and Delete are jump buttons, you don't want to put up a login screen when player 1 is firing and both players are jumping. Thus, a program that uses DirectInput can spoof a login screen.
"But NT isn't designed for games. Use Windows 9x instead."
Games are just another application. The only reason Windows 9x wasn't a version of NT is because of marketing.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
However, their attempts to cut off Netscape's OEM channels did appear predatory, and it may have fallen under anti-trust law. Yes, lots of folks downloaded Netscape, but this was before fat pipes to the home - many home users would have had to do an overnight download over 56K.
Furthermore, a starting user who wanted Netscape would have to use MSIE to download the software - I seem to remember MSIE was pretty bad at downloading more than an hour at a time. Was that a strategy?
Even if a new user wanted Netscape instead, he had MSIE, and could not excise it from the operating system. It may be free, but the end user already paid for it hard disk space. If he had to re-install Windows, there it was again, the default option, only a Windows Update away from the latest version.
MS will release IE 6.x soon, and they are already debating whether to release it on Windows 95 or not. This means that existing users will have to upgrade their operating system to browse with the latest browser. Yes, it's been done before, but Microsoft has a way of adding features so that in a few years, you won't be able to browse many sites without IE 6.0 or later.
Government intervention may not be the best bet, but something will have to give eventually. We should re-double our open-source, free software efforts.
Introducing artificial barriers to interoperability when one is a monopoly seems to me to harm the consumer.
-Craig
--
Corollary to Clarke's Third Law: Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Lets see here:
1) Microsoft makes money charging for software.
2) Netscape had grand visions of a browser-centric model of computing.
3) Microsoft gives away IE. This is a money-losing proposition. It doesn't make sense if you're playing "fair" - not trying to manipulate the market
4) Netscape gets obliterated.
There's nothing wrong with this?
The problem with the MS monopoly is that for average consumers there's no alternative to using MS software. This means that their no longer subject to the pressures of the market - you HAVE to buy Windows, and it can be whatever they want it to be.
The stealth DRM in Windows ME is a good example. MS will eventually disable your machine's ability to play any MP3 you haven't had "blessed" by MS. They plan to activate this feature once they have "acquired sufficent market share" - doubletalk for "once we've driven the competition out of business."
But unless I'm a real geek, I don't have an alternative. In a normal market, the competition would be running adds with slogans like "Don't let Microsoft control your computer. Use Bob's OS instead." But there's no choice. Linux, maybe, but the average person doesn't want to install a frickin shareware program on their machine. They're gonna run Linux?
The only competition that can survive is free software, because MS can't use it's predatory pricing to drive it out of existence.
Did Microsoft get a fair trial? Probably not. Bear in mind this America, you no longer have the right to a fair trial. You can be sentenced to death while your lawyer is taking a nap and that's not grounds for a new trial. Microsoft got something that approximates a fair trial better than a lot of trials. Tactless comments by the judge don't change the facts - they're anticompetitive.
Previous antitrust actions in overly concentrated markets have had the desired effect - Long distance is cheaper now than it was before. Going back to the heydays of antitrust, our petroleum-dependent economy would have been bled to death by Standard Oil. Our information-dependent economy will be bled to death by Microsoft if we let them - subscription software is how they'll suck the life out of you.
Similarly, how the judged seemed to downplay Netscape as a competitor -- certainly not now, but in 95-96, they could have been big. I remember distinctly Netscape and Sun saying that with the browser and Java, you could have your own operating system, and they were pushing that as the Microsoft killer. However, when MS included IE and their specialized Java VM (which they have already been punished for branding as such), they broke a lot of Java code, and since "everyone" was using IE, Netscape could not break into this market further.
Plus, you need to consider that Netscape at one point was payware for commercial use -- they only dropped the fee when IE started to gain market ground. That's rather strong evidence of a monopoly using their power. Of course, nowadays, a non-free browser that doesn't have something extra (read: Opera) is considered laughable.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Machines that you expect to have to reboot every day.
