Slashdot Mirror
Bush Administration Stops Microsoft Breakup
The U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had been instructed by the Bush Administration to cease its drive to break up Microsoft, which has already been found guilty of violating U.S. anti-trust law in a complaint filed by the Federal Government and 19 states. See the BBC or CNN for more. It isn't clear what wristslap, errr, remedy the Justice Department will seek instead. Update: 09/06 15:21 PM GMT by M : Declan McCullagh of Wired notes: "The text of the DOJ announcement is here. Wired News has an article. Also, the DOJ says a 'Senior Antitrust Division Official' will brief reporters at the department's DC headquarters at 11:30 am ET, so look for some followup stories from that."
This definitely has been answered in other articles, though it'd take me an hour to dig up an old link.
Doesn't much of it boil down to "I can do/have done this better, and I can prove it!" sorts of sentiments?
Searching for the funniest joke in the world seems to be such a fruitless endeavor because jokes are subjective & cultural. Outside of a certain cultural understanding most jokes would be plain dumb. (Try telling a dumb blonde jokes to a group of tall blonde amazon women. You'd likely be beat down, if not killed.)
What is funny to the British is often completely over the head of Americans simply because our culture is different from theirs and visa-versa.
Part of it is because even though we all speak English, the everyday language, the slang, is very different. If you ask someone for a 'fag' in England, you'll get a cigarette. If you ask the same thing in America, you might get beat up because someone thought you called them homosexual.
Sounds like they are looking for a non-existant Holy Grail. It still may be interesting to see what they come up with, though.
How did this get rated "funny"?
Gee, I guess this means the people who think Flash is going to replace everything are SOL now.
Hi, Rob!
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
well, bush just lost my vote.
Bring on Gore.
... and in a related announcement, spokesmen unveiled an upgraded version of the United States government, to be named "Microsoft US/2010", scheduled for release first quarter '02.
OK folks, time to come out swinging. As a tech writer, I hereby swear to do something worthwhile for the Linux Documentation Project by the end of the month.
What are you doing?
Deep in the ocean are treasures beyond compare; but if you seek safety, it is on the shore.
We could see Microsoft above the law if this goes on.
C
There's no problem that cannot be solved with a suitable amount of high explosives
The worst part is that couldn't we all see this coming? Ashcroft was such a weenie during his appointment hearings, especially whenever the topic of Microsoft came up. Microsoft, of course, must have been getting the inside word on this, which explains their incredibly nervy behavior (many aspects of XP, Smart Tags, etc.) in the last few months. This was surely all arranged between Bill and Double-Yah many months ago.
Those bastards!
-Waldo
eh?
George W. Bush & Microsoft: TWO GREAT TASTES THAT TASTE GREAT TOGETHER!
Really, are 2 Microsoft's better than one?
I told everyone not to vote for him, but you didn't listen! Its all your fault! America is run by idiots!
i know who is not getting a vote in 4 years...
i cant seem to come up with a sig.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had been instructed by President Bush...
Funny, i don't see any claims that George W. Bush told anyone to do anything.
Typical Slashdot bias.
P.S. Write your state senators and tell them to press on -- the trial can go on without the DOJ.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Before he was elected, already Republicans warned that they would do whatever was in their means to make life easier for Microsoft.
Apparently, in lack of other means, they resorted to bullying the DoJ.
Welcome... to the Corporate Democracy. Do you want the blue pill or the red pill?
Hugs, Cyke
bush has made it clear that he has the interests of corporations at the forefront of his agenda. I still think he is better then Gore though...
-teknopurge
http://techienews.utropicmedia.com help us beta!
Website Hosting
Before everybody gets all worked up about it, I think it's safe to say that a Democratic president would have done the same thing eventually. In recent years, MS has started contributing heavily to both parties, thus they can get pretty much whatever they want, no matter who is in the White House.
Free Hans!
The CNN story does not mention Bush at all...
Just because a few of us can read write and do a little math, doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the universe
There is no way I will vote for bush. I didn't this time and I certainly won't next. The interesting thing is I didn't think all of the people who had the theory that the administration would effect the case were right. I really believed that it wouldn't effect the justice departments case, boy was I wrong!
Actually I believe it was Ashcroft that made the decision. Wouldn't want to stop new bloatware from bringing the PC biz back to life! I can't believe this thing actually takes up 2G.
Anyway, this should be no surprise - if Bush thinks clean air would hurt the economy he certainly wouldn't slap MS, would he?
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Isn't the matter of punishment before the courts right now? I can see how a president can tell his lieutenents who to prosecute at some level, but this degree of interference? Yech.
... is that the DOJ is completely dropping any intent to have the "IE-tying" complaint reexamined. (which was one of the most basic elements of the case).
They claim they're making these changes to their stratagy to make sure consumers get a fast and appropriate solution to the problem. BS. Since when did the solution to providing expedient justice under the constitution become dropping old charges and reducing penalties?
Furthermore, why a change in stratagy at all? Microsoft has already been found guilty. It should be clear to anyone paying any attention at all that there's a very distinct motive at work here.
"You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
heh
I want you found, blindfolded and shot.
After I have received the wisdom of good teaching, I will untiringly teach all people. - The Teachings of Buddha
He didn't give an order to the judicial branch, the Department of Justice is under the executive branch. It is a law enforcement body. They are persuing the charges but they aren't a judicial body in charge of the case, That would be the distict court. Bush gave no order to the court (at least not officially)
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
I remember when I was reading slashdot before the elections and the microsoft point was brought, everybody seemed to agree that if bush was elected, he would jump in and stop this... so this isn't a surprise...
The sad part is now you can see how the American Gov is above plain basic justice...
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
I wonder what future president Jenna Bush will do after a prior administration's DoJ finds Microsoft guilty of monopolistic practices for allowing Borg of only their approved series, because the collective is run on their OS
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Certainly took MS's checks long enough to clear...
Oooops !
I am afraid the stock prices of Red Hat and Mandrake are going to hell in a handbasket...
Gosh, this is just bad news.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Where does this say Bush was the reason for stopping the MS breakup? I see a reference to the Bush administration, but I assume that means someone he appointed (ie John Ashcroft) is the person who "Stop[ped] the Microsoft Breakup".
Bush is invoking executive privledge, which is his right as chief executive.
"Moderate drinking can help prevent amputated limbs" -- Abigail Zuger, NYTimes, 12/31/02
I think the EU has been sitting on the sideline waiting to see what happens. I wonder if they will get more involved now that DOJ is dropping the ball.
This isn't the company you want. Move along.
Does this mean now that George W. gets to spend nights at Bill Gates' mansion, and Bill gets to spend nights in the Lincoln Bedroom?
I'm curious, does anyone know how much a US President costs these days? Obviously, M$ can afford it, whatever it is.
I'm simply appalled that M$ will get what appears to be a slap on the wrist and sent home.
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
Yeah, I remember it well - paid MS assasins infiltrating the opposition. But you should really update this text, you keep posting the same one...
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Bush isn't mentioned in either CNN or BBS article... The only explanation I could find is that The decision was made in order to obtain a "prompt, effective and certain relief for consumers", said the DoJ in a statement.
I don't know about you, but this has had exactly the opposite effect on me. Relief? No. Disbelief? Yes.
It seems like Bush, as the head of the
administrative branch, is in no position to
give -any- orders to the judicial branch.
And you'll notice that no article claims he did. It's just the Slashdot editors abusing their power to stir up resentment and further their political views.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
I'm no political analyst, but IIRC "Bush Administration" != "George W". And for those of you who are wondering, the BBC article names the Bush administration. There's no mention of it in CNN.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I fail to see how breaking Microsoft up helps consumers, or more / less importantly, how it will help our falling economy.
If you split microsoft into Windows / Apps or something like this, then you have 2 monopolies. If you go with a top down split, then you get the same thing that exists with Linux user interfaces, or that still exists with web browsers. You have KDE, GNOME and countless others, making it a bitch for developers, and for users to get used to. In some situations, you really want everything to be the same way.
Captain_Frisk
Well, bush is already in the pocket of Big Oil (and thus the big 3 car manufacturers). Is it no surprise that he was bought out so quickly by the MS lobbyists.
The worst part is that couldn't we all see this coming
During the campaign flame-wars here, I dont know how many times I saw people right here on slashdot predicting Bush would stop the breakup. Everyone knows he is deep in the pockets of big oil and industry, did you not think Microsoft would get a piece of that action?
If anything the past couple years have shown, is that we now truely have a government by the corporation, of the corporation, and for the corporation.
The ivory tower has never had to reach so h
Jeesus... Just after having a friend finally convince me that breaking them up would be a good idea, they come around and reverse their stance and pull this crap? On what grounds does the Bush administration have to unilaterally push a decision down like this, other than possibly a bucketload of cash?
As much as a MS user I am, I even like Win2K and XP, and their office suite is good, but look at how much consumer benefit came out of having competition with the Intel vs AMD... I doubt we'd be past 1GHz by now if AMD didn't step in.
There is no details as to why this happened, and after finding out about some of their more sleazy business practices, I think it would be a good idea for them to get a good smack upside the head.
Oh well, there goes the market. Lets hope that linux keeps gaining ground like it has, maybe at least that'll force MS to get a bit more competitive. (Hmm, $0 for Linux, or $200 for XP... hmmmmmm)
If God gave us curiosity
Here's the list of possibilities from the CNN article: Among the conduct remedies Judge Jackson originally imposed were: prohibiting Microsoft from punishing hardware and software companies working on competing products; prohibiting it from favoring computer companies and software developers that helped Microsoft exclude competitors; requiring Microsoft to license Windows to PC makers under uniform prices and terms according to a publicly available schedule; and barring Microsoft from interfering with the way PC makers set up startup screens, the Windows desktop, preferences, and Internet connection wizards.
IMHO, these sound like much more practical measures to force Microsoft to allow competition. A Microsoft which competes fairly may actually be better than two Microsoft monopolies.One is Microsoft, who has done it a couple of times now.
The second is the Church of Scientology, who got the IRS to consider them as a tax-exempt religous organization.
All I can say is, look out Heber Jentzsch and David Miscavige, Microsoft is thinking of releasing MS Religion 1.0
You'll see this: "The US Department of Justice has announced that it will no longer push to have software giant Microsoft broken up.
The decision by the Bush administration reverses the Clinton White House legal strategy against Microsoft. " Since Bush is (nominally) the head of the Bush administration, it's proper to presume that Bush gave the order. Whether someone advised him on it is another matter, but Bush is the president.
If you ask me, George is just plannifying his strategery to get the economical situations back. Bush, like his father, has a keenly awarity of the severeness of the recent economical turning downward.
Part of the economical restimularity proposed by Bush's administration includes a provision for strengtherizing the stock market. The best way to accomplish this, obviously, is to redistributerate the nations wealth resources. This means we don't want to go after Microsoft. Once the stock market begins to redisconfigure its direction and go itself from its turning down of the economy, the economy will be better!
Leave George alone. He's the best thing to come along since Clinton.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
...that is, the characteristic Slashdot "Bush is the Great Satan" slant.
In the future, please provide a link to an article that actually says what you summarize (such as "The U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had been instructed by President Bush to cease its drive to break up Microsoft" -- I missed that in the two linked articles), or clearly label pathetic zealotry-inspired speculation as such.
Thanks so much.
How can Ashcroft defend his tough-as-nails posture regarding alleged computer crime by a small-time russian company who threatens nobody, while refusing to pursue an in-the-bag conviction already won in part, of a notorious bad actor whose conduct will affect virtually every computer user on the planet?
Ashcroft's new motto: "We're tough on crime, except when they donated to our campaign fund."
Let's face it: We're in for 3+ more years of Bush Jr. doing bad things because he can get away with it in our climate of general apathy and disillusionment. Now, I'm all for being disillusioned, but watching this idiot get away with things that should have us on the White House lawn with torches and pitchforks is getting old.
Let's name a few: -Allowing religion to limit science.
-Irresponsibly cutting taxes and using it to blatently curry favor with the Nascar sect of American society.
- Environmental destruction in favor of short-term corporate gains (Alaska, Kyoto).
- Doing his best to restart the good 'ol cold war (ABM treaty breaking, trying to isolate China).
Let's face it: This guy's the worst example yet of how bad things are getting, and unless people start to notice they might as well just start allowing only Fortune 500 companies to vote in the general election (hey, you said you wanted to get rid of the electoral college, right?).
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
He who holds the purse is in command.
Let's hope in the EU - which incidentally recently opened up a second investigation against MS for anticompetitive practices.
When it was announced that MS would not be broken up, MS's share price soared. No surprise there. The Nasdaq also rose dramatically. That's a bit more of a surprise, but a large part of the computer industry depends on the release of WinXP to drive sales, so it also makes sense. The Dow Jones also rose quite a bit. That's a surprise. The Dow Jones is supposed to be an INDUSTRIAL index, so it shouldn't be affected that much by MS's fortunes.
That's the whole story. You (for the American audience) / They (for the rest of us) elected a president on an economics ticket. The US economy is on the verge of a recession. From the above it is clear MS's fortunes in the near future will have a large part in determining whether a recession occurs or is avoided. There is no way Bush will allow the court to hurt the economy by hurting MS.
The article that I first saw on CNet said that this announcement was *ONLY* the Justice Department and that this did *NOT* represent the wished of the individual states.
The newest CNet article is unclear, saying that the Justice Department and the States and the Judge will all meet over the next two weeks.
There might be a chance that the states won't go along with this. The Attorneys General of the states tend to be more progressive in consumer protection.
"Yes.. no matter what the culture, folk dancing is stupid." -MST3K
The BBC story said that the Bush administration ceased to seek a breakup.
I don't think the president himself could do it because it would be an obstruction of justice. (waaaaay more so than Clinton lying about sex.)
Previous comments about Ashcroft may prove true since the Attorney General does head the Justice Department.
--Al
and that did not seem to stop him. He's the Supreme Court's President. Hail to GWBush, King of the 87 IQ Club.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
What the hell did they put in his wheaties? First he castrates Stem Cell research, now he's putting his nose in the MS case... Do they require urine screening for this job or can any coke-head be president?
In all seriousness folks, I'm not surprised that MS won't be broken up (we already know how well that worked with the Baby Bells) but I'm shocked that Bush decided to put his nose in that mess! Considering how politically safe he walked the Stem-Cell research line... this is just out of left field!
...violent protest. This can't be true
THE DEPARTMENT ALSO said it will not pursue the bundling issues in its protracted antitrust suit against the software giant.
What's left?
The Death Penalty: Killing people to show others that killing people is wrong.
Are you serious? Lets recap:
Legislative- make law
judicial- interperate law
executive- enforce law
The attny general is part of the executive brance. The presedent gets to decide what is enforced afterall.
--------------------------------------
in a world without bounderies or fences, who needs Gates anyway?
Given the current economic climate, this was the absolute worst time of heavy handed industry regulation anyway. And note that Justice will drop the demand for breakup, they will not stop considering other means to regulate MS. Who knows, at the end of the day, with Justice's shrill anti-MS posture gone, and MS's shrill anti-breakup posture gone, there actually may be a solution satisfactory to all. (Yeah, unlikely I know, but...)
You can buy anything in this world for money. Why should the Justice system, senators, or even the United States President be any different?
Microsoft is merely a demonstration of "applied influence".
Legislative Branch - Makes the Laws = Congress
Executive Branch - Enforces the Laws = President
Judicial Branch - Evaluates the Laws = Judges
The Department of Justice is part of the Executive branch, as well it should be. The executive branch is charged with law enforcement. Bush can't order the judge in the case to rule in a certain way, but he can tell the government lawyers prosocuting the case to proceed the way he wants them to. Checks and balances are still maintained. Even if Bush were to dangle the carrot of a higher position within the courts in front of the judge checks and balances would still be maintained because congress would still have to aprove her for her new position.
"You can't fight in here! This is the war room" --Dr. Stra
Believe it or not, there are people that think that this might not be a bad thing. First let me clear up that I am not one of them. However, there are some reasons why having a strong microsoft may be beneficial, especially to the US Gov. An american company that controls most of the desktops in the world could potentially be very usefull.
On a side note, don't ever think that MS is more powerful that the Goverment. We are in a Republic, and that means that the people (and corporations) tend to be left to control themselves, but that is not necessarily the norm. If the US gov wanted to come down on MS (perhaps nationalizing the company) how would you stop them? Legal action? Through the government??
Just a couple of quick (and admittedly not real well thought out) thoughts.
Zeus_tfc
"Outside of a dog, a man's best friend is a book. Inside of a dog its too dark to read." Groucho Marx
"...At the end of the day"..."when everyone goes home, you're stuck with yourself." RIP Layne Staley
This is exactly what happened to IBM in the 80s which made them behave better and led to greater innovation in the PC market. (and also gave rise to Microsoft's DOS)
A breakup would have been untenable and would have just made two monopolies instead of one. This way, at least they might find themselves under the eye of some court appointed watchdogs.
It isn't the monopoly that is the problem, it is the business practices that gave rise to that monoply and which continue today which hurt companies and consumers alike.
No where in the story does it say that Bush ordered this. It never even mentions the president. That headline is one of the most pathetic and biased attempts at "journalism" I've seen since Sam Donaldson covered the last elections. You're job isn't to make up our minds for us or infer for us anything, it is to report what's happening and let us decide or infer what we want. I just lost ALOT of repsect for slashdot.
That is just irresponsible reporting.
No MS breakup, what now? What to do with MS?
Well, they have about 30 billion in cash and short-term investments. Maybe about 20 billion dollars in fines?
Massive fines to top-executives of MS (Gates, Ballmer etc.). It really hurts when they touch YOUR money!