This is where I have a big problem with your post. Yes, MS products in the past have had really shoddy stability. But NT 4 works well, and 2000 is even better. If you are using 95 or 98 in the office, you deserve to have to reboot it every day.
I've got two servers at work. One is running NT 4, and I never mess with it. It's a PDC for a small network. I've been ignoring it for months, and it's still going.
My other server is running W2K. It's a domain controller, DNS server, SQL server, and IIS server. I hammer on it every day. It's current uptime is about 52 days. So far this semester it's uptime is 99.995% and counting. That's not bad considering it's not on a UPS, and I'm just a lowly undergraduate student without any professional supervision.
I'm not MS fan. I run FreeBSD in my apartment, and I love it. I won't try to defend Microsoft's idealology or actions. But to say "oog, I reboot windows every day" or "oog, blue screen!!!!" just shows ignorance and the inability to think objectively for yourself.
What further doesn't make sense about this whole situation is that Jackson seems to be targeting the ties between Office and Windows as the big threat. This is Microsoft's current power base and Jackson realized this, but I think the leap of logic to say that because of the netscape debacle they should break up the office products from the OS is pushing it. The great danger with IE has nothing to do with office, but rather that they can leverage that monopoly to push a monopoly in the server realm (proprietary ties between IE and IIS that push people away from open platforms). In fact, if you look at Microsoft's current models it looks like they want to get rid of the traditional packaging of Office and replace it with pay-per-use on-line software driven by a Microsoft server and browser.
So, I think that the DOJ and Jackson really dropped the ball on this one. I think that Microsoft is a dangerous monopoly, and once this suit falls apart (which I think is an almost certainty), Microsoft will feel free to start using both hands again to strangle competition. Microsoft won't really learn anything (except that it's a good idea to send large checks to politicians) and we'll continue to have a Microsoft dominated industry for the foreseeable future.
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No. You're mistaken. You compare "install Linux" to "use Windows". You think most people can install Windows themselves? They can't. They rely on whatever comes with the computer. Many don't even differentiate the OS from the hardware. And MS created a monopoly for itself at the computer manufacturer level back in the late 80's early 90's with the predatory practices that eventually caused them to settle their original DOJ case.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
- The ILOVEYOU virus and its infinite children. Though MS didn't write the virus, the existence of the hole combined with the monopoly they have in the OS market are what really caused the problem. If somebody wrote a virus for a tiny hole in BeOS would it have affected the world like this one did?
- Incompatible file formats between its own products year after year. I love it when Office97 tells me "Oh, not everyone has Office97, you should save in Office95 format."
- Machines that you expect to have to reboot every day.
People *ignore* these things, because they figure that it is just par for the course. Know what? It's not. I call it demonstrable harm to the consumer. People hate Windows, we know that. All day, on the subway, at lunch, in meetings, you can hear people commiserating over their latest crash or virus. But they never blame Microsoft. They never say "I'm not going to use MS products." Why?Because they don't even know that other options exist, for the most part.
Why? Because MS is a monopoly.
Isn't that demonstrable harm to the consumer? This is not a case of "what they don't know won't hurt them". They don't know that better solutions exist. It's hurting them, they just don't know it.
I do not run Microsoft products. I pay less for hardware and software, my computer runs faster, and crashes less. That, too, would seem like demonstrable harm by Microsoft. When I point out Linux to users of Windows they do not argue the qualities of the software with me. Know what they say? "I have to run Office2000 because everyone else does." That, again, is a sign of the monopoly that MS has.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
dmorin writes:
"Let's look at what else MS has given us:
The ILOVEYOU virus and its infinite children.
Though MS didn't write the virus, the existence of the hole combined with the monopoly they have in the OS market are what really caused the problem. If somebody wrote a virus for a tiny hole in BeOS would it have affected the world like this one did?"
Oh come on! You can't show that Microsoft "harms consumers" because some idiot wrote a worm and other idiots helped spread it by executing a script file attachment to an email. It's not like the thing just auto-spread. There was a lot of stupidity involved. You could as easily send a Perl script to any UNIX out there ask the users to save the attachment and then execute it. Same result. Granted Outlook didn't have enough warnings about executing scripts but to say tht it shows that *Microsoft* has harmed consumers is just plain stupid. I mean really, wake up!