Opening of some of their proprietary protocols. I'm thinking of Office file-formats (competing Office-suites could really compete) and maybe DirectX
And, what could WE do to help comptetition gain on them? Well, think of ways to help. You Linux-application crashed? Write a bug-report! You notice something could be done better? Write to the developers (if you can't change it yourself)! Write documentation! Create artwork for the desktops! Evangelize!
People, it's time we got off our arses and start doing something!
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Flamebait but what the heck...
Add to this the cost of loss of data. Linux' native file system, EXT2FS, is known to lose data like a firehose spouts water when the file system isn't unmounted properly.
So if I delete all (hidden and otherwise) instances of USER.* and SYSTEM.* on a windows pc, life will be merry? I've wasted plenty of time with corrupted registries... As for journaling, clue in to xfs, reiserfs, and ibm's fs. Reiserfs v4 sounds like it will be way ahead of anything else in terms of integrity + security. (sorry to use the "S" word).
My suggestion is to trade in your MSCE for some O'Reilly texts.
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? - Joshua (Wargames)
From the BBC article:
The US Department of Justice has announced that it will no longer push to have software giant Microsoft broken up.
The decision by the Bush administration reverses the Clinton White House legal strategy against Microsoft.
Bush is the head of the Bush administration, so one can presume that it was him that made the decision.
In 2000, Microsoft was by far the biggest computer & internet industry contributor to election campaigns with a total of $4.6 Million.
53% of this went to Republicans, 47% to Democrats. Although it does not show to which campaigns received the money, or which level of election (presidental, senatorial, etc), Gore probabaly got a pretty good chunk of this. Microsoft was playing both sides of the table, but I still dont think this would have happened under a Gore administration, he just knows too much about the tech sector.
The ivory tower has never had to reach so h
Where ?
CNET and CNN both didn't make one single remark about Bush instructing anyone to drop the suit, so where is it?
Are we that slanted we can't report anything correctly?
burning karma because of bigots is my hobby
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I lack the words to express how bad I feel about the issue. This is fucking disgusting... Where is Justice, I wonder...
One shall speak only if what one has to say is more beautiful than silence
"All your presidents are belong to us!"
mp3's are only for those with bad memories
I have long been of the opinion that it ould be good for Microsoft to be broken up. This would reduce the embodied liability of their future actions to some extent and give them a graceful exit from the OS market as hardware sales continue to slow...
This notion of putting severe restrictions on Microsoft's conduct, and imposign additional liabilities if they violate those restrictions will certainly help Linux and other competing products. While I am annoyed with Bush for using political pressure to help decide this, I certainly think that this will have an effect far different than the one Microsoft is seeking.
I also agree with the appelate court that breakups should be pursued only as a last resort in part because it is difficult to ensure long-term effectiveness. This is a real victory for Linux, FreeBSD, and everyone else.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The decision by the Bush administration reverses the Clinton White House legal strategy against Microsoft. BBC Article (emphasis added).
You were saying...?
Liberty in your lifetime
Lets get coding
Free Unix? Free Windows. http://www.reactos.com
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The basis of this lawsuit is Microsoft "bundling" their browser. Let me ask a question from the opposite angle: What should Microsoft have done differently?
It seems to me that, especially from the vantage point of today, it's pretty obvious that a browser is an integral tool in an OS's toolkit. KDE has a built-in browser. The Mac ships with a browser (if it wasn't IE, it would have been Netscape). Hell, even various Unix flavors ship with a browser.
And yes -- the browser should NOT be able to be de-installed. If your going to use a browser as a tool of the OS (say, to display error messages), then you need to know that your going to have a consistent tool there to use. Nothing stops you from installing another browser and deleting the icon -- just like having KDE's browser doesn't stop you from using Netscape.
Of course, we will also have all the Pro-linux people who never use a shred of Microsoft software tell us that they have a clear monopoly.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Too many decision makers in the government are easily swayed by the corporate dollar and charisma in both parties anyway. Very few politicians in DC aren't for sale nowadays, and the same goes for federal judges, I'm sure.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
There is a good chance that the EU may pursue this further than the US. I heard a story on NPR during the GE Honeywell proposed merger that described the difference between the two regulating bodies for anti-trust. The US is focused more on the idea of protecting the consumers while the EU is focused on protecting the competitors.
Just yesterday I heard that Microsoft had a favorable public opinion in Europe. I've heard otherwise also, but the fact is this may not matter. The regulatory body will probably act to protect competitors and that is where Microsoft anti-competitive practices have been focused on.
I told everyone on Slashdot that this would happen, in a reply to an article on Bush and the other guys running for president at the time. If you don't believe me, go dig up the slashdot articles on last years election.
:-(
I told you guys, hoping that I would be proven wrong. Oh well
And wait a second... the Republicans always claim that they think the government should punish law breaking. I guess the laws only apply to the lower classes and not higher classes or large companies.
Well, although MSFT has seemingly been going sideways.. In reality it has been trying to drop all along. MS has been buying back MSFT in order to keep the price stable. I'd guess they've stopped doing that and are hoping this new news will allow it to maintain price naturally.. Guess not eh?
... of an american president these days?
pronoblem
The post by m says that Bush intervened. Since this tidbit isn't in any of the stories linked in the post, I'd like to know the source. Or if it's untrue (or at least inaccurate) to say that Shrubya himself intervened (or even knows how to spell Microsoft), I'd like to know that too.
IIRC, the original suit was brought by the DOJ and the attorneys general of 18 states. The DOJ has announced it will no longer seek a breakup, but that's no guarantee it will happen. For starters, the 18 attys general have a say in the matter. Next, the guilty verdict has already been handed down. IANAL, but I believe that only the penalty phase needs to be re-heard, along with any updates. It has happened before on several occasions that someone was sentenced to death even though the prosecutor didn't push it because the law of the land said it was a valid punishment for the crime.
I seriously doubt a breakup will happen, but this case is far from over. Microsoft has already been found guilty of at least some of the charges. The question is what the penalty should be. There may be 1000 opinions, but the one that counts is the one belonging to the judge.
----------
Something cleverHere's a suggestion: require Microsoft to publish all their license agreements, including the ones that prohibit OEMs from shipping PCs that dual-boot Windows and another OS.
Will anyone that didn't see this coming, please raise your hand?
::crickets::
steal 100 bucks go to jail...
...noooooo not me ;)
steal 10000 bucks get parole...
steal 10 billion bucks (like ms) and you're a king (esp. when you kick back to those already charge)
read your history, things have always been this way...
cynical
looking more like corporate feudalism rather than democracy these days isn't it
use Signature::Witty;
Perhaps you cannot read, but the article did not state that the Justice Department did this at the instruction of Bush. You might speculate that he was the source of the decision, but reporting it as fact is clearly extremely poor journalism. FWIW, the Justice Department specifically disclaims any administration involvement, saying that the decision was made internally so that the case could be concluded in a reasonable period of time.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I thought that get out of jail free cards only happened in the game of monopoly.
... the Golden Rule -- the person with the gold makes the rules. And Republican or Democrat, politicians pay close attention to who has the gold...
Is anyone actually surprised by this outcome? I'm not.
All about me
The Chandra X-Ray Observatory happened to be looking at the presumed site of the hole at the moment it absorbed a comet, blasting x-rays off into space as a byproduct.
That hole in the center of the galaxy is Microsoft. It wasn't absorbing a comet, but rather our Department of Justice.
Sigh...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
The U.S. government is probably one of Microsoft's biggest customers. I am sure that there are some people in charge of procuring the computers that feared that M$ would charge more if they were broke up. I'm also sure that they figured that the government itself would have a harder time negotiating with M$ if a breakup were to happen.
I'm also sure that there have been significant back-room deals made. There always are.
The "right-wing" is and always has been pro-business.
All of the proceedings were done under the Clinton administration. They can't undo the results of the trial but they sure can minimize it.
This is nothing new. GM, Firestone, and Standard Oil essencially put mass transit out of business in the US a few decades ago, they were found guilty and paid a fine of one dollar.
I wouldn't be shocked if M$ had to do the same at this point.
Its amazing and scary how many of you read a head line posted by an "editor" and just assume its true.
NONE of these articles says anything about Bush ordering the DOJ to back off of Microsoft.
If anyone has any doubts about the power of the media and its ability to affect the brain dead public, this should put those doubts to bed.
Sigs are for wimps!
Furthermore, this should end any lingering doubts about Slashdot's agenda.
We are but the sum of our experiances
If Bush really did have anything (even very remotely) to do with this decision impeachment hearings should start immediately. It is bad enough that he [very obviously] bought his way into the presidency, but to interfere with the justice system and pass judgements can not possibly be legal (unless the US gov has changed from pseudo-democracy to monarchy/dictatorship).
Now you might speculate that they're lying, and that Bush actually did order this action, but to report so as fact is clearly very poor journalism.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
A breakup may not have been the best solution. I'm not an economist or lawyer, but it seems to be that merely breaking M$ into an OS division and an "everything-else" division wouldn't have accomplished much, except to give us two monopolies instead of one.
OTOH, business-oriented people love Bill Gates for his business strategy, which is the most audacious since the days of Standard Oil. Most Republicans are business-oriented people, so it stands to reason that a Republican executive branch would have issues with smacking down M$.
There aren't any decent alternatives for leadership, though. The Democrats have sold out their former constituency, and any third parties are too small to break through the deadlock, and are too far to the left or right for most people to agree with anyway.
sigh.
While it is disheartening to see such a monument of legal work flushed due to a president who has been bought and paid for. I don't know if it qualifies as news in one sense.
Slashdot might as well have been running that banner on the front page since the day the election was forced to settle, leaving blanks for the date and a blank for the link to the reported news on whatever site.
Now that the federal case is more or less gone, the only thing left is to pressure the state attorney generals to persue redress with microsoft directly
I believe the findings of fact still hold as valid in and of themselves
IANAL bla bla bla
Clearly your position is grounded more in a kneejerk bias to defend the President, regardless of the merits, than an informed understanding of what is going on, or a valid criticism of the original posting.
Bottom line, the President is absolutely answerable for this (although it may well be the right thing to do from a legal perspective). Writing "state senators" can and will accomplish nothing.
First, the Department of Justice is an agency of the Executive Branch of Government, that is to say, they work for the President of the United States. John Ashcroft was appointed by, and serves at the pleasure of, the President. While he is sometimes granted autonomy as a matter of course, Ashcroft would take no position contrary to the wishes of the President. You may recall not too long ago, when Richard Nixon sought to have "independent counsel" Archibald Cox sacked -- two officers resigned office (or were asked to resign) rather than follow their boss' instructions. Only Robert Bork, one of the few remaining executives in DOJ who hadn't resigned, agreed to follow those instructions.
Now, just so you understand -- the Department of Justice are the lawyers for the United States Government. If they drop the case, the U.S. government will not proceed. Furthermore, and far more important, the House and the Senate have no constitutional authority to enforce any law against anyone (except a case for impeachment), presuming that, by "state senators," you meant the Senators representing your state in the Federal Senate. Your state senators wouldn't have much to say about anything -- except the cases brought by particular states -- and they would likewise be constrained under their respective state constitution separation of powers from acting against any company. You might write your governor, if you wanted to continue seeking structural relief, for all the good it will do you.
Is allowing a known monopoly to charge grossly inflated prices for an operating system with both security and privacy flaws a benefit to consumers? I'll let y'all be the judge on that one.
Side note: Bush is the same president who thinks that allowing 3rd world style arsenic-in-the-drinking-water-standards, drilling-the-ANWR, and well-nigh banning stem cell research will be good for the economy too...
Really. The point is not that Bush is letting Microsoft off the hook--he's not. The Bush administration (important to remember that) is saying, ``we don't think a breakup is called for, we want to see conduct remedies instead''.
This is not necessarily a bad idea. In fact, Tom Miller, the Iowa attorney general who has been one of the biggest movers in the states' suit against Microsoft, has agreed with the Bush administration's decision on this matter.
When even the most aggressive of all the state AGs agrees that ``conduct remedies are enough, they'll do'', what in God's name are the rest of you mewling about?
Let's also note that the Bush administration is no longer pushing for a breakup. That doesn't mean a breakup won't happen, because in the end, it is the judge hearing the case who gets to decide what action is necessary to restore competition to the marketplace. If the judge in question thinks a breakup is called for, well, it doesn't matter a damn what the Bush administration or the states want--Microsoft will be broken up.
This is, realistically, not news.
The DOJ's decision not to pursue the MS breakup is disheartening, but I'm not sure it's the end of the world. Whether or not that's the case depends completely on what business restrictions they will push to have slapped on MS.
Breakup would have been the ultimate punishment for MS, but in the end what is the suit against them all about? It's about stopping their evil business practices, which properly-designed sanctions might still be able to do something about. Granted, the Bush administration is not likely to push for strong sanctions. (Okay, they're almost certainly not going to, but one can hope.) In the off chance that they do, then the real goal here has been accomplished - protecting everyone from MS predation.
Ashcroft still reports to Bush, and it's unlikely that any attourney general would make a decision this big without at least letting the president know.
Also, it's widely known in DC that Bush is taking advice from his aides a lot more than from his cabinet, to the point where some members of the members of his cabinet are publicly joking about it. (As attourney general, Ashcroft is in the cabinet)
According to this Washington Post article, Cheney's son-in-law is now running the MS case.
Maybe because investors know that most companies, when split up, end up making even higher profits. Look at what happened when they split up Standard Oil, or Bell Telephone.
Sorry to respond to a troll (see my sig and do an internet search for references to "The Barkto incident"). Also, IANAL.
We don't have to depend on Linux now. Especially considering its outrageous cost ownership - even compared to Microsoft products - as explained below.
Actually, we won't have to depend on Windows. See, the court has helt that Microsoft has "market power" in the distinct operating system industry and that this position poses an inherent danger to the foundations of our economic system. Accordingly, per the case law surrounding the Sherman and Clayton acts, we hold companies with market power to a higher level of responsibility because of the damage they can do to our country.
This is fundamentally a bad position for Microsoft to be in and it harms their ability to continue to provide software at compelling values-- as long as there is any doubt about their attempts to control the market, they could be sued for their actions.
If Microsoft was broken up, there would be two monopolies which would be far more agile because they would not have to protect eachother. The IDC was predicting that if Microsoft was broken up, it would be the end of competition in the Office Suite market, for example, because Office would more easily be ported to Linux and used to destroy the markets for StarOffice, etc.
I also celebrate this decision, being the right one, but I see the consequenses very differenty.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I'm no MS fan, but I don't disagree with the decision per se. The less the government does to regulate the market, the better. Still, I wouldn't have been sad if they were broken up.
But it's not like Microsoft is off the hook now or anything. They're certainly not going to drop the whole case, it's just a question of what the penalties will be. And just because the DOJ isn't pursuing the break-up doesn't mean the court can't decide that that's what they want to do anyways.
Admittedly, I'd rather see the company dissolved, but at least they seem to have retained some teeth in what they (DoJ) are seeking. Namely, the prohibition of unfair licensing agreements and baring MS from preventing OEMs from having their own boot loaders seems like it might go a long way towards opening up the OEM market to alternatives.
I'm not at all suprised that the Bush administration (dubya or his minions) is waffling on acting against a big corporation, as a Texan I have watched him bend over backwards ever since he got elected to lick the boots of 'big bidness'; his agility in that realm is notable even for a Texas politico.
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
How much campaign contribution money would it take to get you to change your mind?
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I'm no fan of MS, but given my current job search headaches I'd prefer not to see a recession get triggered by something that could be avoided. Selfish? Short-sighted? probably. But I'd like the economy to recover sooner than later, and a MS breakup would result in later.
cz
Today marks the first time that I have ever been ashamed to say I am an American. I have lost what little faith I had in this administration and can only hope that something stops Bush before big business truly is the highest authority in the nation. As for me, cashing that refund and moving to Japan is sounding better by the minute.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had been instructed by the Bush Administration...
OK, this is blatent flamebait, but I don't care. This is slightly better than the previous "instructed by Bush" (Michael apparently added the "administration" part).
But it's still bad. Michael, why do you think people hate you and think your a total biased fool? For your information, the DOJ is part of the Bush Administration, so phrasing it this way is out and out biased bullshit. It's like saying, "The Bush Administration instructed the Bush Administration".
The decision came from within the DOJ. If you have proof otherwise, then post it. Otherwise, get rid of that total biased bullshit and grow up.
On a different note, this is why I voted for Bush. Finally, rational decisions in government.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
In light of the problems with bundling, MS should be forced to sell the operating systems at a fixed, published price, with only qty breaks.
Every one pays the same price based on volume, without exception, or bundling or other deals. And oems are free to do what they want with the code, similar to other products, no more "you must put our icons on the startup".
Putting everyone on the same footing is the place to start.
Perhaps if you weren't as fucking ignorant about government as the Slashdot editors, you'd post a comment that made sense.
Hint: the Department of Justice is part of the executive branch. The judicial branch, as any good 7th-grade civics class will teach you, is made up of the courts.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Turns out Bush had very little to do with the decesion
m l
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,33790,00.ht
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Couple of thoughts.
:)
First, who says president Bush is behind this? I followed all the links but saw no-one point directly to the president. While I do not dount that the new atmosphere has something to do with this, direct involvement should be proved. Maybe I missed it though, quite possible.
Second, I believe we need a regrouping. This is obviously a major disappointment for the OSS community. I can forget moving the company to MS Office for Linux now. So where do we go from here? MS will be here to stay, we better deal with it.
That means learning marketing lessons from them. You conquer the world by conquering small markets at a time - the "crossing the chasm" idea. It seems to me we need to identify chasms we can cross. Maybe we can become the desktop system for government. Maybe we can emphasise cost svings and ride on the XP cost increase to conquer a market of small broke companies. Maybe the graphics market (remember Apple?) or some other market. The desktop as a whole is out until we do, I think.
So, ideas anyone? I have sysadmins running Linux on the desktop - that's a statr I guess.
---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
Who said that "breaking up is hard to do..."
-Frijoles-
That's news to me. I realize completely that Murdock is a pretty solid Republican, but I think you need to do a little more background research on Turner. Reed Hundt (FCC chairman during Clinton's first term, helped Gore invent the internet) in his book "So you want a Revolution" talks of Turner as wishing to build a competitor to Fox, only liberal. I wouldn't be suprised to find out that he gives large donations to both parties (most public figures do), but he is definately a loyal Democrat.
Also in a sick way, I think that there are things that can be imposed that are far worse than breakup. The feds can come up with a concent decree that ties MS's hands pretty bad and then a single judge can oversee that it is imposed properly. I just don't see Balmer and Gates asking someone if they can do something or getting slapped on the hand if they do something they shouldn't. They are egomaniacs.
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
Perhaps all of Microsoft's campaign contributions [opensecrets.org - search for Microsoft] proved to be a good investment.
Interestingly, MS really hedged its bets by contributing to Ralph Nader's and Harry Brown's campaigns in addition to Bushito's and Gore's.
I saw the title of this post and I just knew what was going to happen: The politically uninformed were going to instantly post "Bush is wrong! Screw Microsoft! I hate republicans!"
Bush is not the problem. When you weigh your options (Gore), you quickly see why. After all, Al Gore -did- invent the internet. I don't see Bush mentioned at all in the article (granted, I skimmed - quote it if I missed it), only the DOJ, which I suppose in indirectly Bush anyways.
It's not being debated that Microsoft has some rather unethical practices. However when you look at the whole issue, why should Microsoft be punished for squashing their competition by creating a product which is the best (for the technically inept)? If you're a Free-OS bigot, you will probably argue until your face is blue against this point, but millions upon millions of people and businesses will tell you otherwise. Personally, I don't use Micros~1's products, either.
It comes down to simple capitalism. Microsoft accelled (not to be confused with Microsoft Excel) themselves to the top, ethical issues aside. After all, having bad ethics is not illegal by any stretch of the imagination. Personally I'd like to see my tax dollars going to other things besides constantly trying to drive a stake into Microsoft's operations. If you hold this as a dominating personal political issue, you need to rethink your issues.
Personally, I don't see how anybody could be for a party that wants to tax you when your relatives die, or happily live on in the legacy of the likes of Clinton or Condit.
vi rules.
0, 1. (Just my two bits.)
Ummm, 1,0.
Spackler - Keeping Slashdot binarily correct for the last 2 minutes
And I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners.
Berke Breathed
Maybe you should view some public opinion polls there dude, just about every poll I've seen has showed the public does NOT think they should be broken up. Just look at cnn's front page, its nearly 70% in favor of the DOJ. Get your facts straight, slashdot's opinion is a small fraction of people.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Redundant:
1. The DOJ is part of the Executive Branch.
2. Bush runs the Executive Branch (see 'Job Description', under 'President of the United States').
3. See 1 and 2 above.
Flamebait:
Just because YOU happen to like Bush or agree with his decision doesn't mean that the reporting of reality is 'abusing their power'. Bush also manages to stir up plenty of resentment and further his opponents political views without any outside assistance.
-Patric
I have never seen a more perfect example of jerks with mod-points punishing opinions they disagree with than in this discussion.
As of 3:46 EDT:
Dow: -193.40
Nasdaq: -54.91
MSFT: -1.48
RHAT: -0.30
Looks like the preservation of Microsoft's illegal monopolistic practices will turn out very bad for the overall economy...
The parent post wasn't entered by me, it was something the buggy slashcode replaced my comment with. A shame they haven't corrected that!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If you read CNN's article, and I suspect that if you read the other ones as well, you'd see that the DoJ is merely stopping the breakup, NOT the trial. The trial will continue, with the DoJ seeking conduct remedies...
"If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards."
A lot of people saw this comming. During the election flame-wars, many people were posting right here on slashdot that Bush would stop the breakup. This should be a surprise to very few, and certainly none who frequent this board. Bush is so deep in the pockets of big business and industry, it should come as no surprise that Microsoft would jump on that bandwagon when the opportunity arose.
Microsoft donated a total of $4,617,726 to all election campaigns in 2000. Although it does not break down specifically where the money went, 53% went to republicans, 47% to democrats. From an industry standpoint, Bush received $1,177,770 from computer and internet companies, and Gore $580,634. Certainly not huge numbers, but a quick analysis on how Bush's number is more than double the #2, and then there is a pretty linear dropoff, it is not at all unfaur to conclude that since Microsoft was far and away the biggest contributor from this industry group, a large percentage of the Bush money is from them. (A bone for the flame-mongers: More analysis of these numbers would, of course, be necessary for a solid conclusion.)
Although this decision may have also happened had Gore won, I do not think that would be the case - he is too knowledgeable about the tech sector. Also, knowing how Microsoft respects the law, it wouldnt surprise me at all if they made many more untraceable contributions (dont tell me it cant be done, its done all the time). I also wish opensecrets.org would show contributions for the 2004 election, that may be more revealing.
Is any more proof necessary that this is now truely a government of the corporation, by the corporation, and for the corporation?
The ivory tower has never had to reach so h
I am sorry to say that Microsoft regards rules, custom, law, and everything else as something that are to be circumvented. Bill Gate's version is that everyone has the "Total Microsoft Experience" and that he has all the money. Its word is the expediant of the moment and it will refuse to follow any law. Microsoft obviously thumbed its nose at the legal system during appeal by refusing to follow Judge Jackson's orders in preparing for the breakup. As such it is corporately in contempt of court (and should be held so thank you, as you and I woulld under the same circumstances). I would love to see them broken up by the new Judge (which she can do thanks) no matter what the Justice (or lack there of) department decides. Short of that it has now placed itself in a position where it will dictate what you use, not you deciding what is your best solution.
Sex is heriditary, if your parents didn't have it chances are good you won't either.
What most everyone seems to be missing is that the DOJ does not get to decide the sentence for MS. That is in the hands of the judge the case was handed to. She can still break the company into little mini-microsoft clones if she wants to. There is a degree of less likelyhood to that happening, but it does not change the fact that it is up to her not Ashcroft, Bush or the DOJ.
There were 13 comments on this story ("Bush [Administration] Stops Microsoft Breakup") and 1 on another story that we suspect may have had their metadata mixed up somehow. I believe some of them were actually (intended to be?) posted to other stories and they wound up here instead. They were definitely replies to other comments and we had to make them at the "root level." But I believe the rest of their metadata was correct: user id, subject, points, etc.
If anyone who posted one of these comments or otherwise knows for a fact that our metadata is wrong -- at worst we might show them posted by the wrong user, that would be bad -- please email me and I will correct things as best I can.
Sorry about this, but our first reaction is to try to save comments when at all possible in the case of DB corruption, and we all figured it would be better to leave them up, possibly with wrong metadata, than to delete them.
These are the 14 comments: 2259183 2259165 2259166 2259170 2259171 2259174 2259175 2259178 2259181 2259182 2259185 2259186 2259188 2259191
(Please note, discussion of Slashdot downtime is pretty clearly offtopic, so don't be surprised if you reply to this and get modded down as such. Feel free to mod me down. Hm, maybe we need a user-created discussion about our downtime so there's someplace it won't be offtopic...)
I agree with you a to a point, but you made one *huge* mistake
Microsoft *does not* pay dividends on their stock.
Try again
The decision by the Bush administration reverses the Clinton White House legal strategy against Microsoft. The BBC article is the place to find it. IMHO the BBC tends to have better coverage than most other news outlets. I'll believe them way before I belive something I read on CNN or CNet.
In some ways this would be like FDR addressing congress on December 8, 1941, "Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
We will therefore abandon Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the Philippines, and all of our bases in the Pacific and leave it to the japanese as a reward for their initiative and innovative spirit, but leave them with a stern warning not to invade Texas."
What this translates to:
May bundle and give products which are the sole source of income, and thus drive out of business, no more than 35 companies per year.
May not bundle and provide free of cost any of the following: oil, natural gas, lumber, minerals or mineral ores.
May not give more than $500 M^H^H^H^H^H$1 billion per annum to the Republican Party, conservative think tanks, and special shadowy organizations which shall remain nameless.
May not give more than $10.00 per annum to any parties other than those affiliated with the Republican Party, unless they have a popular, but nutty candidate which is competing in an upcoming election and may draw away votes from a party which will be remain nameless.
The Microsoft CEO may not spend more than 3 consecutive nights in the Lincoln Bedroom.
May not include less than 64,000 bugs per major release.
Will release a special W. version of Word with a spell checker which forbids use of words over 7 letters or 2 syllables in length.
Microsft products shall be distributed to all enemies of the USA, free of cost, so that we shall know of their weaknesses.
Should Microsoft be found in violation of any* of these conditions, the CEO will be sent to bed without dessert and grounded to his multimillion dollar mansion for one week of his choosing.
* Excepting the oil and gas provisions, under which punishment shall consist of the Microsoft CEO briefly discovering the resting place of James Hoffa, Sr.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
In my above post, I forgot to point out the two contributions Microsoft made to the "Ashcroft Victory Cmte Non-Federal" on 12/31/1999 and 06/30/2000 found in OpenSecrets.org's database [opensecrets.org].
Whoever voted this as flaimbait failed to read the articles. Not only do the articles not say Bush had anything to do with this one specifically says :
"During a briefing at Justice Department headquarters, a senior official who spoke on the condition of anonymity denied that the White House had anything to do with Thursday's announcement: "These decisions are being made inside the DOJ."
Someone with mod points who took time to read the article should vote the above reply as informative.
1. The DOJ is part of the Executive Branch.
See this comment.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Guess the Justice Department got scared of MS sending the BSA after them, too...
Here is what I know to be true.
Microsoft will release Windows XP on time, with all of the features it alone intends to incorporate. There will be some slight cosmetic changes meant to give the misleading impression that the Bush Justice Dep't was able to reach some sort of deal with Gates et.al. It will be an almost bald-faced lie that nobody in the non-slashdot world will give a second thought to.
In truth, XP will be within approximation exactly what Microsoft intended it to be, its crowbar to begin leveraging their control of the individual PC desktop into dominance of the internet's protocols themselves and thus the server market. Microsoft will attempt to become the IBM of the 21st century, with all of the attendant lethargy, intransigence, and dictatorial control of what may and may not be done with the equipment that old dinosaur used to have. This'll be explained as the best of all possible outcomes for the consumer because it introduces "consistent standards for the protection of intellectual property and the security of personal data."
----------
Their ploy, most likely, will work. You see, I really think that there's not enough appreciation on Slashdot for the crushing masses of people who never, ever think about free software, open standards, or whether or not there are whatever sorts of privacy or antitrust issues involved with XP. They just want to use their computers to do stuff, and if XP makes it easier for them to do things online, work with video, etc, then they will use it even if installing it's a pain in the ass. And it looks all neat and new, too. For them, Linux is geek stuff. They know that Windows is "the only real OS". They've been using Windows and are quite comfortable with it, warts and all. All their friends use it. They don't want to mess with their computers all the time or have to find out what free program is available to do X, Y, or Z. They're just not at all curious about it as we are.
And MS, with a crack marketing dep't, knows all of this and more about their consumers. Linux can't even make a decent distro for idiots yet, nevermind that relatively prodigious learning curve. Linux has its market, sure, but so far it's not even on the same map as Windows & MS's efforts, and I speak as a complete advocate of open OSes. We MUST be honest with ourselves about the extent of permeation Windows enjoys and not fool ourselves with fantasies about how a government that only reflects the aforementioned popular disinterest is gigon to do anything real, anything solid, to stop the big bad company from making & selling its product.
Excuse my rant.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
It might be more complicated than it looks.
I'm not sure I understand the DOJ announcement, but doesn't it say it wants to take action immediately? If I understand it right, it claims a break-up would take too long.
In short, they want to punish Microsoft effectively before XP hits the shelves.
Oh, geeze, I really hope I read that right... It might actually be a good thing, you know...
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
For those who react to this news with righteous indignation over the Bush Administration's 'clear' act of 'selling out' to $$$ from Microsoft, please read the article. The Wired article in particular contains the following tidbits:
That would include restrictions such as: Microsoft can't give discounts to hardware or software developers in exchange for promoting or distributing other company products, and state and federal government lawyers may come onto Microsoft's campus to "inspect and copy" any document or file they find relevant.
Microsoft would also have to monitor all changes it makes to all versions of Windows and track any alterations that would slow down or "degrade the performance of" any third-party application such as Internet browsers, e-mail client software, multimedia viewing software, instant messaging software and voice recognition software.
Hardly favoured treatment for someone supposedly 'in bed' with the B Administration. This sets a precident that will be a lot more useful in the long run than simply 'busting up' Microsoft for the Internet Explorer issue.
This decision rocks!
**>>BELCH
Read the DOJ text itself. Not ONCE does it mention Bush, or the Bush Administration. Typical Bush-bias by the slashdot community.
Get your facts straight before you point a finger.
Breaking up MS wouldn't have solved the problem anyway. There would just be two companies with monopolies, and the company with Office would have no incentive to support more platforms, as it would cost enormous amounts of money to port the applications.
A real solution would be passing a law that all commercial Word Processing/Spreadsheet/Presentation applications(Office Apps) regardless of manufacturer, would have to support a standard format defined by a standards body. The standard would be freely available. The standard must also be the default and natively supported format. The penalty to MS would be that they are forced to release their current Office file formats to this standards body to be the baseline for the standard.
Any and all companies (including MS) would not be prevented from extended the formats or developing something new. However, their products must support the standard first. For the user to use the proprietary formats the user would be forced to manually chose a different file format. Like selecting ".rtf" instead of ".doc" is now. Practically, no one would do it, and anyone acheiving a monopoly on file formats would effectively be blocked.
This would spur an enormous amount of competition in the office/productivity software space. And we would be guarenteed that StarOffice, KOffice, WordPerfect, and the like, could become 100% compatible.
We can only hope that Microsoft is found guilty of violating anti-trust laws for its monopoly on quality flight simulators for Windows running on Intel-based desktop microcomputers, so that the DoJ can deliver the righteous smackdown for such evil business practices. What's next for Microsoft if left unchecked? Domination of some other niche segment of society, like fuel pumps for Volvo engines (diesel only, of course)? You wanna talk about a monopoly, look at the U.S. Postal service. Those guys deliver almost ALL of our mail! Poor little FedEx and UPS can't compete against a 30-something cent stamp! And what about breeders of carrier pigeons, and smoke signal artisans? Sure, their techniques are more expensive and harder to use, but don't they get a chance, too? We can't expect them to actually respond to what customers want, or stop charging outrageous fees for difficult-to-use products. We should split the USPS up instead. Punish them for their efficiency and the unbelievable hubris they exibited by trying to be successful. I mean, this is America, land of tightly controlled and needlessly regulated opportunity. I myself want government to get involved as often as possible in the dealings of business, especially if a product is unfairly underpriced, or is bundled with too much free (AIB) stuff. Who wants cheap stuff that regular people can actually use? Not me, and not America! Go get 'em DOJ!
(close-sarcasted for the humor impaired)
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
I HAVE FUCKING HAD IT!!
.net?
I REFUSE AND I MEAN REALLY REFUSE TO BE SUBJECT TO MICROSOFT! MICROSOFT HAS SHOWN THEY CAN DO ANYTHING THEY WANT AND THEY CAN BUY WHOMEVER THEY WANT IN THE GOVERNMENT TO MAKE IT HAPPEN! PROOF IS IN THE PUDDING!
HOW LONG DO YOU THINK IT WILL TAKE BEFORE LINUX IS OUTLAWED? MICROSOFT CAN MAKE IT HAPPEN! JUST FILL OUT A CHECK TO G.W. ALL IN THE NAME OF EDUCATING AND INFORMING OF COUSRE.
This pisses me off alot more then Decss vs MPAA. Sorry to type in all caps and be really emotional but I feel like I am absolutely powerless
and my most valued piece of equipment, my hobby, and my career will be rented out and controlled by Microsoft and the mpaa. They will no longer be owned. Why can't I play a dvd movie on my Linux box? What if I take some photo's on a digital cmaera and decide to print them. Will I have to pay Microsoft a printing fee wether I use winXP or not? I really wonder what is the license agreemnt to print digital photo's from XP is? This is just another example and since the split is not going to happen, Microsoft will monopolize the photo industry now. It will not stop their. If they take over yet another market microsoft could make even more money. I know lets charge customers for every transaction sold over the net from serverlets written with
What will happen when Microsoft patents file sharing, smb, or.net and who knows what else? Did you know Microsoft owns a patent on css? How could Linux compete?
Face it Linux is going to die really soon if this power from Redmond is not controlled. They are viscious unhuman animals. It will not die from innovation but from clever legal and political maneuvers. Microsoft knows the strengths and weaknesses of opensource and they know we are broke and will take advantage of it. What do you think MS V.P. Murray meant when he said "The government, is encouraging open source. We need to educate the government in the evils of it?"? He said he was only referring to governmentally funded software but I do not believe him. Of course he is not going to admit the truth. Look at the halloween documents from www.gnu.org? Patents is their main strategy. With checks to the patent office they can actually buy them. He also said that there is a wall between the operating systems group and the applications group at Microsoft 10 years earlier. We all know he was being honest. right?
Microsoft has shown they will try to win tooth and nail at any cost in order to crush competition. They will try patenting and using more forceful EULA's banning Linux from corporations.