"Incompatible file formats between its own products year after year. I love it when Office97 tells me "Oh, not everyone has Office97, you should save in Office95 format.""
Incompatible file formats is nothing Microsoft specific. If you wrote something with the latest version of Word Perfect, you can't open it in Word Perfect 4.2, nor can you open it in emacs or possibly in Star Office (not sure about that but you get my point). Yes, Microsoft isn't any better than the rest, and quite possibly is the worst of them all, but again, it's nothing that Microsoft introduced. The same problem has always been there. And at least Office supports a ton of formats so you can communicate with the rest of the world if you know what you're doing.
"Machines that you expect to have to reboot every day."
We have shitloads of servers at work - both Linux and NT, about 50% of each.. We run pretty similar stuff on them; a database (MS SQL and Oracle mostly), a web server (IIS & Apache), a Java servlet engine (JRun) and a variety of other stuff like SMS gateways, SMTP servers, LDAP servers etc. etc. and uptime is not a problem for any of these machines. Yes, the Linux boxes have less problems but we consistently have uptimes of several months on all of the machines. Rebooting typically happens when we need to do some major upgrage - not when something crashes.
As workstations, we have NT4's and Windows 2000 and there too uptime and crashes are not a problem. I can't remember when I would have rebooted my NT4 workstation last - must be several months ago. On my laptop, I have Windows 2000 and I haven't seen a single blue screen of death or OS crash.
To say that crashing machines and daily reboots are such a horrible problem, caused by Microsoft, is just a plain lie - or maybe you just haven't used anything Microsoft has made in the past couple of years. Maybe you should try so that you know what you're talking about.
Please people, realize that this isn't some blind pro-Microsoft post. I would just prefer that people stick to FACTS when they post their anti-Microsoft ramblings.
And you know, there are always two sides on the coin. I had HUGE problems with various Linux distros some time ago on my desktop machine at home. It would freeze every once in a while (maybe every 2-3 hours or so) under X, no matter what I tried. I changed hardware, changed my motherboard, CPU, memory.. no change.. Finally I installed Windows 98 on it and I had no problems. Sure, typically it would be the other way around, but if you have had 100 blue screens of death in one day on a Windows box, remember that there are people who have had similar experiences with other OS's. It's nothing Microsoft specific.
I heard a good explanation for the control-alt-delete to login thing. Whether or not this was MS's intention, I'm not sure, but it certainly works out well.
Using that key sequence to bring up a login dialog effectively prevents the "false login screen" style of password sniffers. If one of those were running, you'd press C-A-D to login, and get the wrong screen, so immediately you'd know something was wrong.
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"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
A number of errors here. Microsoft certainly triggered no such revolution - it rode a wave that was well underway, and excelled at profiting from it. At most, one might argue that they accelerated a revolution that would have happened no matter what. Microsoft certainly did not in any way "spawn... Free Software" - the GNU project started when MS was still a very small player, providing an early and primitive version of dos for IBM, along with their basic engine and the like. Free Software was a reaction, yes, but to the actions of the likes of SUN and DEC, not MS.
While I think I agree with the overall point of your article (certainly I agree that "One of the problems is that our media has become a mob, lurching one way, then the other. Perspective and clarity is hard to come by." and that Jacksons decision has some flaws...) I really can't imagine that you would want to spread such misinformation as this.
As to the judgement, a deeper issue that you don't mention is that antitrust law itself is a tangled mess of subjective criteria to begin with. Monopoly is a concept solid enough to be fairly useful in economics, but not quite solid enough to be objectively definable in law. A monopoly is a single supplier in a given market. In order to determine whether or not MS "is" a monopoly, one must define the relevant market. Personal computer software? Not a monopoly. Desktop x86 computer software? Not a monopoly. MS-Windows compatible software? There they are a monopoly, and given the share of the total personal computer market that represents, that makes them a juggernaught, for sure, but there are some definate reasons to find such a narrow definition of the market for legal purposes quite troubling - it nearly makes them a monopoly by definition. By that criteria, Apple must be a monopolist (just a monopolist in a smaller market) and so is SUN, and hell, Symantec has a monopoly on Norton Utilities, right?