The guys with big pockets own American and the world and there is nothing we can do. They own %97 of the world's wealth so we can't outlobby them or out buy them. Writing letters to senators and congressmen wont help either. Campaign finance reform won't work becaus your asking politicians to change a system that got them elected. In other words we are screwed.
I will look at other job options and keep my computer for windows based games. I just will no longer seek employment with these kind of attitudes prevailant in the industry. If Linux dies a legal and not a technical death then I encourage all who are reading this to quit as well. By staying in your job, Microsoft wins. You are rewarding Microsoft for their sleazy and illegal business practices and putting dollars in the wallet for it. I am just so disgusted right now its unbelievable.
Excuse while I go vomit.
http://saveie6.com/
Once again from the article,
During a briefing at Justice Department headquarters, a senior official who spoke on the condition of anonymity denied that the White House had anything to do with Thursday's announcement: "These decisions are being made inside the DOJ."
I DO NOT LIKE BUSH I THINK HE SUCKS JUST CUT/PASTING WTFing ARTICLE SAYS. I also hate M$ and wish the DOJ didn't reverse this decision.
I think slashdot should report what the news says. Instead they titled the article the opposite of what the article says.
They are going to have a better chance to push through realistic remedies rather than a huge one that doesn't make sense and would take 4-6 years to push through the courts and
Just set them so they don't go back to begining and start repeating history. MS is in for some tough time ahead. Sooner or later the economy problems will catch up with them, as they seem to be slowly crawling up the food chain. (first dot bombs, second bandwidth/hardware, traditional software companies.. brick and morter... etc etc. Soon enough it will crawl back up to MS and bite em!)
- Office files (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, etc)
- Internet files/protocols (ActiveX, etc)
- Registry files
- Win32 driver API
- Win32 API
In addition to opening the files/protocols, MS would be require to grant irrevocable patent licenses for any patented software routines needed to read/write any of the above files/protocols.With public specifications, there's no excuse for a lack of competition. The playing field is levelled, so to speak.
Nathan
OK, I know you slept through government class but try and follow along here. The Attorney General (This is the head of the Justice Department) is appointed by George Bush. He was appointed to forward the Bush agenda in what cases are brought before federal courts. John Ashcroft is not a judge, not part of the judiciary, has absolutely nothing to do with them.
Would it have been better to say "John Ashcroft bailed out Microsoft"? What is the difference? There was never any doubt that George would bail them out, they were his #3 donor. Right behind the oil companies. Wouldn't be right for Big Oil to get a 1000% return on their investment in him and then turn around and not show Microsoft some generosity.
Fucking corporate whores. Last chance for democracy was campaign finance reform. I didn't hold out alot of hope on watching elected officials cut themselves off from their trough, but now that's gone.
Who cares, Linux, Alan, ... etc are not going to stop working on the kernel. All the software we use is not going anywhere. Microsoft will continue their normal operation. The world will not end. Who really gives a rip what happens to MS. I don't use Linux because I was waiting for MS to be broken up. I don't use open source software because I was just waiting for until MS comes out with better stuff for me to use. Why doesn't everyone just grow up. Its not an us vs. them. MS is a competitor, but thats great. So is Sun, SGI, and every other software company out there. We deal with it.
Here's a thought, how would MS being borken up help open source?
Nothing to see here, go on your merry way...
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
I have yet to understand why most slashdotters, a group of above-average intelligence, can be so stubborn and mule-headed about political issues.
Microsoft is not off the hook. The DoJ merely came to the conclusion that a breakup of MS would solve NOTHING. Do any of you really think that would have made a difference, or did you just see it as a way to stick it to Big Bad Bill?
This whole tying-the-browser-to-the-OS thing was BS from the get-go. No one was stopping anybody from downloading and installing Netscape or any other browser. I actually thought it was rather USEFUL that a browser was preinstalled so that I could go out and download Netscape!
Regarding the political stuff, don't get any happy thoughts about Clinton starting this suit to protect the consumer. As if he cared about the consumers - the same ones he screwed by enthusiastically signing the DMCA? This whole thing was class warfare from the get-go. The bottom 50% loves it when the guy at the top at the food chain gets pie in his face, don't they? So Slick Willie bolsters his poll numbers by going after MS for some trumped-up crap and gets full cooperation from their competitors, of course. Just try to be honest with yourselves here.
Look, sure MS is evil. XP is full evidence that they're evil. So don't upgrade. You know what happens to products that screw the user? They don't sell. Look at DIVX. That sure didn't go far. XP is the OS equivalent of DIVX, from what I've read so far. Let the market do its thing.
"Property is theft, therefore theft must be property, right?"
Hm, maybe we need a user-created discussion about our downtime so there's someplace it won't be offtopic...
Maybe you need a real database that backs out transactions when they fuck up, instead of just hosing everything.
Oh, and a "sorry, database problem" banner to throw up instead of letting the site come half-ass up when it's being recovered.
Think about it for a moment. M$ finally thinks it has won, and that nobody is able to stop them (Muhahahah). While this maybe true, it most definitely will make M$ more bold, and isn't this exactly what we want?
Think about it. A embolden M$ is more likely to think that it can (and more importantly will) get away with its Monopoly (TM ParkerBros), and proceed to enslave the corporate world. This will do two things, make Linux (TM Linus Torvolds) more popular, and secondly (and more importantly), allow new charges of monopolistic behavior against M$?
The core of the US case against M$ was the stupidest level of incompetance (browser wars?) I have ever seen. Judge Jackson was the only one in the courtroom to see the true implications of the M$ Monopoly (TM ParkerBros). The US Justice Dept. was completely clueless and out of touch with the real issues in the case.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
There is only one law in jungle
If you have money, power, and influence
You can buy, bend, or change all the other laws.
(From the Wired article)
Microsoft can't give discounts to hardware or software developers in exchange for promoting or distributing other company products.
State and federal government lawyers may come onto Microsoft's campus to "inspect and copy" any document or file they find relevant.
Microsoft would also have to monitor all changes it makes to all versions of Windows and track any alterations that would slow down or "degrade the performance of" any third-party application such as Internet browsers, e-mail client software, multimedia viewing software, instant messaging software and voice recognition software."
This is much more effective than simply breaking up the company.
**>>BELCH
Sanity returns once again to the government. Maybe now we (the free software community) can all get back to the business of beating Microsoft in the marketplace, instead of running to daddy DOJ whenever we want him to beat someone up.
[ home ]
Oh, very simple, actually. Go re-read the remedy suggested by Judge Jackson. The break-up was only part of it. The most important part, wildly underlooked, was that all technical communications between the different parts of Microsoft would be made public. In short, there would be a Microsoft-OS part that would make the core OS, and the rest of Microsoft, that does IE and the Media Player and everything, couldn't commingle its proprietary apps into the OS without the very way they are commingled becoming public.
It was a smart ruling. Judge Jackson did an immensely good job of understanding the problems at stake.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
Microsoft has nothing to do with any kinda of recession or recovery of the economy. So many people think that if M$ would get split, that there would be this huge downfall of economic opportunites.
bullocks!
If you really wanna see something that would affect a recession/non-recession then look at an industry much bigger and farther reaching than the computer industry - the auto industry. Remember the bail out of Chrystler in the 80's? Look around you. The auto industry is many time bigger than M$ and will be for quite some time, maybe forever.
Anyway, I don't give M$ that much credit. In the end they'll be their own downfall. Economically, we as a society will not be able to support upgrading software that does pretty much nothing new and, despite popular belief and marketing hype, is not particularly innovative at all, every year or so. When that is finally realized, then they'll end up like a Borland or maybe even Lotus.
That will be a good day. Just like how it was when it all started. This, I feel, will be the natural evolution of things.
In the parent comment, I had posted a comment about President Bush and slashdot bias. The excellent slashcode rendered into what you see above.
This whole thing has been a colossal waste of taxpayers money.
We should let corporations do whatever they damn well please with no adverse consequences whatsoever. Brilliant. The problem is that Microsoft has done the same damn thing several times. They got off with a slap on the wrist the first time around. Now it's gonna happen again. Where is the remedy to keep them from doing it again?!
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Indeed, the Bush Administration's order was directed at the Justice Department (Executive Branch) and not the Judicial Branch. There is a difference here. The Justice Department is prosecuting the case and can say "we don't want to break up Microsoft anymore" but the Court could say "We don't care, we think that Microsoft should be broken up."
That can happen, though my Magic 8-Ball says "Don't count on it"
Heh. I want to call the Democrats the DFL party, but I guess that's a Minnesota thing.
Anyway, I realize it's easier if you can pigeon hole decisions into a political landscape. But you really can't with this Microsoft trial.
The DOJ case was brought forth by the Clinton Justice department, true. It's also no secret that many Microsoft competitors contribute heavily to the Democrats. Most notably is Larry Ellison who gave multiple millions to the Democrats in the Florida public relations campaign.
On the other hand another Microsoft competitor who has complained fiercely is Novell, which exists in Utah and is championed by Senator Hatch.
Also on the DOJ side are two very notable Highly Republican partisans by name of Robert Bork and Kenneth Starr.
I don't agree with the DOJ case, and I'm a very partisan Democrat. Yet on the other hand my boss and many of his friends are highly Republican and they do disagree with the case.
Yet I encounter numerous persons in newsgroups who are clearly right-wing extremists who are very anti-Microsoft.
I realize these are a lot of random anecdotes and facts, but the point is there really is no trend of Republicans being for Microsoft and Democrats being against Microsoft. It's all over the board.
Instead of a "user-created discussion", how about posting an article under the Slashdot topic, so that discussion of such WILL be on topic?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
bush has made it clear that he has the interests of corporations at the forefront of his agenda. I still think he is better then Gore though...
I see a lot of posts saying this. Better in what aspect -- pro-life, pro-immigration, against gay marriage, just what do you agree with him more on?
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
There was another provision -to require a standard and consistant licensing price schedule- which obliquely touches on this issue, but none that address it directly; just as in the trial it's being ignored. Particularly troubling is the suggestion that the DOJ will model their proposed remedy on the restrictions proposed by Judge jackson in so far as those restrictions to business practices were relevant when they were originally proposed but the landscape has changed drastically sice then. Microsoft has moved on from the battle for the desktop, to the battle for the net, and if the restrictions do not relate to practices associated with the new battleground, then they will be on no value at all.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
A piece of factual information is flamebait? You suck.
The only way that this wasn't Bush's decision is if all the stories about Cheney really running the country are true. The decision may well have been issued and executed by Ashcroft and his cronies, but Bush is his boss, and can fire him if he makes decisions with which he disagrees.
It's not like Ashcroft is some gunslinging maverick who doesn't toe the party line- he does what Bush wants, or he is replaced by someone who will.
Bryguy
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
The pole over on CNN indicates about 2:1 in favor of dropping the case. I think people are scared that any multiplicity of Microsofts will simply cause incompatability. Most slashdotters realize how much better an OS can be, but most other people do not. All they see is the repeated promises of software writers which have, historically, been dissapointing. Finally, after decades of promise, computing platforms for ordinary people are stabilizing and software is, generally, working. We all know things could be better and want change, but the average user is content with stability - even a stability which means users have to reboot daily. What I think slashdotters do not realize is that the average person using a computer just wants to get a relativly simple task done - word processing, printing, scanning, writing email, reading email, etc.
Cheers,
Greg
a war on terrorism? How can we end a war on a method?
The whole breakup scare was a farce anyway. Oh no, now I'll have 2 giant corporations. What a penalty. At least this way (and granted this is information gleaned from quick and digital sources, and how much can we trust those) Microsoft will have some sort of accountability. Also I think it's good to keep the company together. The split was more of a slick PR maneuver than an actual solution.
hmm
Funny. When the ruling from Judge Jackson first came out, there were droves of people here on Slashdot who were complaining that breaking MS into 2 (or more) companies would do nothing to curb their monopolistic behavior. The argument went something like: the smaller companies would continue to exercise the monopoly for the particular domain that they operate in.
Now that the DoJ says that they are going to pursue a different penalty, even going so far as to check out the current situation in industry to customize something that will have teeth, do we hear Slashdot members applauding the decision? No! Instead, we're hearing people complaining that the Bush Administration is butting in, being pro-Microsoft, and blocking what is now hailed as one of the best ways to stop MS.
You can't have it both ways, people.
Personally, I applaud what the DoJ is doing. I think we're on the road to finding a solution that will actually make a difference. Time will tell.
Hmmmm... How has a free, or free'er market ever stifled the ecconomy of any country?
(Don't use Russia as your *lame* example; Their markets haven't been freed, just switched from one corrupt system to another).
What's bothered me is that nearly every linux distribution includes one or more web browsers. Recently they also include spreadsheets, graphic manipulation (gimp), and soon they'll all include word processors similar to MS Word and email/calendar/contact magangement similar to MS Outlook.
It seems quite dangerous to establish a legal precedent against including a popular application with the "operating system". At the rate things are going, in a few years a Linux distribution will probably come with work-a-like replacements for every major proprietary application.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
As a separate, off topic post, I would like to refute your TCO claims.
The IDC and Netcraft have both commented on an important trend where many large and small companies are moving from proprietary Unix and, to a lesser extent, Netware to Linux and NT/2000 based solutions. As such, Microsoft's marketshare has risen slightly and Linux's market share has exploded. The basic reason is that most versions of UNIX are proprietary and tied to a hardware market, and for this reason, sales are low. Sales are also comparitively low for Netware and that OS cannot share the developer load with a workstation market. Because the software industry is captive to a very steep economy of scale. (Don't believe me? Price out one of those RS-6000 workstations!) At the same time, Microsoft and Linux are both able to distribute the cost of development more, and as such, able to deliver a better value.
The industry is not driven by the question of "Is it good?" Particularly in hard times, it is driven by the question of "Is it good enough?" If a piece of software is good enough and is a better value, it wins out in the long run (see DOS vs MacOS vs Amiga OS). Microsoft became very successful by inventing the idea of distributing the cost of development by sellign to multiple vendors, and this idea is further "embraced and extended" in the open source movement which distributes this cost by distributing the development itself. In this way, an open source operating system will never be tied to hardware sales even the way Windows is today, so it will, forever remain affordable.
My personal experience has been that NT and 2000 have been more trouble to impliment, support, and secure than Linux or FreeBSD. They often run on otherwise obsolete hardware (a market where Microsoft, for business reasons, chooses not to compete), providing useful network services, such as DNS, SMTP, and POP3. It is easier to learn to administrate well (rather than merely competently), and it is easier to properly and securely automate.
Another factor in Linux' cost is its maintenance. Linux requires a *lot* of maintenance, work doable only by the relatively few high-paid Linux administrators that put themselves - of course willingly - at a great place in the market. Linux seems to be needing maintenance continuously, to keep it from breaking down.
Over the last year, I have seen 4 crashes of my Linux servers which were not resolved by a reboot(I administrate 6 Linux servers, several of which are also workstations) and as many crashes on the two non-dedicated NT and 2000 servers I have worked with. The average time to fix the Linux crashes was 15 minutes, and almost every crash was caused by human error in the installation or upgrade of new software, such as Tomcat on Apache, etc. OTOH, the NT and 2000 machines not only had to be rebooted twice as often buteach fix that this did not resolve required much more troubleshooting. On one occasion, the reinstallation of network services caused registry corruption and the entire system had to be restored! How is that for lack of maintenance?
Back to Linux' cost. Factor in also the fact that crashes happen much more often on Linux than on other unices. On other unices, crashes usually are caused by external sources like power outages. Crashes in Linux are a regular thing, and nobody seems to know what causes them, internally. Linux advocates try to hide this fact by denying crashes ever happen. Instead, they have frequent "hardware problems".
What, exactly does this have to do with Linux and Microsoft? Yes, I too have noticed that Linux is slightly less stable than other Unices, but it is FAR more stable than anything Microsoft has released (including Windows 2000). If you are only concerned with stability go with FreeBSD which currently accoutns for most of the servers with the longest uptime according to Netcraft. But FreeBSD is not without its own problems-- it has less hardware support and no framebuffer device so that not all Linux games run in it... But who needs a framebuffer or that new video card on a web server?
Add to this the cost of loss of data. Linux' native file system, EXT2FS, is known to lose data like a firehose spouts water when the file system isn't unmounted properly. Other unix file systems are much more tolerant towards unexpected crashes. An example is the FreeBSD file system, which with soft updates enabled, performance-wise blows EXT2FS out of the water, and doesn't have the negative drawback of extreme data loss in case of a system breakdown.
Only when someone who doesn't know what they are doing tries to run e2fsck with the drive mounted... And to Linux's credit, the program displays a wonderfully dire warning message if you try this.
The steep learning curve compared to about any other operating system out there is a major factor in Linux' cost. The system is a mix of features from all kinds of unices, but not one of them is implemented right. A Linux user has to live with badly coded tools which have low performance, mangle data seemingly at random and are not in line with their specification. On top of that a lot of them spit out the most childish and unprofessional messages, indicating that they were created by 14-year olds with too much time, no talent and a bad attitude.
I won't say what comes to mind here. NT-based OSs are extremely hard to learn well, IMO. OTOH, My parents, who were lost when trying to use Windows 95 are using Red Hat 6.1 with Ximian Gnome and love it! That is a learning curve for you!
I won't feed this troll anymore, so if you are sincere and wish to debate this subject with me, please email me.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
This trial would of been over months and months ago if they had made the suit on business practices. Focusing on IE was BS there is nothing wrong moving parts of the browser to the OS. Just ask Linus he has parts of a web server in the kernal now with TUX. Giving away IE had nothing to do with it, Netscape did that first. They didn't charge for old versions or beta of current versions. Play with words if you like but Netscape started the whole world of giving away browsers.
Bottom line MS would be under scantions now if the DOJ lawsuit had been strictly on business practices.
the PC that can't boot anything but Windows? (How will they do this?)
Regardless of the fine print on this decision, I expect MS to spin it as a victory. Most notably, when the Appeals Court overturned the penalty while upholding the verdict, MS went out with the trumpets. Furthermore, their ACTIONS went along with what their WORDS were saying. It appears that they really believed that they had won the appeal.
So no matter what conduct remedies will be, what do you think their actions are going to be, now?
My remedies:
Open up file formats of monopoly-scale products.
Open up protocols of monopoly-scale products.
Open up contract details for monopoly-scale products.
Actually, don't think anything is going to work in the US. It's up to the rest of the world to make up for our ethical laziness.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Um, no.
Even if that were true -- which it isn't, despite what their PR staff tries to tell us -- that would be a sign that our system is even more fucked up than it actually is.
Too late, WinXP Professional Corporate Edition (the version that doesn't need to be activated, ever) has been making the rounds on Usenet since last week.
*This page intentionally left pointless*
...keep in mind two things.
1. MS still has the Findings of Fact hanging around its neck -- read: civil suits from Sun, Netscape/AOL, just about anybody who wants to bring an antitrust case. Remember, AT&T was broken up after a civil suit by MCI way-back-when in the early 80s, not because of the Feds initiating the action.
2. The conduct remedies are not yet set in stone, just based on Jackson's final judgement minus the breakup (which was pretty harsh already) and not necessarily limited to that. It would be interesting, for example, if one of the remedies were to force MS to take Windows XP from the market...and that is strongly implied in both the BBC and CNNfn articles.
So MS has dodged the breakup bullet, but OTOH the breakup as specified -- AppsCo and SystemsCo (or whatever the heck the stupid names were) -- would have just created two monopolies where only one existed before, and with both still having the same kick-'em-when-they're-down culture of MS. If you ask me, that would have been worse than the current situation.
And XP may yet be barred from the market (at least for a while) -- and later come to market sans Messenger, Hailstorm, Passport and so on. Maybe. *fingers crossed*
Of course, IANAL and all that.
So there is a silver lining...well, maybe a mercury lining. Oh, whatever.
cya
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
So, after what...years? of arguing, the solution to the M$ problem is to figure out a better solution.
It seems to me this wishy-washy behavior is just the start of simply letting the entire monopoly thing go unpunished.
I'll be fair, its a decently sound theory to say the reason this is happening is to not hurt the economy anymore, but isn't that the reason the trial happened anyway? To prevent one company from having such a large economic presence as to be immune to the law? To singlehandedly drive or slow the economy?
is it terribly unreasonable to expect someone to make a decision and then follow through?
First, Bush's name is not even mentioned in the CNN article, as many people have pointed out. There is a FOX article that says Bush intentionally STAYED OUT OF THE DECISION, and the BBC article says the Bush ADMINISTRATION. All evidence I have read that Bush made the decision is pure subjecture. You people have no evidence that Bush made the call, but you're sure willing to blame him. The only "evidence" is in the articles and none that I have read said Bush made the decision. The Fox article DOES say he intentionally STAYED OUT of it and left Ashcroft to make the decisions. So if you're gonna be pissed at anyone, but pissed at Ashcroft. You could be pissed at Bush for appointing Ashcroft, but if that's the case you need to focus your anger more. Don't blame the man for something he didn't do.
Secondly, how many people really thought A) The breakup would happen and B) that it would solve anything? Do you people REALLY think the gov't would be able to stop MS? From the start of the case, I had a feeling it wouldn't effect anything and it looks like it won't. MS is too slimy in and out of the courtroom to be brought down. They're masters at coming out on top. The public was against a breakup and sanctions will work as well as they did before. This has been a waste of taxpayer money. I would like to see MS brought down, but I don't think the gov't can/will do it regardless of who is in office.
I honestly don't know what the solution is, but something must be done. Unfortunately, I'm at a complete loss as to a plan of action.
Khyron
Well,
... WinXP all flavors, All versions of Office, whatever else they have a monopoly in, Internet Explorer?) Have an independent third party confirm that it is accurate as of the date that it is released. Any third party knowledge that is part of the above products that Microsoft licensed is treated as though Microsoft owned all patents and copyrights to it.
If you want something that will penalize Microsoft, require a minimum of government oversight, and actually help the economy here's my suggestion:
Step 1.
Require Microsoft to publish the source code and API of all Microsoft products that Microsoft has a monopoly with. (DOS, Win1.x, Win2.x, Win3.x,
Step 2.
Revoke ALL licenses, EULAs, copyrights, and patents that Microsoft holds and prohibit Microsoft from being granted any new patents or copyrights for X years (5, 10 ?).
Step 3.
Provide free support for all government (Federal and State) agencies, public libraries, and public educational institutes, for the same X years as in step 2.
Step 4.
Have Microsoft pay the full cost of prosecuting the case against Microsoft.
That's it.
Step 1 Opens up the playing field. Lets everyone see what's going on and either make their programs compatible, or sell a Win clone. Microsoft doesn't have to provide support unless you have purchased a product from them, except for the exceptions in step 3. Sure Microsoft will probably change the formats the very next day, so what. Everything that people have now, and have had in the past can be made compatible. Step 2 insures that Windows clones can exist, and that even if they do change things it's legal to reverse engineer the changes. Since they have spent so much time bulling people (audits, restrictive licensing, tying) remove their ability to sue, arrest, or otherwise bully OEM's and customers alike. Step 3 makes sure that they provide "community service" to repay "the people". Step 4 is their fine.
If Microsoft "truly" innovates then they should be able to survive. They still have their war chest, the source code for things like their games and Xbox (though they don't have any patent or copyright protection, so sinking Mono will be kind of tough), better keep those as trade secrets for now. Best of all we don't have to rely on the government policing Microsoft.
Microsoft gets to make restitution for it's crimes, remedies some of the damage it has done in the past, and is prevented from doing the same thing for X years.
I don't think it's going to happen, but I wouldn't mind being pleasantly surprised.
someone247356
(just my $0.02 Canadian, before taxes)
Just my $0.02 (Canadian, before taxes)
In reaction to the news, large holders of MSFT stock were delighted by today's announcement.
"This is exactly the kind of relief from burdensome regulation and government oversight that we had decried so often in the past," said one Bush advisor.
"It shows the kind of cooperation that you can get. That government and industry can work together for all Americans that pay taxes," said the President, arriving back after a recent 24 day vacation.
At Microsoft's Redmond, Washing headquarters, a teary-eyed Steve Ballmer could barely whisper his joy at the occasion of the news that the feds at discontinued their pursuit to break up the software giant.
"I'd like to thank everyone out there that supported us. It just goes to show that the American way is working, that we really do have the best government that money can buy." said Steve, wiping away tears.
"Protecting our right to innovate has been vindicated by the government of the United States of Amerika. We're heartened," said Bill Gates at a conference on Bridging the Digital Divide in Haiti. Gates refused to answer questions that he was negotiating to buy Haiti in the event of an unfavorable treatment from U.S. courts in the landmark anti-trust trial.
"The President of Haiti and I have reached an understanding that his police force can cooperate fully with the BSA in an effort to prevent software piracy, which, as you can easily see, has led to the ruination of this once-proud nation."
"Provided by the management for your protection."
With a special game called find Bill's hidden treasure.
I have yet to hear any credible explanation of how breaking Microsoft up will hurt the entire U.S. economy or even a segment of it. I just keep hearing it'll be bad for the economy and nobody says why. Where are the evidence and facts that could be used to deduce future market performance from something that hasn't happened?
I'm interested in how exactly that works...
There is a Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. Presumably, a large block of TBS's shares are held by Time/Warner.
I would be very suprised if Ted Turner himself had zero influence over political donations made by TBS.
I was hoping I could find some information on shareholding and whatnot on turner.com's site, but it's pretty content-free. I suppose I should consider the source.
j.
You have to understand something here: As the president, Bush is named responsible for the actions of all those underneath him, whether he made the decision personally or not.
It is quite likely that this same decision would have been made even had Gore or Nader been made president, at which time you'd be reading, "The Nader administration..." and you'd wonder, "What? Nader would NEVER do anything like that."
Of course he wouldn't. But being president means delegating authority to others, who then make the decisions. You then get blamed for their bad decisions.
[Off-topic rant: This is the major reason why I couldn't support Gore. It seemed to me, through various incidents during his campaign, that he had chosen to surround himself with people who were not very competent, no matter how intelligent he himself was. Bush, despite the perception that he's not very intelligent, has a knack for surrounding himself with very intelligent and competent people. Because of the size of the Executive branch of the US gov't., the ability of a man to surround himself with the best and brightest -- people to make him look good -- is far, far more important than that individual's capabilities in itself. In the end, the president becomes an effigy of himself that's then hung, burned, and shat upon by the public at large anyhow; in this way, the position protects the people who do the actual legwork of diplomacy and policy-making. It's a waste of the talents of a talented individual to make him or her president; he or she can do much greater things as a cabinet member. Why do you think Powell hasn't run for President yet? It's because in his current position he can do more to change the world, and he doesn't have a bigass bulls-eye on his back. In other words, in the US Executive branch, it's much better to have a buffoon surrounded by good puppeteers than a brilliant man surrounded by fools.]
Bush promised the American people alot of things. Lets take a look at a few.
1) A vote for Bush is a vote for GOD. Unless money can be made by drug companys.
2) A vote for Bush is a vote for lower taxes. So lets piss away any money our country has saved and give it back to the people who don't really need a couple hundred bucks.
3) A vote for Bush is a vote for education reform. Unless you spent all the budget surplus on a tax refund.
4) A vote for Bush is a vote for Health Care reform. Unless ( see #3 ).
5) A vote for Bush is a vote for a regular guy. Thats if regular guys come from billion dollar familys that control Oil and Drug companys that are only interested in lowering liablitys, raising prices, and squeezing every penny out of other countrys that can afford life saving drugs.
Now Microsoft gets off the hook.
What did you guys expect?
Okay this system of government we have kinda sucks. We get a choice of the lesser of two evils and are expected to be happy with the out come.
The thing to remember is that Republican's get there money from BIG corperations.
As a final insult to most of the people that thought Bush would be a good president when he could not even get a B in college.
You are all idiots! Your vote for GOD was a farse and you should have your voting rights taken away for that coming from that position.
And for you idiots that voted because of the promise of a check in the mail. Well your even bigger idiots! I would personally like to thank you for pissing away any chance we as a nation had of education, social security reform and keeping this country out of debt.
Now all thats left to do is wait for our freedoms to be taken away in the wake of the coming american corperate republic.
Our only chance now is Jessie Ventura in 2004.
Oh and I'm not a democrate you Saltine Style republicans fools.
Last one in jail is a fascist.
comment 2259181 was attributed to me, but that is not the message I sent. It is my sig, though... weird.. that would seem to indicate that the form data got mixed up in transit.
I think this is because the DB hosed right I was submitting a comment.
"Yes.. no matter what the culture, folk dancing is stupid." -MST3K
Excellent idea. I've created one here: http://slashdot.org/journal.pl?op=display&uid=&id
Mind posting some details there, Jamie, or in the journal of the first guy to make the move if I'm not the first one? That'd get the discussion started, hopefully...
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
They can ban it from doing business in Europe -- this was the reason why some mergers were called off.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Okay, Slashdot readers, let me explain something to you. As a member of the Executive branch of the US Federal Government, I apparently have some insight that others of you don't.
In the world of government, there is a magical thing called 'Delegation of Authority'. You see, without the concept of Delegation of Authority, absolutely NOTHING could possibly be accomplished in the world of modern government. There is no fathomable, feasible, logical, REASONABLE way that a man with as much responsibility and power as George W. Bush could possibly handle each and every aspect of the minutia and day-to-day operations of an organization like the federal government. That is why authority is DELEGATED. Yes, you heard me right, AUTHORITY IS DELEGATED (for those of you that are really slick, you will note that responsibility is NEVER delegated).
So what does this mean' It means that when you are the president, you can't possibly stick your nose into every detail of operations and politics. It isn't possible. Even if people wanted to, you CANNOT MICROMANAGE THE US GOVERNMENT. It is simply too large. There cannot be far-reaching conspiracies of men in blue suits behind closed doors that are secretly plotting every detail of your life and working their hardest to oppress you and your way of life. Even if they wanted to, IT ISN'T POSSIBLE.
Did President Bush personally instruct the DOJ to reverse their policy? No. Does Bush have some 'secret agenda' to restore Microsoft to its former glory? No. Did not John Ashcroft himself have something to do with it? Maybe. It's not like these people aren't busy, folks. They have a government to run. They don't have the time to screw with your lives and make things hard on you. That happens through carelessness, neglect, and bad decisions. It happens because of NOT trying, because of a lack of effort on the parts of lawmakers and politicians. Not because they hate you.
Now, after all of that, does this mean that Bush is responsible for the decision?
Yes.
I was just wondering... If George W. Bush != Bush Administration, would that imply that Bill Gates != Microsoft?
Yet, anything said against Microsoft here on Slashdot is taken directly against Bill Gates.
So here's my point: George W. Bush is the head administrator of the Bush Administration. He's in charge. So, if something as big as this did not pass on his desk at the White House, something is wrong. And I'm not even saying that the decision is right or wrong. I'm just stating that it's clearly something that the president whould be aware of before it was announced.
Just my 2 cents,
Bradasch
Per the NY Times article discussed above, Ashcroft didn't make this decision.
However, you are right to point the finger at Ashcroft in the sense that as the head of the DOJ, he is responsible for decisions made by those to whom he has delegated his authority.
Microsoft.atr@usdoj.gov
Use the above email address. Write to them explaining how we feel. There was a quote at the end of the BBC article that struck me, "The DoJ will ask the court for a period of discovery to investigate developments in the industry since the trial concluded, and evaluate whether additional conduct-related provisions are necessary." To me, this is the worst news out of all three articles and the announcement itself. Use the email address to explain why further action is needed. We're running out of chances to be heard. I also want to point out that the articles linked to only said the DoJ is no longer asking for a breakup, but the judge can still issue a breakup order if she decides to. So perhaps we should also email her office too.
Now you might speculate that they're taking the quote out of context, or that there might be another implication to what he said (or almost didn't say), but to only go from one source and ignore all others is clearly very poor investigation.
-- Still waiting for the Nike endorsement
It doesn't say anyplace in either article that "The U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had been instructed by the Bush Administration to cease its drive to break up Microsoft" (from Slashdot description). That provocative statement screams violation of checks and balances, so I went and read the two articles with interest. The Slashdot description may be the Real Truth, but there are no supporting references provided with it. So the reporter screwed up here, and ought to try a little harder (or maybe a little less hard) next time.
The picture of Bill in the Wired.com article should be "Eeexcellent, Smithers. It's all going according to plan."
Actually, this is one of the few issues where BushGore differed by more than a hair's witdth. Whereas Dubya was using the phrase "we shouldn't restrict innovation" in his speeches, Gore campaigned in favor of antitrust action in the software industry while visiting Redmond. Here's a quote from the Seattle Times:
Let me repeat -- Gore said this at the heart of Microsoft's campus, to their faces, while asking for their votes. He may be an arrogant exaggerating tight-ass, but he's got some big brass balls.
Of course, Microsoft probably would have gotten a breakup thrown out on appeal either way, but at least the DoJ wouldn't have rolled over like this. When they appointed Charles James as head of DoJ antitrust division, Dubya's handlers knew exactly what they were doing.
the battle between Intel and AMD only came about because of demand. no demand= no product and no r&d. gamers built this demand. (thought id point this out... :)
We're like rats, in some experiment! -- George Costanza
And the states can always toss in their two cents. If they still want MS broken up, it might still happen.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
I'm sure pBush is "strategerizing" this will reinvigorate the tech sector of the economy. Problem is, as I see it, the PC sector is down because of the Microsoft monopoly. No real competition _does_ stiffle innovation of new products, which spurs the growth of the PC technology. Sure there are alternatives to Windows and/or MS Office, but when a PC is pre-loaded with Microsoft (aka the Microsoft tax), why would someone want something free like Netscape Navigator, Star Office, or Linux .... I think you know where this is going.
Monopolies control innovation (think Big Brother).
This Hoover's capsule says TBS is a subsidiary of AOL/TW - I think Time Warner bought it outright. Generally, "Inc." is used for private companies (Although Sun Microsystems, Inc. is a notable exception) and "Corp." is used for public companies. Although Turner did manage the division under Time Warner, This article at Forbes says he lost control with the merger with AOL.
Somebody please, tell this machine I'm not a machine.
The appeals court only assigned a new judge to determine the penalty, they didn't say she could not issue a breakup. The judge can still issue a breakup order if she decides to, the DoJ just stopped asking her to.
It's great to fly off the handle about what you THINK is going on....Why don't you read the stories to find out what they're REALLY doing? This is from CNN: "Instead, it said it wants to investigate developments in the industry since the trial concluded and evaluate whether additional conduct-related provisions are necessary, especially in the absence of a breakup." click here for the full story
Ray of hope? For what?
Microsoft is being slammed royally and in real time, rather than the nebulous affair that was looking to be drawn out over the next ten years.
I agree with others, tho', that this (parent) posting has no business being labeled 'flamebait'.
Everyone is welcome to their own (wrong) opinions...
; )
**>>BELCH
IP law is about creating monopolies. Microsoft abused their IP monopoly so the remedy should be to take away their IP. Specifically, all their code implementing their interfaces should go into the public domain as "reference implementations".
Normal procedure is for a company and its investors to HOLD OFF on major business plans when it faces serious legal trouble that could change the fundamental way they do business.
Instead the US GOVERNMENT is waiting so that whomever the powers may be have the time they need to make their billions.
What other types of criminals get away with this type of thing?