So I've watched this whole story with very mixed feelings. Microsoft has a tremendous market clout which they've used in VERY questionable ways. They do stifle innovation, they do harm consumers, and it's tempting to view anything that strips them of a little part of their all too great and all too often abused power as a good thing. But antitrust law is just as scary and abusable.
At any rate, a thought provoking article. Please do correct the factual errors before publishing an article like this in the future though - it's bad enough that an army of MS Marketdroids are out there misinforming people about the history of computing - the last thing that should happen is people like you helping them.
"That old saw about the early bird just goes to show that the worm should have stayed in bed."
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Your examples are too recent. M$ brought much more to us:
Basic everywhere. At time of smalltalk and lisp, they pushed basic. Thanks for that. They ruined my life.
DOS, EMM, XMS, 640Kb limit, A20 gate. The whole DOS api. It was not at stone age, folks, it was in the 80's. This harmed a lot of children, that ended-up re-developing unix in the 90's. Digital civilisation lost about 10 years in the process.
The paperclip. This harmed millions of users.
The login panel that is dismissed with the escape key. The 'control-alt-del' to login. Someone should pay for that.
Winmodems. Don't forget winmodems.
Oh, and the 10bits in the cylinder number. The 504Mb limitation of hard drive ? And the 8Gb limit ?
And FAT, the Fragmented Allocation Table ? Who should pay for the countless hours morons spend looking DEFRAG.EXE painfully moving blocks around ?
And the windows API ? Winsock ? The API where you need a hidden window to receive data on a socket ?
Oh my god. I don't want to break microsoft apart, I want to dissolve bill gates in an acid bath.
Cheers,
--fred
1 reply beneath your current threshold.
Capitalism does not reward innovation in anything but marketing. The best car is not always the best-selling car for example, it's an image thing. Capitalism only works properly when the consumers have all the information required to make the correct choice. Only then is innovation rewarded. The idea of marketing is to prevent this from happening. Letting the market decide has produced so many monopolies and cartels in the past 150 or so years that there has to be a balance, and the only organisation big enough to take on an abusive monopoly is a government.
Yes, it's not the government's business to mess around in the marketplace. Capitalism rewards innovation. Letting capitalism take its course may not produce results as quickly as the government would, but it will produce better results in the end.
And "Open Source" fits in with capitalism nicely (though RMS would disagree).
wishus
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Having said that, some elements of this trial do worry me. As an American ex-patriot, now living in London, I am worried about the ideaology that this trial represents. It didn't seem to be about Justice, it seemed to be about the government imposing its economic ideals.
Since I have lived in Britain for a few years, I have come to think that in affairs like this expediency is often the best way. Idealogy should be left to students and High School pupils - there is no place for it in the grown up world, because it leads to a divorce from reality/
Also, the hypocrisy of many people in the tech industry worries me. It seems that they are libertarian in their outlook everywhere, except for when it comes to Microsoft. Why the two-faced attitude? It is emotion clouding their viewpoint.
I am an expatriate; events like this are turning me into an ex-patriot.
Jon Erikson, IT guru
Because they don't even know that other options exist, for the most part.
Why? Because MS is a monopoly.
And thats Microsofts fault? No, its the fault of the ignorant consumer. If you don't research your options you're going to have to put up with what you're given. For the 'average' user at home Windows is the best operating system. Most people couldn't even install, for example, Linux. Its simply not as obvious and easy to use as Windows. Consumers are a stupid bunch. They tend to like little paperclip assistants, 'Wizards', and autorunning CDs. It doesn't require any thought. That suits most people fine. Microsoft have dumped vast amounts of money into simplifying computer systems so that they can sell to as many people as possible. Maybe one day Linux will be as easy to use as Windows. Until then though Microsoft will not have a rival in consumer operating systems, irrespective of what the US courts rule.
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