That does it. I'm gonna be a cannabis farmer. They can't toss me in jail until i've made my first 10 Million.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_c
He probably didn't...
This post is by far one of the worst examples I've seen of 'loaded language.' It was obviously an attempt by the author to drive a point across with out haveing a single reliable premise on which to base a conclusion on.
A claim is made that it really did come down to a decision that George W. made. However, all supporting claims are based upon guess work and the use of language intentended to give the author a sense of credability. Such language is listed above in italics. The author has given no concrete or valid premises to conclusivly link a final decision to George W.
Try again, please.
On a side note, I am not denying that W. didn't have a say in the decision. I'm just pointing a major flaw out in the presented argument.
Despite the wild speculation about under the counter agreements between Bush and everyone else else who owns a big biz. The republican party is generally capitalist pig suckling. He's really just walking the party line on this one. And one I wish I hadn't voted for him on.
Although I will give him one particular line of defence. If the microsoft illegally used monopoly was constitutionally split up as is gaurenteed by (actually I think its an amendment) then a large portion of the market would collapse under the weight of its fall.
Remember the market is filled with pointy hairs who like money. They could give a rats butt about how poorly MS software works (unless it crashes while they're making a bid) 75% of traders still consider MS the mainstay. If the US market tumbles any further we could be stuck in a recession alot longer. Which isn't really good for anyone.
Anyway, this is probably where Bush is coming from. It's a win-win for the replublican line. Keep the economy nose above water and get some money from a large monopoly as well.
Duhprey
People who quote themselves bug the crap out of me -- Me.
I've got a great plan...
/.'ers out there can take their $$$ from Mr' Bush's ill-advised "tax rebate to the American People(TM)", send those monies to the Open Source Movement of your choice (Patrick Volderking's getting MINE!), and beat Microsoft at its own game. Who needs politicians when you have each other?
all
Money wins again. WRONG!!! Geeks win again!!!
-PONA-
+that's funny...I don't FEEL tardy.+
Don't have a reference handy, unfortunately. I first heard of it from David Boies, when he was hired in relation to the Napster/RIAA debacle. He figured that if Napster could show RIAA was acting in violation of antitrust law--difficult, but possible--then they could get all those copyrights turned over to the public domain, and Napster would be home free.
:)
The law predates the twentieth century, apparently, having been passed very late in the 1800s. Almost everyone had forgotten about it or overlooked it until Boies found it while doing research into converting copyrighted works into public-domain works. The law has, to the best of my knowledge, never been tested in court.
The law is filled with all sorts of landmines like that--laws passed over a hundred years ago which everyone has forgotten about, up until the point someone points the law out and you discover you just had your balls cut off by a rusty spoon. That's why I'm so deeply suspicious of the law, myself.
...and Open Source in general. With the Bush administration letting MS off this easily after being accused of being a monopoly, what do you think this tells other major corporations? Big businesses will be a lot less worried about getting into trouble when attacking smaller businesses. Bush doesn't want to protect small businesses, he wants to support Big Business.
As for Linux running into hard times. MS is going to have more freedom to attack Linux now. Do you think the Bush administration is going to support Linux against MS? No way, Linux doesn't make any money, it's against the Bush administrations ideals. Other Open Source projects better watch out for any commercial competition. It's open season on the little guys now.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Cripes, so Michael was a little bit loose in the way that he worded things. He's since changed the imprecise "The U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had been instructed by the Bush" to the unwieldy (and redundant) "The U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had been instructed by the Bush Administration" (The DOJ is part of the Bush administration, so the Bush administration is telling the Bush administration what to do). Imprecise wording is the rule not the exception around here, so I think that supposing this reflects some kind of axe grinding by slashdot is kind of silly. Remember the old saying, "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
And I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners.
Berke Breathed
Our current president, George W. Bush, is not a junior. His father's name is George Herbert Walker Bush. George W. does not have the same name, thus he is not a Jr.
--
"What do you want me to do? Whack a guy? Off a guy? Whack off a guy? Cause I'm married."
Mod this sucker down.
Get real people I find it amazing that there are all these Libertarians out there wanting to break up MS.
The liberatarian party is for free enterprise.
The MS breakup flies in the face of free trade, and competition. MS is and should be free to bundle any software package it want's with its OS. It's a simple economics of scale.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
The breakup wasn't a particularly good solution anyway. Rather than having one company with a monopoly on 3 sections of market, we'd have had 3 companies each with a monopoly on one section of market. Not much of an improvement.
What they should have done was have some kind of vertical separation and created >=2 OS companies, >=2 office/business software companies, >=2 browser companies, etc, etc. At least then there would have been some competition.
Oops. I guess somebody got metamodded wrong :/
Need a Linux consultant in New Orleans?
okay so the whole stem cell thingy was tough, being a unificator it's hard to come to terms with cell division.
phew. i need some down time at the ranch.
okay, now about campaign promises, Karl, i'm not a divisioneer! breaking up is hard too due! i do know that my brows're gettin furroughlated just thinking about it. my daddy says monobrows bad, bushy brows good. Karl? do you see what i am saying?
Always be wary of odd-numbered Star Trek movies, and even-numbered Microsoft Service Packs. More often than not, you will regret the experience.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
There are other penalties that could make Microsoft wish it had been broken up.
The basic idea is that Microsoft should not benefit or profit from the proceeds of their illegal acts.
Therefore, one possible solution could be:
1) the equivalent of a jail term
- Microsoft should not release any new software or any revision or update to their operating system software in any way for an extended period of time. Occasional patches may be issued so long as they are standalone, issued for no cost, and can fit on a single standard format floppy disk. (1.44) megabytes
- The period of time that this prohibition should be in force should at least equal the period of time that they have had profit from their illegal acts (5 to 10 years), if not more. The purpose of this is to inhibit their dominance of the market as it was achieved by illegal acts, and return the conditions as much as possible to what it was when Microsoft committed the illegal acts.
- If Windows XP is not released to market, then the penalty can be reduced slightly (3 to 5 years).
- There should be a very substantial fine to remove any profits that they have accrued as a result of their illegal activity.
Again, the idea is to remove any profit or gain that resulted from their illegal acts.2) Another alternate solution is to require that all operating system software releases must meet the approval in advance from a government commission comprised of a large number of industry experts. This includes any software integrated into the operating system, and any software intended to replace the operating system. Maybe three from each state in involved in the law suits, plus three from the Federal Government. With a quorum of 2/3 needed to vote. Again from a 5 or Ten year period.
With each of these, if this means that .NET is put on hold, then tough. It is meant to be a penalty. Similar to if you when to jail for several years.
Of course, criminals routinely protest that the jail sentences are unfair, and that they are mis-understood. This should not inhibit the administration of Justice.
- - -
Radio Free Nation
an alternate news site using Slash Code
"If You have a Story, We have a Soap Box"
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Okay, in my slightly humble opinion, MS isn't exactly a monopoly. I do have problems with their business practices and the way they bundle their various application software, but there are other options in operating systems out there if you have the gumption to learn them.
MS took something that was often too expensive and too cryptic for the average person and made it more available. Apple made (and still makes) a good product, but it was out of the price range for most folks. Working with a computer was the stuff of science fiction and was seen as something only a true genius was able to do. MS put lines of code and connected them to bright, colorful, shiny buttons and flashy pictures anyone could understand. It made dumb chicks (like me) or people with too much on their plates to learn how to actually work with raw code (also like me) able to take advantage of the growing popularity of computers and the internet.
As for their business practices, I don't approve of the way their operating system is installed on almost any computer system you buy. I may not be a geek, but I have many friends who are and who would rather use one of the various flavors of Linux. It irks them, rightfully so, that they can't get a system without Windows. Unless I'm mistaken, and I could be, this seems to be due to the liscensing agreements between MS and the PC companies. You should be able to get a system with nothing but the info and drivers for the hardware or with the operating system of your choice installed if that is your desire. There's no real reason why should have to pay the "MicroSoft Tax".
As for GW telling Ashcroft to drop the push for dividing up MS, that's probably not what happened. Contrary to what people want to believe, the President doesn't have time to micromanage everything his people do. If he's smart, he picks people who can do their jobs without his looking over their shoulders and just checks in from time to time to make sure they're not going power hungry.
Just three years ago a Microsoft exec told my (then) manager:
"We are going to eliminate all non-microsoft programming by 2003"
I think they might pull it off.
Between embedded XP and the favoritism shown to MS by governments and corporations, I don't see how they can be stopped. Ethics doesn't work, the law doesn't work, the slow speed of government is ineffective in dealing with the information economy.
I've just about had it, too...I've got two other possible careers in the works, neither of which is "tech heavy" (little or no computer use required) so I'm thankful for that!
Hopefully, after some time off FT programming and just enjoying life for a bit, I'll be able to devote some time to improving Linux.
I'd love to work on a decent "Security Control Panel" -- things like PortSentry, Nmap, Satan, Tripwire all controlled and configured by one GUI. That would be a fun project.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Here is the all-in-one post to sum up all the others:
1) Bush is evil
2) Microsoft is evil
3) Gore would have been just as evil
4) Clinton was/was not evil
5) Bush 1 was evil
6) Ashcroft is evil
7) Bill Gates is truly absolutely evil
8) Corporations are evil
9) Government is evil
10) The American People are Evil [tm]
11) We at Slashdot are somehow pro-government anti-liberty libertarians, more or less.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
The head of the X-Box project has claimed that it will not be possible to boot Linux on it. Now everyone here knows that will be taken as a challenge. We can expect at least Linux and NetBSD to boot it within a year of it's introduction. Of course, it would be a much longer road to fully support it's hardware.
This boast that the X-Box will only be capable of running it's pack-in OS seems to mean that steps have been taken lock down the environment as much as possible. It's true that it is being marketed as a console rather than a PC but it seems like a ThinkNIC on steroids to me.
If Microsoft can get out of this with a wristslap then locking down commodity PCs does seem like a plausible step. They've already shown their ability to strongarm OEMs.
The sad part is now you can see how the American Gov is above plain basic justice...
Worse still, it demonstrates that m$ is above the law...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Amen, brother. Also note that the "correction" was quietly inlined instead of an appended update. Show some respect!
This sig intentionally left blank.
The funny thing is that this action, which MSFT believes to be in its favor, will almost certainly cause Europe to pick up the bat dropped by the US government and whack MSFT even harder.
MSFT may be able to influence the US government, especially through very large contribs to GWBush (I park my car next to The Ruins sometimes, I'm not naive), but they have little or no influence on the EU, which has the total and absolute power to dissolve MSFT into two companies.
"But wait!", you say, "Europe can't do that to an American company!" Silly person, you fail to understand that as a condition of doing business in Europe, the EU may require that MSFT split in two or three parts. No split, no sales.
This is the lesson that many US multinationals have been learning over the past few months - sometimes it's better to have your friends whack you over the head (US penalties) than to let your enemies do it instead (EU penalties).
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
The way to hit Microsoft hard is not to break it up rather it is take away its leverage without having too much government involvement. The solution is to
(1) open up the API and allow companies to sue if some undisclosed API is found and force MS to take any product off the shelves that has that undisclosed API. That would level the playing field and keep the government involvement at a minimum.
(2) Also not having OEMs have these aggreements were they can not add value to Windows, but rather must install an untouched Windows OS with no third party applications.
(3) And one price for Windows to all OEMs.
(4) And finally some fine levied against MS would be appropriate since they did "play dirty" with Netscape.
Those 4 items would be my punishment (in order of importance).
Yeah, for my money, i've started accepting that many slashdot "news" articles (and i use that term sparingly) are PURE RUMOR and/or SLANDER.
E.G. it doesn't pay to read the slashdot headlines AT ALL. You have to read the actual source, and figure out what's going on yourself. 9/10 times the author didn't, so in effect, having an indpendent news outlet is NO BETTER than having a corporate controlled, Pepsi-oriented news outlet: the "facts" are just as factual.
Sorry slashdot, welcome to mediocrity.
"What thou shalt not, I shalt did!" -Bart Simpson
With over 600 comments made on the story, no one will ever read this one. Now I can reveal my plans for world domination... and now Microsoft can help me. Muhahaha...
The Justice Dept. was obviously hoping that the courts would let them off the hook, and enable them to avoid displaying obvious favoritism toward a big supporter of the Republican Party. Unfortunately, the courts upheld the most serious counts of Clinton Justice Dept.'s antitrust suit. Facing the dismaying prospect of a victory, the Bush Justice Dept had no choice but to back down on the most serious charges.
To avoid the appearance of a complete capitulation, Microsoft is once again being ordered not to engage in the sort of behavior that Microsoft previously agreed not to engage in--an agreement whose violation triggered the most recent antitrust action.
"All right, young man, I'm serious this time! I'll warn you just *one* more time to stop cutting off your little sister's fingers...."
Did any of you bother to read Jacksons recomendations. Illeagle bundling, give me a break. Who cares? This is just one issue that the MS controled press focuses on to confuse the public. Most people don't understand why this is a problem, and in reality it is a minor point in comparison with the bs that MS puts in their licencing agreements and the games they play with the APIs that they allow their partners and costumers see. ( Company A starts to support Linux, and with the next service pack, their software suddenly starts acting kinda slow because the APIs that they are permited to use have been deoptimised. This happens often.) Jacksons original recomendations address just such issues. Basicly all this new emphisis does is make things harder for the MS Ministry of Lies and Propagand.
That would make a great T-Shirt :)
Bill... a big cross... and Uncle Sam with a mallet and a handful of railroad spikes...
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
But this doesn't require the states attorneys general offices to drop their antitrust suits. Any one state could still ask the US District Court to break Microsoft up. The Federal Trade Commission is independent of the DOJ and it could also act. Moreover, the European Union has begun to investigate Microsoft's anti-competitive practices.
The bottom line remains, however, that the only alternative for the next few years to the Microsoft monopoly will be open source and/or free software.
I am not a lawyer. Do not take my words as legal advice. If you need legal advice, consult an attorney.
All those who didn't see this coming from a million miles away when Bush was appointed president raise their hands..
...anyone...
...anyone..???
If he wanted to be politically safe on stem cells, he wouldn't have made a whole big deal out of it -- it's not like that many people cared or even knew about the issue before they went on and on about how agonizing the decision was, eh?
'sides, how happy people feel about their pocketbooks will probably be the main factor in whether or not he's re-elected, anyhow, assuming that he's not caught with an intern or managing to save Kuwait in Desert Storm II: Smackin' Saddam S'more.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
How would a break-up of Microsoft lead to a recession? Wouldn't the people who were going to buy Windows or Office still do so? Why would it matter that they were now 2 different companies?
If it did have the affect of eventually introducing more competition, prices for these types of products would go down, companies that had to buy these product would be able to pay less, and their ratio of profits to cost, i.e. productivity, would go up. This is good for the economy!
If you go to http://biz.yahoo.com/t/m/msft.html you will see that in the last two months Bill gates has sold several hundred million dollars worth of Microsoft stock... It kind of makes you wonder how many people he had to bribe to get the government to stop pursual of this case...?
The answers to how this happened are right in front of us, just go have a look at the Insider Trading Data...
By that way of reasoning, Bush makes every single decision the federal government makes. That must be millions of them a day.
Now I see why he needded that vacation...
Hint, XP isn't going to be the tonic to get the tech sector back on its feet. MS isn't the be all and end all of the stock market. And even if a sushi chef of a judge diced MS into a ton of Baby Bills you wouldn't get a recession.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Is it ironic that this decision comes the day after Bush meets with the President of Mexico yesterday. Isn't Mexico looking to purchase millions of dollars in computers and software and trying to decide whether to go with Windows or Linux. I think that article was here on Slashdot within the past few days...
http://www.askthevoid.com
Take a second to jump off the MS/Republican campaign finance bashing. The fact is MS gave over $1 million to BOTH the Republicans and the Democrats in the last election. Check it out here: Top soft money donators during the 99-00 election cycle. While I do think it's likely that the Democrats would have handled this differently than the Republicans, there is no way that these donations were the sole reason or even a significant reason for MS getting off the hook in this way.
The fact is that big corporations tend to give lots of money to both parties so that both parties will find that company in good favor - take a look at how many times Time Warner, SBC, and other big companies show up on the list. And you know each of those companies has gotten favors from the government as they lobby for deregulation and merge into bigger monopolistic entities.
Money is everywhere in DC - it only gets your foot in the door. You gotta play the political game if you want all the benefits from your donations. Maybe a generous donation to the GOP helped the DoJ "decide" it was time to speed up the trial. The DoJ isn't backing off though - remember, MS is still guilty of being a monopoly and that will be seen to the end.
Cross yer fingers everyone. It isn't over yet...
t
"Corrupting our youth one mind at a time"
If it weren't for Microsoft....who would post to /.? I mean, MS seems to get alot of airtime around here.
/. is the mole?
I think its a plot to keep all the open sourcers busy commenting and reading and preventing them from coding.
Following that line of thinking it seems that MS has infiltrated deep into the open sorce community. Which leads me to the question....so who at
Troubling very troubling indeed.
I'm still working on a clever footer.
From opensecrets.org:
"During the 1999-2000 election cycle, Microsoft contributed more than $4.7 million in soft money, PAC and individual contributions to federal candidates and parties--almost three times what the company contributed during the previous three election cycles combined. More than two-thirds of that money went to Republicans."
You get what you pay for, eh? Or, in this case, a lot more -- an excellent return on investment.
And Bush was the guy that was going to bring honor and integrity back to the White House? Not bloody likely.
Alternatively -- perhaps any sufficiently complex system may experience down-time -- especially after a major upgrade. Life is good if it is infrequent and non-repeated. This is when the SA's earn their pay.
LOLOLOLOL
ROTFLMAO!!!
Man, you must have a HUGE Penis cuz I think I know where all your MAJOR brain cells ended up!
HAHAHA I'm still laughing....
Typical response of a Totally Clueless person. My advice, pack the PC up, and ship it back to Gateway, Dell, or where ever you bought your PRE-PACKAGED PC from. Go back to sheep herding.
1. This does not get M$ off the hook. There are 18 state attorney generals who are also plaintiffs here. ALL OF THEM must agree to any deal with the Redmond monster. This has been a big problem in past settlement negotiations (thank God!).
It only takes one state AG to keep the ball rolling here. True, it will be hard without the DoJ to help.
2. President Bush ABSOLUTELY made this decision. He appointed Ashcroft and he owns him. Remember how Ashcroft was down in FL disrupting the recount? AG was his payoff. Also remember Bush is the head of the executive branch of the US government, and the DoJ is part of this branch. Bush was talking about letting M$ off before he was even elected.
Bush is a political whore and the big corps. of the USA are his Johns.
The EU is made up of many different countries -- and if MS can influence the members then the EU will give them a pass or else disolve itself (not that it is too solid now).
But there's a world of difference between indirect influence and direct instruction, which Michael claims.
I actually agree with this statement. When a president wants to take credit for an action, she will directly instruct her inferiors. When she wants to avoid blame, she will not announce her direct culpability.
Bryguy
ps- I'm sure someone will complain about my use of the feminine preferred. My statement applies to any hypothetical president, and all our female presidents so far have been hypothetical
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
You don't hardcode high penalties for a specific party in a treaty! If we had passed that, we would pay out the nose for every little violation. Even for you in your POS 1986 Honda, which you still drive even though it pollutes twice as much as my 1995 Buick. Meanwhile you eat veggies and spout "environmentalist" rhetoric.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Let's see if they can really do it. If by this time next year, Dell, Gateway, etc. are free to put any software on the machines they sell, I will be very happy the Feds decided not to waste any more time on now hoplessly obsolete issues. What M$ does with it's platform makes absolutely no difference if people are free to do what they want on alternate platforms. If the DOJ pushes through, and makes stick, regs and laws on anitcompetitive behavior for vendors M$'s unfair power and advantages will vanish like last years .DOC format.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Don't look here to the UK for a shining example of honour. M$ are pretty much camped in 10 Downing Street, and Blair appeared on TV showing off WinXP (another src). All government services are due to be online 2005 but will only be accessibly by Microsoft browsers. The Register has good articles here and here. Makes me sick. Especially as we used to have a thriving computer business of our own (Acorn) which the government did nothing to help whilst it was killed off by M$ anti-competative practices. When will the UK government realise that 'IT' is not solely churning out secretaries that can use Word but to give encouragement to those that might become programmers or other similarly skilled professions instead of holding them back. Sorry to turn this post even more UK-centric, but we could mitigate some of Blair's damage if WE LET THE TEACHERS CHOOSE WHAT OS THEY WANT TO USE (instead of easily bought LEA officials). Oh and paying extra for teachers with industry experience so for a change the teacher knows more about IT than the pupils.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Maybe stop focusing on microsoft, and start to realize just how much of the media is now owned by AOL/Time-warner. And you wonder why cases like 2600's are not getting reported.
It looks like that Microsoft got enough money to buy our new President. So soon they can ask for a nuclear strike on countries that illegally use their software.
> Hint, XP isn't going to be the tonic to get the tech sector back on its feet. MS isn't the be all and end all of the stock market.
> And even if a sushi chef of a judge diced MS into a ton of Baby Bills you wouldn't get a recession.
Pundits keep saying that the tech sector will recover once Windows XP is released . . . only that ain't gonna happen.
Why? There isn't anything in XP that will make a user happy with either Windows NT or Win 2000 want to upgrade. Yes, there's a few bug fixes, but most of the stuff that has changed either (a) locks the user into depending more on MS; or (b) encroaches on her/his fair use rights to the software. And this has been pointed out not only in the computer press, but in such media outlets like CNBC.
And I suspect the Shrub knows this. This is why his underlings are trying to walk away from this suit as fast as they can. Otherwise, another rich buddy of the Shrub may suffer some financial hurt -- which he doesn't want to see.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
I think this is a legitimate decision on their part, since Windows in some form or another runs on all government computers (minus a few thousand Linux boxen in the DoD, and all of the Apple PowerBooks on the West Wing).
I also think that this will have some clear and distinct effect on the market share of Windows and other Microsoft products in the future, but I'm not sure which way it will go. It could go up, if people think "Oh, now that it's in the hands of the government, it must be stable and OK" (that's not stable as in not crashing stable, but stable as in the company's future). It could also go down, if people see this as the government trying to get more control (which they are).
Seeing as how there's at least one precedent set for this type of thing so far (Bell), I think everyone challenging the constitutionality of this should go read up on their American history.
2 files on a fscked file system. Add in MS-insecurity and your friendly IE/Outlook exploit can toast them all too easily. Then there's netbios... another option for anyone who wants to toast said files.
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? - Joshua (Wargames)
Sorry 'bout that.
Reserve your judgement until you see an inefective wrist slap instead of reasonable judgements. Reasonable restrictions on MS dirty and market forces will make you happier much faster than an unregulated MS or an unrestricted MSOS company. Know anyone that really wants XP? I don't.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Had to get that off my chest...now, as to your comment about Reno having had "balls"...
Goodness knows Reno avoided doing her actual job when it came to investigating Gore.
Now that would have taken true courage, since, unlike with other scandals she did hand over to Ken Starr, there was plenty of credible evidence of criminal behavior on hand!
(And to think I started out as a fan of Janet Reno, even through the Waco debacle and her testimony! Sure, I like to give people a chance to do a job well, but she fairly quickly blasted through the floor of my expectations, such as they were....)
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
I don't know how you see the EU, but you clearly don't see it as an EU-citizen. The EU-senate is a bunch of corrupted ex-politicians, and money ($$$ or E's) is all what matters. The EU and the US often have small strugles about trade and enviroment, but on the whole both unions are corrupted to the bone.
The chance that the EU will ever punish microsoft is a day i am hoping for, but that day is far away, and, likewise, democracy is nowhere to be found in the EU...
This sig is intentionally left blank
Ghod, the term Chi-com is so 1950's. Get over it. Cold war over.
The system has failed you, don't fail yourself. --Billy Bragg
Response from executives at rival Hewlett Packard has been that of shock and dismay given their recent $25 billion acquisition of Compaq. "We could have gotten so much more for so much less!" an unidentified executive is quoted as saying. HP executives are said to be exploring the possibility of acquiring a portion of Vice President Dick Cheney.
-- My choice of computing platform is a symbol of my individuality and belief in personal freedom.
And to help the economy ... we should put everybody else out of business, right?
By showing that a monopoly like microsoft can get away with something like this because of their propoganda telling us that it would hurt the economy if they were broken up, The govt. is telling every other company that they might as well not bother trying to compete.
Competition is what drives prices lower and pays employes more to make better products and that is what helps the economy.
NOT letting a money hungry monopoly get away with stifiling other innovation and competition to the point that their "competitors" are going out of business.
"Land of opportunity"
What a joke.
It's the land of lobbying and paying off officials to get above the law, and ruin other peoples dreams!
Help the economy my ass, this is govt. payoff BS!
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
After graduating with a B.S. in C.S. in 1997, I knew I could never work for Microsoft. I find their products inferior, and their business practices disgusting. Add in the pile of companies they have "aquired" technology from or run into the ground through the use of thier monopoly (Netscape, Lotus, WordPerfect, etc) and I'm left with the sinking feeling that if you fight them, you loose. Not because they're better or smarter, but because they have the resources of a giant monopoly to back them up.
Think about it people, if MSN in the early days had to do something novel like, uh, show a _PROFIT_, there's no way they could have contended with AOL. But, with tons of monopoly money they just stuck around and got to screw up as much as they wanted and loose as much money as they wanted untill they got in a position to get it right. Any other company? Not enough backing, no way in hell it could be pulled off.
How about WinCE (or, "wince" the derigotory term and being what a user does when interacting with it)? Come on people, Apple gave up on Newton and they had better R&D concepts, developer support experience, the whole nine yards. Palm still has a good majority (barely), but if WinCE wasn't backed with piles and piles of monopoly money; enough to screw up time after time in the market (clam-shell keyboards?? Multiple CPU's?? Color WAY too soon??) they would be long dead.
And how about a favorite: IE. Yeah this one really pisses me off. Web browsers are not trivial applications. MS threw a metric assload of people at building IE (still do, I'm sure) that they couldn't have afforded to pay AND give away if not for all of the monopoly money. What's worse is that Netscape used to sell Navigator and could have made a profit. The web browser was the "next killer app" in & around 1995. I'd think MS stockholders would be furious for having Bill & Co. put a bullet in what could have been the next application space to make money in if they would have competed for the dollars instead of dumping inferior crap on the market and pulling license nasties untill the programmers could figure out how to write a browser.
I would love to see just one of these entities have to survive on it's own. They'd have dot-bombed faster than anything on the books. And that's the sad part; the nice fallback monopolies lets MS slowly crush anything they want to.
At the rate things are going, it looks like anyone programming will eventually be doing it for the MS monopoly machine, one way or another. Either having to use thier "tools" and target thier OS in order to make a buck, then praying that MS doesn't decide they want to get into your space.
Other companies don't have this level of screw up luxury; multiple failure isn't an option.
Too bad all of the hard-working honest programmers and tech visionaries don't have the luxury of a few do-overs. Imagine how much brighter the computing landscape would be.
I think I'll go puke now too.
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
Sorry guys, it's my fault.
I voted for Bush, and I live in Florida.
I just had no idea he'd so something so... stupid!
I guess that's something that only Harvard Business School could teach someone!
Even if the current US president wasn't involved, i bet a few "Dead presidents" had some say in the matter...
Obi Europe! You're our only hope!
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Here's a link from Harvard:l he .htm
http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/newsclips/001219_wil
It's not a "list", but somehow I think Harvard would know if he weren't actually in the '69 graduating class.
I am the one true god. However, as an atheist, I don't believe in myself. I guess I have a self-esteem problem.
No, the DOJ falls under the executive branch.
welcome to the club
Salon
Cnet
The Economist
Washington Post
National Post (Includes trial timeline)
NY Times
Globe and Mail
and heh.. MSNBC
state have been browsing the web and happened upon Slashdot...
In theory you're right. In reality GWB only can go in and rectify the most egregious deviations from his principles. There just isn't time to do much else than trust the people you appointed and deal with the everyday crises that pop up.
All I think you could correctly say is that GWB isn't opposed to this, not that he strongly agrees with it.
While the M$ trial is a pretty big deal in the nerd world, it's still a second rate issue in the big political scene.
What is a Linux distribution? A bundle of third-party operating system, utilities, applications, etc. For the most part, the only programs in a Linux distro that are owned/created by the distributor are relatively minor utilities - rpm, apt-get, diskdrake, etc. And often you'll find more than one instance of a particular application. Take web browsers - some distros include lynx, mozilla, Netscape 4.x, w3get, etc. etc. etc. Or user interfaces - KDE, Gnome, Enlightenment, plus more window managers than most people know what to do with. Unless AOL starts shipping a Linux distro (and hell promptly freezes over), you'll never be able to accuse a distro of unfair bundling.
If you want Windows, you have to buy Microsoft Windows. If you want Linux, you can get Red Hat, Debian, Suse, Mandrake, Slackware, and dozens upon dozens of other distributions in many different forms - downloaded off the net, purchased from a place like CheapBytes, or a boxed set directly from the distributor - and it's your choice which distribution you get, and (for most of them) what price you pay for it (if any).
So, as I see it, the precedent being set isn't that "bundling is bad". It's that "forced bundling, contractual blocking of competitive products, and lack of consumer choice of whether to buy Windows or not with a new PC" is bad. Linux distros offer choice, which means competition, which (usually) means that the consumer wins.
Corporate Jenga: You take a blockhead from the bottom and you put him on top...
The popular news and discussion site Adequacy.Org recently posted this very topical analysis of Microsoft and their business practices, which explains in some detail the history of Microsoft and some of the controversy surrounding it. I found it to be fairly balanced and impartial, in the general style of popular news and discussion site Adequacy.Org. Although the article was written before today's recent news about the anti-trust case, it certainly sheds a lot of light on the issues surrounding the case.
I understand the arguement that people give for regulation on real-world, tangible products: Cars flip over and kill people when engineered improperly. But there is no safety issue with software. The only issues are security and quality. When bad security results, companies change software. if software is hard to use, cumbersome, un-intuitive, well, companies change software. I don't see why we're punishing microsoft.
I don't buy "bundling" as an arguement. Companies offer , in software and in other products, extra features that make life easier, cheaper, faster, etc. They also offer things that will contribute to repeat sales, like coupons. All microsoft is doing is giving a browser that points to MSN to everyone, for free. No one is suing linux distro's for bundling other software with it. hell, mandrake came out with so many little features they stuck them on 4 cds!
Personally I'm against anti-trust. I'm always against the government bothering people who have found a way to make money without resorting to force.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
gee, shucks, since the original poster framed it this way;
"The question is, does this (the procedural remedies suggested by the DOJ and imposed by Jackson) go to allowing PC vendors to bundle additional operating systems like Linux with new PCs without the penalties that are now part of the Microsoft Bootloader License [byte.com]?"
the byte.com article, linked by the original poster, states clearly, that the DOJ decided to ignore the "bootloader" issue in the current case (a BIG mistake IMHO), so the bootloader issue was NEVER introduced at trial. It will be very hard (nearly impossible) to introduce it now without reopening much or all of the existing findings to further litigation (that's the way our legal system works)
FURTHER, in case you've been living in Elbonia and/or don't understand M$ OS architecture, the ENTIRE thrust of their FS, LOADER AND EXEC is to NOT SUPPORT interoperability with anything but M$ architecture...why do you think they own 90% of the desktop market...their good looks and charm?
so, presuming that the original poster that i responded to meant what he/she said about multi-booting....
...THE ONLY WAY TO ACHIEVE MULTI-BOOTING WITH ***data interoperability*** on M$ ARCHITECTURES IS THROUGH ****substantial redesign****
TRUE, you could force a "Chinese Menu" screen solution (not really completely within the current trial scope, BTW), but how does that help the "monopoly" problem?
...if the average desktop user can't seemlessly and invisible interchange DATA between her multi-booted OS...guess which one they're gonna pick, the one with 3-6% market share amongst geeks like us, or the one with 93% market share amongst home users and businesses?????
Now, just WHO do you think would have to control the necessary architectural changes to M$ OS????
Bubsy F*****G Berkley?
BTW, you might have the stones to not post AC, if you want to be taken seriously, unless taking cheap shots is ALL you're about
Ten quid, she's so easy to blind. And not a word is spoken...
Slashdot's database was hosed from sometime around 7 AM EDT
:)...
Sorry, but in lieu of this thread, I just HAVE to troll
If you had been running MSSQL server this would be a non-issue.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
$16M in political contributions [Common Cause] by Microsoft in the last four years obviously didn't go to waste. Time Magazine and the BBC also have good (although a little dated) articles on the size and scope of Microsoft's intense lobbying effort since the antitrust trial started.
Linux CD's can be had for as little as $2 a pop.
EXACTLY what sort of maintenance does Unix require?
Suitable journalling filesystems are already in place for Linux. Even so, it takes quite a bit of effort to even get EXT2 to hiccup. WinDOS+registry is remarkably more fragile.
Crashes on Linux are NOT a "regular thing".
Peddle your lies somewhere else.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It's a vendor service pack. You shouldn't NEED to worry about it hosing up your system. It should simply work. This is what QUALITY ASSURANCE is supposed to be for. This is why PAYWARE is "supposed" to be so much better.
Amatuerish crap like this isn't supposed to happen.
What's the point of bothering with NT if you have to make it a horrible bother. You might as well just run the real VMS for that kind of overhead.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
"Fragile economy"? Ahahahahahaha. This economy is not fragile. What's unemployment at, 5%? That's probably a high guess, actually. I remember being told in high-school economics class (and I'm talking five years ago, not twenty-five) that 5% was as low as you could ever possibly see due to friction in the job market, and that 5% was pretty damned good. Now, unemployment climbs up to 5% and everybody runs around like the sky is falling. Sure, things are worse than they were two years ago, but they're a hell of a lot better than they have been at almost any other point in history.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
I really want to know why Not Breaking Up Microsoft is a bad thing.
Obviously the DOJ Finally realized that the worse thing they could do is break up Microsoft.
For example, they were talking about breaking up MS into a Windows division and an Office Division. If they would have done that, then all they would have done is break up the one big monopoly and split it up into 2 Big monopolies which would put them in the same boat two to three years from now fighting two Microsoft's over monopolistic practices.
Keep in mind that the DOJ is still on the MS case, they have only ruled out the Breakup because they realized that it was just not the logical way to deal with the Windows Monopoly.
The Best remedy that they could choose to breakup the Windows monopoly is to force them to open source everything in current and future Versions of Windows and allow it to be freely downloadable. This takes the Windows Monopoly out of Microsoft's Hands because anyone now can make changes to the Windows Kernel and software and sell their version as a Windows Distrubution (Much like Linux is done now)
Once you take the Windows Monopoly out of Microsoft's Hands and allow other companies to make Windows Distributions, you will get a more competitive marketplace for Operating Systems, more Choices, Less Bullying, Higher quality software overall, and a much higher quality operating system than you could ever get with just MS supplying the OS code.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
"MAKE them eat their own dog food" so to speak.
Minor points like:
hotmail, yeah windows2k is the front end (window-dressing, if you will) but the heavy lifting is still done by BSD..no?
Their cd creation, compiling, storage etc is done by various *nix's (not subject to viruses, like the OS it is compiling, storing and burning).
Keep them from buying/partnering/sabot^H^H^H^H embracing others technology and "getting other peoples ideas", ONLY to integrate it into
the next version of windows".
HELL, that is what brought them back into court for this go 'round in the first place.
THAT is where their MONOPOLY lies!! THEFT of OTHER PPLS PROPERTY/IP/Code/actual innovative ideas! (stack electronics, spyglass s/w, Novell's DR DOS, these and a slew of other names ring a bell?).
No more PRELOADS, restrictive agreements, different pricing for different OEM's.
If they are not a monopoly, as they have repeated over and over, then take away the monopoly "powers" and FORCE them to stand on their own merits, and the merits of their own OS/apps/etc.
and have slashdotters monitor their entire network for any non MS os, and fine the hell out of them if they break/bend even the slightest rule.
As soon as the last *nix box leaves the compound, I give it a month before it all comes crashing down/BSOD'ing or falls to codered IV.
THAT would be JUSTICE, my friends.
Moose.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
MS donate a billion dollars to the FSF?
But denegrating Slashdot is always on topic. Hahahahahah! I'll bet that's the last time you'll keep database servers on a comet in the middle of this solar system. Or was it a solar flare this time? Hmmm?
Go ahead MOD ME DOWN! I CAN TAKE IT! HAHAHAHAHA!
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
They shouldn't have paid ISPs, OEMs, etc. to NOT distribute Netscape. They should have allowed OEMs to bundle whatever software they wanted, etc, etc, etc, etc...
I agree with you though, bundling IE was not a bad thing. What was wrong though, was the way they forced Netscape out of the market.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
From the BBC Article:
"This company performed an illegal operation but they will not be shut down."
I thought it was only their OS's that did that.
Check the CNN story. The state attorneys general are apparently going along with this:
We'll see what the EU regulators will do.
HAHA!
I am glad to hear MICROSOFT is NOT being broken up.
I am not an advocate to anything!
I think this whole war of evangelism is quite stupid!
So what if Microsoft bundles IE with its OS.
One could just as well complain about Microsoft's bundling of Solitaire because of other companies making commercial Solitaire suites!
!!!!!STUPID EVANGELISTS!!!!!
Even the Politburo concurs with Process of Elimination http://process-of-elimination.net
Comment #2259182 is my message, but for another article about the search for the funniest joke in the world. Weird thing is that it added someone else's sig to the end. I guess things really got scrabbled today.
well, i presume that you're supporting M$, because every major poll has shown that around 70% (running average, very rough) of the American public DO NOT support the breakup of M$..
throughout the period of this antitrust trial, this public support in the major media's polls (CNN, Zogby, ABCNews, NYT, et al. when they have polled on this question, which isn't that often) has ranged between 60-80% of the American public supporting M$ in this, and many question the G's role in antitrust as a whole
i presume most of these people have had trouble finding the "Any" key, and while i would dearly love them on the jury of any trial i was subject to...
i sure wouldn't want them making technology policy for my company or my country...ever watch PPV Wrestling????
you want these folk driving major public policy, eh?
Ten quid, she's so easy to blind. And not a word is spoken...
It's funny how defending oneself is seen as threatening. If I lock my door, am I threatening you?
No, it is not funny, and it is not about locking your door. It really show how much (or how little in this case) you know about a topic when you use analogies like that. Instead of oversimplifying the situation, try thinking about being in the position of another country, like Pakistan, for example. And assuming they have ICBM's, how scared do you think they are that an aggressive superpower like the United States (the only country to have ever used an atomic weapon on another country) can now fire ICBM's at them at will, with no fear of a counterattack because they can defend against ICBM's.
Do you think they will just happily sit around with the USA basically pointing a gun to their head for all intents and purposes saying "Oh don't worry, I would never pull the trigger. Just don't go to war with India, or don't allow such and such to become president, and don't buy Pepsi products blah blah blah". Or do you think perhaps that it is more likely that they will attempt to balance themselves with the United States causing a new arms race with unpredictable consequences possibly disasterous for the entire planet?
And statistics don't lie? haha. Remember this cliche: "There are 3 kinds of lies in the world... lies, damned lies, and statistics." Well, just remember that everything is "provable" by statistics.
Note that this original comment was NOT mine and was caused by this morning's meltdown of the comments system.
.NET and XP are probably going to trigger it, too.
What I had said was that It was a predictable outcome. It's good to know that for the right price, government can still be bought. No worries, though, Microsoft will implode upon the mass of its own arrogance.
"This company performed an illegal operation but they will not be shut down," complained Scott Harshbarger of the citizen lobbying group Common Cause. From the story @ the age.
smile, it makes everyone else wonder what you're up to
I have to reconsider this. A single state attorney general probably couldn't break up Microsoft. What's worse, though, is what I read in an article on BBC (no link, sorry), that 18 of the AG's are already supporting the Bush Admin. I guess it's either EU or open source/free software.
The original subject line was, "but less and less," which served as a good quip against the subject line at the beginning of the thread. But the "lameness" filter caught me. I feel uplifted.
I am not a lawyer. Do not take my words as legal advice. If you need legal advice, consult an attorney.
A lot more people are aware of this than you would think...
l y+ triple+damages+intellectual+property
http://www.google.com/search?q=Microsoft+monopo
What kind of movie Star Wars be if it ended with the Empire being broken up into civilian and military branches and the Rebels being given some say in how the Death Star was run?
Bush is protecting our Freedom to Whoop Microsoft's Ass by protecting Microsoft's "Freedom to Innovate."
Umm. DOJ is not on the judicial branch.
"When the DOJ announced that they would allow Microsoft to stay united, the relief was palpable. Both the operating system side and the applications and consumer products side gazed into one another's eyes and sighed. Sources close to Microsoft say that the make-up sex was unbelievable."
l ay=20010907&id=400
full story:
http://www.ridiculopathy.com/news_detail.php?disp
OK thanks for that explanation. It's real good they (and huge oil companies, arms manufacturers etc.) give *equally* to "both" parties. That make's it more ethical I guess.
Luckily Americans have agreed to reduce the "choice" of parties = 2 or influence could get expensive to buy ... Of course the third viable choice for more and more Americans (a group that is getting closer and closer to constituting the majority) is to simply not vote at all.
Of course just because you don't vote doesn't mean you don't *pay* for the election in reduced tax revenues (contributions are deductions of course) and constant mind-numbing uninformative sound bites from campaign ads on TV and unintelligent pundits of the likes of Rush Limbaugh or whoever his current equivalent is ...
Of course the media will uncover a potential candidate's every single instance of oral sex and teenage masturbation before they even bother to criticize or intelligently discuss campaign finance. And why is that? Because the ads that are bought and paid for ... uhh, well gues who gets the money?
Slashdot should take political ads next campaign - a bit of perl could tailor the personal attack ads per constituency based on the guesstimate geographical location of the incoming IP connection. Just be sure to give 10% of the dough to open source projects.
I have yet to hear any credible explanation of how breaking Microsoft up will hurt the entire U.S. economy or even a segment of it.
Because people think that it will. That's the way that our economy works -- it's fear-based. (Or euphoria-based[1], as the case might be.)
-Waldo
[1] See 1999.
...is the reason that the DOJ gave up because w/o MSFT they could not keep tabs on the judges internet usage (or keystrokes?).
Moose.
HEH! I amuse me.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Sorry for being a carma whore:
s tory_id=773106
http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?
The nice thing about Windows is: it does not just crash; it displays a nice little dialog box and let's you press 'OK'
Well, I for one, having worked in technical support know exactly how clueless most users are about Windows and any alternatives they might have. Case in point: When asked what version of windows a customer is using when they call tech support, I swear fully 50% don't even know! I would say about 25% of that 50% don't even understand the question. And then there's the Mac people that answer "Yes" when asked "Are you running Windows 98?" It's not that they think that Windows is "The only real OS," it's that they don't know what an OS is. They don't even think about these things. It never even occurs to them to question whether Windows is a good thing or not, or whether they have a choice. They walked into a computer store one day and asked to buy a computer, and that's what they were sold.
If I didn't know any better, I would swear that Microsoft was taking advantage of these poor saps out of spite because the marketing team once worked in front line tech support.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Ok... Slashdot completely nuked my post, I'm sorry. (with a very MS like
unknown error message)
Here is the original:
Ok, as a bit of a change from the usual (and boring) MS/Bush flaming that we
will see here how about this.
WHO CARES!!
I'm constantly amazed by people who gleefully anounce to the world that they
haven't used a Microsoft product in years,
simultaneously acting like a bunch of frightened children whenever MS does
ANYTHING
CNN Anouncer: And today Microsoft anounced that Bill Gates took a
dump.
Slashdotter:The world is being taken over by EVIL corporations!! I
don't actually use any of their software, but because other people do it's
the end!! We need the government to come and save us from MS!!
Damn, you people sound like a bunch of frightened women. I certainly don't
see Linux going away anytime soon, and Redhat, Mandrake, Ximian, (especially)
Debian etc. all were founded and started under the 'MS Monopoly' and continue
to grow. If you people would just concentrate on promoting your own
software, and show it's advantages over MS (instead of praying for them to
just go away so you never have to do things like improve useability of your
software) then maybe you could actually beat them.
And onto my final rant, I'll paraphrase Mulder from an old X-Files episode:
"You can't just call up the devil and expect him to behave"
The same US government that you want to use as a mafia thug to break
Microsoft's knees is the exact same government that's prosecuting Dmitri and
doing all the DMCA stuff you don't like. You really like the government
strong-arming people when you don't like them, but then when they turn around
and attack you (duh) you bitch about it endlessly........ no wonder.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
What about the "wristslap" comment? This is far from his worst though. Michael and the others are always putting little pokes and criticisms of Bush in their posts.
Lets just call the editors "The King Trolls"
And that is why I mentioned Bush dangling the carrot of a better position. Bush knows that Bill could finance his reelection campaingn single handedly, therefore why not do things to make Bill happy. Being nice to Bill is in Bush's best interest.
Bush also has the power to promote a judge to a higher court, be they the Appeals courts, or even the supreme court. So it is in the judge's best interests to make Bush happy.
This is where the checks and balances really start to come into play though. Congress dosen't have to play along. Bush can nominate the judge and congress, specifically the senate can say "I don't think so." Why would they say this? If their consituents are calling and saying "This judge is easily manipulated by the president and we don't like it" then it is not in their best intrests to go along with the judge's promotion.
That is the beauty of our triparte government system, not even two of the three branches working in collusion can trump the governamental system in whole. The founding fathers were men, and while they were great men, they knew that power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. So they fashioned a system of governement that even in the face of people in power acting in their own interests would still be able to function.
"You can't fight in here! This is the war room" --Dr. Stra
Your BUSH smells!
"If a show of teeth is not enough, bite
In my opinion a good solution would have been a split to three companies:
- Microsoft Office Corporation
- Microsoft Entertainment Corporation
- Microsoft Winwows Corporation
For the Microsoft Winwows Corporation we would need some additional limitations - on bundling software and OEM licensing terms. However, that would have greatly reduced the US economy in favor of global economy (including developing countries) and is thus not an US interest.I hope the guys in EU still remember their plans and restart their case against Microsoft. While waiting for the EU vs. Microsoft case, a good corrective action for governments would be to enforce the use of other software in schools, universities, and government offices.
-- Imperial units must die --
This version of the link works, apparently.
http://slashdot.org/journal.pl?op=dis play&uid=3167 03
Too lazy to do HTML this morning, cut and paste and then remove the space between the 7 and the 03.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Maybe I'm jaded but I think this is a result of MS learning the game from Novell, Sun, etc.... the game that you MUST "contribute" to the political system -- both parties. You must lobby. You must grease the wheels (totally legal -- not bribery but politics in the US).
MS was almost a non-participant just a few years ago. Since the attack came from the political side (yes, the Justice department under Bill "get me a pretty intern" Clinton was politically motivated and driven by paying constituents) MS had to learn the political game.
MS and Bill Gates are not dumb. They learn fast. They hire smart people. They fight on more than one front at once. They make mistakes but recover and are in it for the long haul.
We have Sun, Novell, Apple, IBM, etc. to blame for this -- and this is scary -- deep pockets are in the political scene now and learned the game from the best.
I just heard on NPR the former head of the Clinton Antitrust division call the DOJ's move "an acknowledgement of reality." Reality in this case being that it would take forever to litigate a breakup of the company when compared to just implementing behaivoral remedies. According to the former Clinton DOJ official focusing the DOJ's resources on behavioral remedies should speed things up quite a bit.
G. Washington on Government "it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
> Was I asleep when Bush took over the judicial
> branch of the government?
Apparently so. It happened December 12th, 2000.
U.S. Democracy: born 7/4/1776, died 12/12/2000 R.I.P.
> Was I asleep when Bush took over the judicial branch of the government? Guess you were. It took place December 12th, 2000. "If you're not outraged, you haven't been paying attention."
U.S. Democracy: born 7/4/1776, died 12/12/2000 R.I.P.
... or PostgreSQL running on Linux boxen, which would probably be faster and more reliable, not to mention a hell of a lot cheaper.
Sorry troll, no one is going to argue with you that MySQL is better than MSSQL. We're not that stupid.
Well, yeah they poke fun at Bush. They also poked fun at Clinton, Gore, etc. Slashdot iosn't supposed to be quasi-neutral or objective like CNN. If all the news was played straight without humor, who'd bother to come here?
And I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners.
Berke Breathed
Hewlett Packard is planning on taking legal action against Microsoft over the inclusion of Calculator in the Windows operating system.
"The inclusion of the calculator application is a deliberate ploy by Microsoft to damage companies that produce calculators. Since the release of Windows, the demand for pocket calculators has dramatically decreased." - PJ Bellmar (HP Marketing)
The case will hopefully force Microsoft to supply the versions of Windows without the calculator application, or provide options for other manufacturers to supply Windows with their own calculator (hardware of software). The case will also explore the possibility of forcing the Microsoft development team to relocate to Azerbajdzjan, and communicate with the outside world using a primitive telegraph apparatus.
On hearing the news, Linux developers jumped around excitedly and grinned a lot.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
I checked on this, too, to see if I was a fool for not buying MS. Whew! No stock surge.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
You have got to be off your rocker. The significance of the M$ case as both a matter of government business and as a political issue, and the President's responsibility as the final arbiter of high-level decisions in the executive branch, certainly are reliable premises. I went into those things extensively in the post; would you care to quote those parts in italics in your next post?
The inference that W approved the executive decision on this case flows from those premises. Of course it's a probabilistic inference, but there's nothing illegitimate about that. Real life is hardly amenable to deductions based on absolute truths; just about all of our everyday reasoning is based on likelihoods. Welcome to the real world, champ.
Do you think it is at all likely that the President didn't approve this decision? Well actually, given the reports of Bush's disengagement in office, and the role of Cheney as a shadow president, it might actually be possible! But that would be shocking indictment of Bush as a President whose irresponsibility is unprecedented. Let's hope it's not true. This case is so important to the future of the software industry, and the hence the US economy, that no President worth a damn could have neglected to take responsibility for this decision.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
That message almost reads like flame-bait. The break up of Microsoft combined with monetary penalties and severe limitations on bundling apps with operating systems would allow the computer industry to flourish, distributing potential market opportunities among companies that, currently, wither and die in M$'s shadow.
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
I'm glad we agree on the structure of the US Government. ;)
See this comment
-Patric
Perhaps English is not your native language... I meant to imply that MSSQL is indeed better than MySQL, but that PostgreSQL is better than both. Do you have anything to say about that now that you (hopefully) understand my point?
Hey, I'm old enough to remember the 70's when more people made money. The smaller (tech) sectors of today make cash but but as lot of other sectors are losing it.
I only read
I seem to recall Eric Raymond predicting that Microsoft would be "relegated to irrelevance within 18 months" about 3 years ago, using many of the same points you do. The reports of Microsoft's death have always been a bit exaggerated.
Microsoft is a heavily diversified company. If they lose one battle -- say, PDAs -- they can easily fall back on the OS, applications, games, the X-box, Ultimate TV, MSN, Hotmail, etc., etc. They sell software, hardware, and Internet services. Most of their divisions turn a profit independently.
In spite of the old "competing against itself" saw, Microsoft has sold something like eight major versions of Office, six major versions of Windows, and three (arguably four) major versions of NT. Companies do buy upgrades eventually.
And what of free software? It has taken a second-place position in the server market and a second-place position in the desktop market. I'm not holding my breath for it to overtake Microsoft in either arena.
--Patrick. Not an apologist, just a realist.
That's insane. Many of those companies were pushed into the toilet, directly or indirectly, by Microsoft. After having left the hen-house unguarded for so long, the attitude seems to be ``not much left in here, just this fox, we'de better protect it in case it goes too.''
The sanest thing to do would be to promptly fine Microsoft a hundred billion dollars, payable in five-billion-dollar annual installments over twenty years, and throw it at the national debt, OSS incubators, net access for the poor, or something else actually useful.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Actually, allowing science to limit religion is the dangerous one, since scientists have religious beliefs including Atheism.
Alternatively, passing religious laws and then selectively enforcing them - which history shows happening often - usually results in seven-figure bloodshed (think Crusades, both World Wars, Reign of Terror...).
Cutting taxes I like. Cutting taxes for any reason is a welcome novelty. Any government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have. Playing favourites with the remains is not such a good idea.
Not at all surprising, if you assume that Big Business 0wns Bush.
Not at all surprising considering that Dubyah is in the pocket of big industry, and that both sides of the cold war were largely funded (directly and indirectly) by the USA for the nett benefit of certain large US corporations (read Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler sometime).
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing