Slashdot Mirror
How the DOJ/MS Settlement was Reached
Drek was among the many who wrote in to tell us about the following: "Wired is running an article about how the MS/DoJ settlement was reached. More importantly, the DoJ has set up an email address where citizens can send comments about the case: microsoft.atr@usdoj.gov. This might be a good way for Slashdotters to do their civic duty."The address has been around for a bit, but still, a renewed call for comment.
That they even are considering our opinions important enough to set up an address for them. Which means they are at least ACKNOWLEDGING some discontent about the decision.
I am !amused.
from the does-the-doj-doesn't-run-exchange dept.
I've been staring at that for a few minutes now... what in the hell were they trying to type?
Even though I firmly belive that no e-mail messege from a citizen to a goverment angency hasn't changed anything, at any time, anywere, we can only shoot ourselves in the foot all thoes script kiddys outthere start flaming the DOJ. So lets all no make complete idots of our selves, thats what IRC is for anyways.
Sleep is for the weak!
Silly DoJ, they should've spam-protected their email address.
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
If this weren't Microsoft and 'we all' weren't so zealously seeking its death, how far should a government go in punishing a monopoly for misbehavior?
Yes, yes, we all want Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer to be burned at the stake and Microsoft to be blown into a million pieces and split among Sun, Oracle, and AOL/Netscape.
How far should the government go in cases like this? Imagine it was a company whose products you liked.
I really think that our government's resources could be better allocated to fighting a war than listening to a bunch of angry nerds.
(Note: Not flamebait. I'm a nerd, myself.) Just noting that it might be a little wasteful, if, indeed, the entirety of the e-mails are read... and a little pointless if they're not read. Seems like a silly idea in the first place.
Correct me if I'm wrong... I usually am.
Does anyone know if and where the public's responses might be posted for public review? Or, will they just be routed directly to Ashcroft's Outlook trashcan by his rules wizard...
The Microsoft antitrust case was never about protecting consumers' right to choose. It was never about curbing an illegal, unethical monopoly that tries to extend its control over consumers in every possible way. It was about money.
The Justice Department used the Microsoft case to increase their own budgets. Republicans and others who supported Microsoft had no problem with increasing funding to the DoJ because more money for the DoJ means more money to enforce laws against drugs, pornography, civil liberties, and other things that conservatives hate. The DoJ was thrilled when David Boies took their case, because they would get to dole out more funding to a very expensive lawyer and take a cut from the middle. Better funding helps everyone in an organization.
The states had no interest in protecting consumers, either. The states all saw a large antitrust settlement as a gigantic handout - more money from God to drop into the state coffers and spend on pork barrel projects. And since Microsoft has customers in all 50 states, why would any state pass up the opportunity to take part in the windfall? Especially because attorneys general are not elected, so who are they really responsible to?
The antitrust trial has always been about money, and the interests who participated in the whole circus have made billions of dollars off the taxpaying public from it. It is time for a quick and decisive settlement so that the bleeding of wasted dollars can stop. The government has shown time and again that consumers are defenseless against corporations who break the law and defraud them. This time is no different.
~wally
Just who's relief we talking about here?
Guide us Landru!
The subject says it all! Spamming this email address with overly anti-Microsoft emails may have the effect of causing intellegent, well thought out emails to be discarded.
Please, please use your head and point out what you honestly believe the problems are (and back them up with facts when possible). We may be able to make a different here. Let's not screw it up!
Web Guy 1: Wow, we got THOUSANDS of emails to the Antitrust email address from citizens over the past hour!
Web Guy 2: In an hour? Must be spam.
Web Guy 1: You're probably right
*Web Guy 1 deletes said few thousand messages*
-Henry
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
I wonder, has it ever been known to happen that the slashdot effect has been applied to an email address?
This is obviously going to end up as one huge mailbomb!
I wonder what mail server they ran...
you mean the DOJ doesn't read slashdot every day? I think they know how we feel.
As 'a slashdotter', i feel i should know what my 'civic duty' is. it seems like you assume that all of our civic duty is to e-mail them and say "a settlement is bullshit. get em by the balls! they're evil!" but in much more politically correct language.
if you wanna know what i think, an agreement is great. they did some lame things, but they have some excellent software and hardware, and i have no major anti-microsoft sentiments.
if you don't, then at least dig this: when the people that tell the news start telling you what your civic duty is, you gotta look 2x
Even if we were to send email to microsoft.atr@usdoj.gov, do you honestly think they're gonna have some monkey go through all the email they get? Even if they do, it's not going to change anything. A good ploy would be for MS to use this as a "Who likes us and who needs to die" check.
I say everyone go to all the porn sites they can find and sign the email address "microsoft.atr@usdoj.gov" up for the mailing lists. For creativity, go to some of the off the wall Scheiße sites and sign the email addy up for their lists. That would approximate my feelings anyway.
from the article:
The government also sought in its court filing to clarify key provisions surrounding the secrecy of Microsoft's technology to prevent consumers from making illegal copies of music or movies. Part of the settlement allows Microsoft to keep secret any information that might violate the security of such anti-piracy technology, and critics charged that Microsoft might use the exemption to hide details about many of its products.
But the government told the judge that Microsoft must disclose to competitors all the capabilities of its anti-piracy music technology under the latest version of Windows, called XP. Microsoft can't use the security exemption as a pretext for broadly keeping details about its software secret, lawyers said.
I'm no big fan of DRM technology, but the whole premise is that its obscure and heard to interact with. There is no provably secure or correct DRM scheme - all you can do is make the software a pain in the ass to figure out. So by ordering MS to disclose a bunch of stuff on how the DRM works, it probably contributes a great deal to crackability, thus nullifying its use anyway.
Regardless of your moral/ethical/whatever opinions on DRM, requiring too much info be leaked from the DRM technology utterly invalidates and destroys the usefulness of the DRm technology. Which means MS will just have to think of something else that they _wont_ have to reveal secrets about.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Wow, I think this is probalby a first. Have we, as a community, Slashdotted an e-mail address before? Is this one holding up? What would you guys like to slashdot next? Maybe one of those coke machines at some college that's on the internet. Of course I should probably heed the saying "A closed mouth gathers no foot."
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
A. People who don't know anything about law (99.9999% of slashdot).
B. People who just hate microsoft.
C. Losers with too much time on their hands, crapflooding the mailbox.
Yeah..i'm sure they're going to pay a whole lot of attention to the one or two actual decent messages which get through the noise. Good plan kids.
-
Is it really any surprise that nothing new was stated in the article?
Here's a link to the DOJ's press release on the settlement. Everyone should try to read it, as well as the actual settlement (if you can find it... links, anyone???)
Personally, I think the settlement is satisfactory. It addresses the root of the problem and stays (mostly) out of other issues. Microsoft's sin is not in it's products... it's in it's sales and marketing practices. Unless someone can prove that Windows has a secret "Disable third-party software" function, I just don't see the problem.
I'm done with sigs. Sigs are lame.
The question then is, how do you best fix something like this without simply bludgening MS to death? Dedicating a couple of people to skim through a few hundred emails in order to get a feeling for people's opinions isn't that difficult.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Secondly, we know how the deal was reached. Microsoft bought the law,
and the law won. "Don't you know there's a war on?" Someone seems
to think that MS are an American company, therefore their monopoly is
actually a GOOD thing because it means American software dominates
the world. WindowsXP is good for the economy; if you're running Linux
or BSD, the terrorists are already winning!
Thirdly, us Europeans are waiting with bated breath to see
what the EU do. As (again) The Reg points out,
there's none of this 'adjourning for a second hearing in the
consideration of whether to refer the case to another appeal'
nonsense over here. Let's hope that turns out to be good news
rather than bad news...
--
Carolyn Meinel, Scientific American: "Those computers ran Linux, which
meant that they could impersonate any other server on the Internet."
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
(1) Microsoft claimed all along that the web browser was a useful application which deserved to be tied to Windows. The crucial question they never answered was: what about Microsoft Word? Everybody uses a word processor; why didn't Microsoft add Word's powerful features into Windows, to benefit consumers in the same way they did by adding Explorer's powerful features to Windows?
The answer is that Word had no serious competition, so Microsoft was content to sell it separately and to offer a stripped-down word processor ("WordPad") bundled with Windows.
I've believed all along that a great solution to the tying issue would have been for Microsoft to include a stripped-down basic web browser with Windows, and to sell the full-featured Internet Explorer separately. This would let customers surf the web without buying anything extra, but if they wanted additional features, plenty of competition in the market would give them lots of choices of more-powerful web browsers.
(2) Microsoft defeated Netscape simply because they had the cash, the resources, and the time to copy every one of Netscape's most important products feature-for-feature, and give it away for free. They rarely got things right on the first try, but by bundling browsers and servers in with Windows and by releasing subsequent versions with more features, it was inevitable that they would eventually match Netscape's quality -- and then it was inevitable that customers would choose the free solution over Netscape's. Many of Netscape's customers still remained loyal, and purchased Netscape software rather using Microsoft's give-aways, but still, Netscape was doomed from the very start.
Netscape did the research and development. Microsoft saw what worked, copied it, and gave it away. How could Netscape possibly survive?
More importantly, what does this say about the Next Big Thing, whatever that may be? What incentive does a person have to turn his great idea into a company, when he knows that Microsoft can simply steal his idea and undersell him once he proves that his idea is a success?
(3) Microsoft has a long history of abusing their power, and they've been taken to court for it many times in many different countries. They've learned, however, that if they can get a court case to drag on for years, any ruling will become irrelevant because the competition it was supposed to benefit has long since died off. And not only are they skilled at dragging the proceedings through molasses -- but they also thumb their nose at the government while doing it; were they ever reprimanded for introducing a falsified videotape into evidence two years or so ago?
Any ruling against Microsoft must be strong and unyielding. So far their punishment for shrugging penalties aside has been another court case which has dragged on for another few years, and they'll only ignore the outcome of this one too; this must come to an end.
And what a community it is that will write in. Just view the message threads for the delightfully intelligent banter that accompanies postings.
/sarcasm
-
if (/microsoft/ && /bad/ && /consumers/) {
--$bad_microsoft;
}
elsif (/microsoft/ && /good/) {
++$good_microsoft;
}
elsif (/linux/ && /awesome) {
++$slashdot_geek;
}
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
From the
microsoft.atr : bit-bucket
<\sarcasm>---
"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
increasing funding to the DoJ because more money for the DoJ means more money to enforce laws against drugs, pornography, civil liberties, and other things that
conservatives hate.
Most conservatives are *very* interested in preserving the liberties that are granted by the Second Amendment. Especially because so many liberals want to pretend that amendment never existed.
****
WARNING: The rest of this poster's comment will be replaced by an automated response:****
Q:
I've been staring at that for a few minutes now... what in the hell were they trying to type?
A:
And how does the hell were they trying to type make you feel?
"Wireless : LAN
But you are saying here:
I wonder exactly who is entitled to write an email to the US-DoJ. A lot of non-US citizen slashdoters would be willing to write I guess ...
-- Don Inodoro
Yeah right. Back in the 80's when illegal dumping of toxic waste was big, fines for those companies were like $50k/day- a value smaller than the amount of money the companies saved by dumping illegally.
So now we are going to fine MS "stiffly?" How much would this be- 1/10 the value of breaking the rules? MS has a history of breaking these kind of agreements, and I don't see this changing anytime soon.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
I'm disappointed with a lot of people who are anti-MS zealots, esp those who think linux is the best os ever, and anything else is a waste of time. Some of you may like Linux, and use it, but that doesn't mean osx or windows don't have their places. linux has a higher learning curve, and for people who don't use computers that much, or have no need to learn anything beyond email, word processing, etc. osx or windows would make an excellent choice. (gamers also).
whatever...i just think ms is getting screwed over by a lot of people, undeservingly. they have screwed up and a lot of people rightly don't like them, but i think a good portion of the anti-ms movement is by people who don't have a reason to hate ms other than to jump on the bandwagon and promote linux at their cost
my two cents...i suppose i could have done more than 0 research and come up with a stronger argument, but i'm not pro ms or anything so i didn't bother. just disappointed w/ those people...
"A. People who don't know anything about law (99.9999% of slashdot)."
I think when analysing the law, the primary objective of the law should be to implement justice.
How can we begin to understand the law when it fails so consistently on its primary objective in regard to tech matters.
The law will probably always be unjust to techies ad its based on precedents going back hundreds of years, a few people will always have to get persecuted before the lawmakers will consider changing a now irrelevent law.
Why should we try and understand the law when it ignores us and is clueless to make informed descisions.
To obey a bad law is worse than breaking it.
The first thing we need to learn about the law is how to evade it, its the only way to get justice... ironic isnt it.
First, the fact that our government has a channel
for citizens to respond is not wasting resources.
Ask most of the Afghani population about that.
Second, the amount of resources spent soliciting
and responding to email will pale in comparison
to the squandered resources in pursuing Microsoft
all these years for this pathetic settlement. If
this is what the DoJ wants, they should not have
bothered in the first place.
[Large Bush campaign contributions] + [Paying off everyone else in between] = [bye bye antitrust lawsuit]
Critics, including Microsoft competitors and some independent antitrust experts, have said the settlement announced Nov. 2 is inadequate and charged that the company will be able to bypass many of the sanctions because of vague language. Truth be told, the settlement was only reached because Bill performed anal favours for the judge. It is not known at this time whether Bill enjoyed himself or was only doing what was best for the company.
lets find out.
% host -t MX usdoj.gov
usdoj.gov MX 15 wdcsun1.usdoj.gov
usdoj.gov MX 20 wdcsun2.usdoj.gov
% nmap -O -sS wdcsun1.usdoj.gov
Starting nmap V. 2.54BETA30 ( www.insecure.org/nmap/ )
Warning: OS detection will be MUCH less reliable because we did not find at least 1 open and 1 closed TCP port
Interesting ports on wdcsun1.usdoj.gov (149.101.1.100):
(The 1547 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: filtered)
Port State Service
25/tcp open smtp
80/tcp open http
Remote operating system guess: Solaris 2.6 - 2.7 with tcp_strong_iss=2
Uptime 296.738 days (since Wed Jan 24 02:33:53 2001)
Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 172 seconds
A Sun system wuth an uptime of almost 300 days...perhaps the DOJ deserves more credit than we give them...
On a sidenote, I wasn't able to get an http responce from it, sadly.
--
grep "xercist"
It has been pointed out (I forget where) that windows master cd's are made on a unix station.
Hotmail was and still is unix windows dressing 2000 on the front end, *if* I am not mistaken.
Address these or the settlement is worthless:
1) Bootloader and OEM contracts. NO more, ever.
2) *IF* windows is requested to be loaded on an OEM box...let the consumer choose which.
3) Enough of this fscking upgrade treadmill, all versions of windows should be supported for a *mandatory 10 years*, including patches, bugfixes and drivers for the latest hardware.
4) Anyone who can produce a cd of whatever version of windows they have/had and runs another OS, Microsoft should be *FORCED* to pay the customer back. Windows refund day, with a vengance.
5) Any vendor "wronged thru contracts" should be allowed to find out what other OEM's payed and get money back for being royally screwed.
6) Knowing the 'hell' the SAMBA team goes thru with each new version of windows either:
a) Full and complete publishing of the source code to CIFS/SMB so that SAMBA can be fully integrated into a windows network quickly OR
b) have Microsoft code it for the team and submit the changes to the SAMBA team.
7) Inclued the past sins of the 1995 consent decree and allow the "de-integration" or outright *removal* of Outlook, Internet Explorer, Windows media player, whatever their IM client is (anything I missed?)...not removal from the add/remove panel, or the Oulook-sneak where it just get rid of the icons and leave the entire exe and other files behind. REMOVE the wholed damn thing, exe's and dll's that are not crucial.
8) Heavy fines or non-voting stock in Novell, Redhat and/or Apple(again). And whoever else was harmed in the past 10+ years by the anticompetitive actions (ignore ineptitude of some of the competitors, or not, business decisions).
9) I'm sure there is a contract lawyer who can point out the BS of "shrink wrap" licenses, do so while we are at it, on MS's tab. Why? see #4, again, because if you can be reamed by clicking I agree, what happens if you click "I disagree", humm? Can't get a refund...sorry, don't work that way (or should not). Too many catch 22's with software if it does not work or is a digital lemon (can't make lemonaide, DMCA forbids it I am certain).
Thoughts? Suggestions? Penguin Mint(tm)?
Let's face facts, you can't change history, but you can influence the future.
Man, 3 more "steps" and it would have been a 12 step process. Heh, MA (Microsoft Anonymous).
Cheers,
GISboy
If it is not on fire, it is a software problem.
Babelfish translation, BORG -> ENGLISH
"That was cheap, not just for us but for all the collective", speaker Gates said, "We will soon forget it." 4LL UR BASE R B3LL0N6 2 US. END TRANSMISION yyyyyyyyyy!?????? -TCP/MSXML CONTAINER zzzt - error 2012867 -
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
One word, four letters:
Cash.
I am BelDion's
Here's my letter to the DOJ:
I've owned a computer dealership since before IBM sold personal computers. I'm also a programmer.
Microsoft is extemely abusive and anti-competitive. -- Microsoft is far, far more anti-competitive and abusive than the US DOJ vs. Microsoft antitrust case discusses. If the present case in resolved in an insufficient fashion, there will be a need for another case immediately.
Secret file formats are anti-competitive. -- A good partial resolution of the case would be to prohibit Microsoft from using secret file formats. Then there could be competition again.
At present there cannot be competition because the software from the dominant company, Microsoft, produces file formats that cannot be reproduced because they are secret. So, another company cannot make software that reliably inter-operates.
At present, if a big customer upgrades to a new version of Microsoft Office, and sends out files in a format incompatible with previous versions, all people who receive the files are forced to upgrade their Microsoft software. Companies understandably don't want to go to a good customer and ask that a document be sent again in a former file format.
Microsoft produces software that is deliberately faulty. -- Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME all have articifial limitations which cause them to crash even though there are plenty of hardware resources. These are called "User Resources" and "GDI Resources". The memory for these resources is artificially limited to 128,000 bytes in some cases and 2 megabytes in other cases. When these resources are exhausted, the operating systems stop functioning.
Microsoft deliberately allows piracy. -- Major competitors of Microsoft like Corel Word Perfect and IBM Lotus WordPro have difficulty competing because Microsoft allows enough piracy of Microsoft products that competitors cannot sell theirs.
I called the Microsoft legal department and complained about this. The result was that I was a witness in a case against one of the pirates. More recently I tried to complain about this again, but it is now impossible to contact Microsoft's legal department.
In my area Microsoft Office 2000 is available for $50.00 at dealers who sell low-cost computers. I have verified with Microsoft that these are pirated copies. Over a period of many years, Microsoft has not taken sufficient action against the pirates to allow a chance for honest competitors.
Microsoft is ending support. -- Next month, December 2001, Microsoft will stop providing support for Windows 98, apparently in an attempt to force users to upgrade. Another good partial resolution of the DOJ-Microsoft case would be to extend the support time for at least another 10 years. Many people have computers that operate fine for the purpose for which they are used. For example, an accounting department in a small company may use Windows 95, or even the DOS operating system. These people should not be forced to upgrade.
These are only a few of the extremely anti-competitive and abusive methods Microsoft uses, in my opinion.
Regards,
Michael Jennings
An explanation of how the U.S. got involved in violence: What should be the Response to Violence?
Bush's education improvements were
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
...and I'll say it again. You have, on the one hand, a goverment that really wants to be able to bug electronic communications. On the other hand, a monopoly software company that controls 99.999% of desktops in the world. Now, the software company owes the government a favour so....
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
OK... Thanks....
Shouldn't the e-mail address been
microsoft.atr@msn.usdoj.gov
?
Just curious.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
The kiddie-pool section of /. is linked to your left somewhere... Go play there, and let the big-boys troll... Thank-You
It never even PRETENDED to support standards, its CSS was mediocre at best, it used the <layer> tag for DHTML, instead of the W3C specified DOM properties (which IE MAINLY adhered to, even in the 4.0 days), and in general, was a bastard to code for. Take it from someone who has worked in the industry, everyone HATES coding websites for NS4.
Mozilla is now superior to IE in alot of ways, but its is too little far too late. While NS was releasing stupid add-on patches to its piece of crap (How many sub versions / bugfixes to NS4 are there? 4.0,4.01,4.04,4.5,4.74,4.75,4.76,4.77, etc. etc.), Microsoft was releasing IE5 and IE5.5, with much enhanced functionality. Sure, we all hate MS, but at least give them some credit. Netscape became overconfident in its market share, and stopped innovating. They are at least partially responsible for their own demise.
I would want to have a big review commitee, made up of people from all the states in the suit, so you have a nice big committee of 50 or 60 people, to pass on Micorsoft Decisions _in advance_.
Micromanage the hell out of them. Hire IRS agents to do the auditing. You get the idea.
If Microsoft is on Probation, then run a _tough_ probation program
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
More importantly, the DoJ has set up an email address where citizens can send comments about the case: microsoft.atr@usdoj.gov.
Important! At the end of the month the email address will be discontinued because of a domain name shift. The new email address will be usdoj@microsoft.gov
You're absolutely right. Netscape 4 was (and still is) terrible.
But this isn't because Netscape chose to stop innovating, any more than a drowning victim chooses to stop breathing.
Let's rewind history and put you in charge of Netscape circa early 1998. Your largest competitor is giving away free work-alikes to all of your flagship products, and they've got enough money to keep doing this (and to keep stealing any new features you add) indefinitely. Meanwhile, you've got to focus on fixing bugs AND adding features, but with your company's slipping revenues, the best you can do isn't even going to keep pace with what's needed. You simply don't have the money to do proper development and QA.
Netscape failed because Microsoft purposefully, aggressively, and illegally cut off its air supply.
That they left out the part about the large burlap sack with the dollar sign on the front of it.
You can e-mail the DOJ and tell them what you didn't like about the case. I think my tax paying DOJ dollars should have been going after OBL after the first WTC bombing. It might have averted 9-11. I don't like how some of my friends have lost jobs from MS, especially the chameleon PPP group, but I look at how important it was to keep an eye on these terrorist networks now. I worry about my loved one's everyday.
I read the settlement. It is great for Microsoft, and almost meaningless for everyone else.
The provisions don't begin until many people have been pushed into using Windows XP (eXtra Pain), after which they will be trapped in ways that are not part of the case. Here is a quote:
"Starting at the earlier of the release of Service Pack 1 for Windows XP or 12 months after the submission of this Final Judgment to the Court..."
Why not starting now?
Microsoft must disclose APIs, but may charge royalties. This prevents competition from Linux.
There is nothing which prevents Microsoft from using secret Microsoft Office file formats in an anti-competitive way.
The settlement provisions apparently do not apply if Microsoft claims that its anti-competitive software practices provide security.
The provisions provide Microsoft significant benefits.
Bush's education improvements were
Please, only email messages that you believe to be intelligent if you know how to spell the word.
Jeez, guys. :)
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
Mod parent down. This is shallow and insightless nonsense & each of these points is easily rebutted (and has been frequently).
Actually, Netscape never made much of their money from the browser business -- they made their money from server sales. You complain about Microsoft giving away a browser, but Netscape did exactly the same thing. Your whole argument is really baseless and poorly informed. I'd suggest reading the briefs from the case if you're looking for the truth. It's annoying to have to refute the same tripe over and over.
* First...Netscape ignored small ISPs as potential distributors of Netscape's Web browsing software, effectively ceding that territory to Microsoft for a long time. Through working with those smaller ISPs, Microsoft learned useful information about the ISP business and the needs of ISPs and also obtained valuable feedback about Internet Explorer and the IEAK.
* Second, Netscape lost its reputation as the supplier of cutting-edge Internet technologies. Netscape's Web browsing software is simply not as good as it used to be relative to the competition, with versions 3.0 and 4.0 of Internet Explorer winning the majority of reviews.
* Third, Netscape made the strange decision to de-emphasize its established "Navigator" brand name and emphasize a new "Communicator" brand name, despite the widespread association of Navigator with Web browsing software generally. When you have a brand name rapidly becoming as well known as Band-Aid or Kleenex, you do not wisely abandon or de-emphasize it.
* Fourth, Netscape invested significant time and money going into competition with IBM's Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange in the enterprise messaging business, a field in which Netscape had no product experience and was entirely unprepared for the rigorous quality and product support requirements of large corporate customers.
* Fifth, Netscape continued to change its corporate direction every six months, to the extent that nobody was quite sure what kind of company it was. Initially, Netscape was a Web browsing software company; then it was a Web server software company; then it was an intranet company; then it was an extranet company, then it was an enterprise messaging company; then it was an electronic commerce company; then it was a portal Web site company. That sort of corporate identity crisis is unsettling to business partners like ISPs, which look for stability and consistency. Furthermore, these changes in corporate direction also made for changes in priorities that caused Netscape to focus much less on ISPs.
* Sixth, Netscape implemented its referral server program in ways that concerned ISPs. The focus of ISP Select, accessible only by going to Netscape's Web site, made it primarily a tool for switching ISPs and not acquiring new long term users. Although this may have provided advantages to end user customers, from an ISP perspective, it was not a good thing because each ISP's profitability is heavily dependent on maintaining customers for a sufficiently long period of time in order to recover its initial acquisition costs. In addition, Netscape favored large telecommunication companies over smaller entrepreneurial ISPs in the way it set up its ISP Select program.
* Seventh, and perhaps most importantly, Netscape sought to charge ISPs very high prices for distributing Netscape's Web browsing software. Given the highly competitive nature of the ISP business, it was not economically viable for ISPs to pay such prices. Seeking to gouge ISPs was shortsighted, and encouraged them to explore alternatives. Instead of attempting to gouge ISPs, Netscape should have distributed its Web browsing software and related tools for free and thereby promoted customer demand for other software and services that it offered.
While I agree with a bit of what you said, its definetly exagerating in certain points. Firstly IE5 had a few other patchs then you suggest, I recall a IE5.01 being in there and some other additions. IE has its share of problems, in terms of security, I believe we saw one the other week in which you have to turn off scripting (doh, there goes all those DHTML websites), but its not as serious as it may seem, so overall your view is correct.
As for lack of innovation being NS down fall? That may be true but that overlooks the point the previous poster made, and that is, why didnt microsoft sell it seperately? If they're product were so innovative and so good, why didnt they sell it? In the end what that means, is that users conveniently had the best product on the market for free making an even steeper hill for Netscape to climb, making it less possible for Netscape to survive off of the browser (as a matter of a fact any customer). The only reason to do such a thing is dominance, and such a practice is anti-competitive, and the issue here is not so much they gave it away, its that they gave it away in their OS.
disclaimer : My views do not represent those of every one else in slashdot.
This is a complex economic issue. It's not as simple as "the only reason to bundle is dominance, so it's anticompetitive." Take a look at _Antitrust_ by Areeda sometime -- this stuff is *really* tricky; some of these cases just boggle the mind.
Let's rewind history and put you in charge of Netscape circa early 1998.
:)
OK, by now Netscape v5.0 has been in development for 2 years. I would do what was necessary to finish it. I would not completely dump working code and then appeal to the "Open Source" community to come and write a browser for my company thus ensuring that I wouldn't have a product for 3 more years. (I would also sell out to AOL
If your company is not extemely abusive and anti-competitive, you have nothing to fear from the DOJ.
You are right, Windows 98 full support will stop in 7 months, not 1 month.
From the Langa Newsletter, Nov. 15, 2001:
"Starting next month and ending next June, the overwhelming majority of current Windows users will find themselves operating OS versions that the vendor --- Microsoft --- either doesn't support, or only partially supports! " [my emphasis]
(The Langa Newsletter is an excellent free emailed newsletter that covers matters of interest to computer users.)
An explanation of how the U.S. got involved in violence: What should be the Response to Violence?
Bush's education improvements were
And we didn't do it on Windows ME, we
did it in raw assembly language and C programming
our own operating systems. Do you think the
F-16 uses VB? We provided the resources
to fight this war a long time ago. Yes, the
government should listen to us, just like
they should listen to the makers of the H-Bomb
during the cold war. Yes, microsoft hurts
American technology workers by monopolistic
practices.
The government works for American citizens,
not Pakistani citizens. Foreign nationals
should write to their countries departments
of justice. European Community, for instance,
is looking at MSFT monoply practices.
It never even PRETENDED to support standards, its CSS was mediocre at best, it used the tag for
DHTML, instead of the W3C specified DOM prope...
How many times must I say this.... The w3c isn't the web stanards board. What they say is completely meaningless. There never have been and never will be any standards for html.
As a dystopian, I'm actually quite happy the DOJ has graced Gate's bum with their lips.
You have to admit that this settlement is a big shot in the arm for all the people worldwide who consider the USA to be a feeble, corrupt, greed-based police state that mouths the words "Liberty, Freedom, Justice" as though they still had some meaning somewhere in the world.
Next time the USA critisizes some other countries political or humanitarian policies, all they have to say is "Bill Gates and George Bush! Don't tell us about corruption and justice!"
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Read it and weep. It's _totally_ lame.
"Nothing in this document shall prohibit Micro$oft from....."
http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f9400/9495.htm
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
the government probably did this: /dev/null /var/mail/microsoft.atr
ln -s
;p
Proof that if you are determined to find things to criticize, you will find them, even if you have to twist the facts.
Wow. You claim he twists the "facts" and write a long diatribe which only severs to prove his point. I particularly enjoy the reference to '60s civil rights for blacks used as a straw man in defense for federal civil rights abuses today. Never mind that it was progressives who took those billy clubs to the heads, got arrested, and at times were even killed in defense of our democratic principles. Considering that even many serious conservatives agree with the previous poster that the list of power grabs by the current administration is detremental to our civil liberties, are you willing to claim that they are "knee-jerk" and in need of "education"as well? As an example of the two most serious of abuses, Bush's new kangaroo courts and the Justice Department's claims at Lawyer-Client privilege, both William Saffire and Bill Kristol have written editorials lambasting these decisions with very similar arguments as the previous poster wrote.
In being an apologist for the executive branch -- not necessarily conservative ideology, since there is so much dissent on these issues among both progressive and conservative ranks -- does intellectual rigor in your arguments matter?
Just curious....
I am so glad that hopefully that the software industry will no longer be plagued with these appeals that have gone on forever. Hopefully we can put this all behind us and stop whinging about it.
:-) ), but I still think maybe we should be giving them a fair go.
But to be honest, what did Microsoft do so wrong in the first place? Did they stop people making other operating systems? No. Did they prevent people from making software for their operating system? No. Did they include some useful software with the OS? Yes.
Come on, lets get serious. When using Windows, who would use anything other than Internet Explorer to browse the web? I know its not perfect, but its pretty good, relative to the other "competitors" - that is Mozilla and Netscape (-or should that be Mozilla/Netscape?). No this is not flamebait, its just the truth. Mozilla is open-source yet is still unresponsive, slow, crashes all the time, displays odd behaviour [well so does IE, but not to this extent]. Even with the source "open" for the community to improve it still doesn't compete - yet. (No disrespect to all Mozilla users [I am one] or developers)
I'll use the analogy I heard someone else use on Slashdot, because it is an excellent one. Car makers aren't sued for including stereos on their cars are they? Even though their are better ones available from other companies. But most people think that is "good enough" so they don't buy them. That isn't anti-competitive.
Same with Internet Explorer. Except, in this case, there isn't anything better. So, why arent we seeing these kind of cases against Ford / Holden / Toyota?
I would bet that if Netscape went ahead and created a commercial OS and built Netscape into it no one would be complaining. So isn't this a little biased towards the "big company"?
I'm no fan of MS (in fact, I primarily use FreeBSD and a little Linux (GNU/Linux
Netscape 4 was released in 1997.
When Netscape 4 was released they HAD 80% OF THE FRICKING MARKETPLACE!
Get rid of your bullshit and start waking up to the truth.
"In my area Microsoft Office 2000 is available for $50.00 at dealers who sell low-cost computers. I have verified with Microsoft that these are pirated copies. Over a period of many years, Microsoft has not taken sufficient action against the pirates to allow a chance for honest competitors."
Hmmm...if this is true: As little as I can remember from copyright law, I do believe that if you don't enforce your copyright when being made aware of a breach - you FORFEIT it.
If I remember correctly, and if this is true, Microsoft Office would be freely redistributable without any fear of punishment.
Don't bet the farm yet, though. Does anyone know anything about this? There's a reason I'm posting as a mere anonymous coward.
Has mentioned the fact that MicroSoft was the number 4 contributer to both Bush and Gore in the last Presidential election. Is it any wonder that the Bush Justice Department let them off with such a watered down worthless agreement.
Wrong. There were people who paid for it - they were called corporations. Microsoft's illegal behavior removed this critcal revenue stream from Netscape's business. In the first 2 years Navigator accounted for no less than 75& of their revenue. Those revenues quickly disappeared once once the now-convicted monopolist realized Netscape was a signifigant threat. Jim Barksdark explained the situation to other business leaders by asking to imagine having to replace 75% of their revenue in less than 12 months. Then he would point out that Netscape had succeeded in doing this (at least in showing Wall Street growing total revenue from quarter to quarter).
Please, moderators, ignore this post.
If the poster of the parent comment sees this, will they please post more details to the discussion? Depending on the details, this could be an excellent example to include in an email to the DOJ address.
Chris
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
How about this -- Netscape's document.layers and JSS were so buggy and broken that they couldn't convince anyone to use them. That plus bucking the W3C equals disaster.
(Nobody's going to code for NS6's DOM either [least of all because there are no docs], but at the very least they can say that they did what the W3C told them.)
As an ex-netscape software engineer I can testify this is dead bang on. You only have to look at the first code base the mozilla project released (sanitized 4.X code) for a few minutes to realize what a mess it was.
People like to whine about how Netscape didn't have good CSS support as a example how IE beat on quality issue. Obviously people who believe this don't think about the practical matters of software development.
I'll check that out when I get some time, but still I'd like to note I'm not refering to just the bundling of it, I'm also refering to the fact that IE was a better product, and I doubt Microsoft was thinking about economics when it was making up its mind to give away IE. There is also equally complex issues in standards, Microsoft is still in a rather dominant position with reguard to a number of standards, and in that they can destroy or squash as much innovation as they can create. There is also other things at issue here as well, with reguard to trust, for example IE and NS are not a big issue to me, and neither is the upcoming WMP (Windows Media Player) and RM (Real Media), in those particular cases I dont care for either of them because in most cases I dont really trust them, on the other hand I do trust open source software (I am a programming and can look at the source code), and by trust I mean in the security of my system, not necesarily in stability, on the other hand with Microsoft and the likes you dont have any idea what they are putting in your system, and with the advent of software putting spyware in your system the issue is becoming much larger in the coming years. Anyway thanks for the info, although I am not sure what you mean by economic issues, I suppose I will have to read that to find out...
disclaimer : My views do not represent those of every one else in slashdot.
Well, when I started working at Netscape they made over 75% of their revenues from the Navigator. The revenue from this fell over the next year to practically nothing due to price pressures from people saying they'd switch to IE. At the end of this transition most of their revenues were from server sales (and the portal renveue really started ramping up during this period too).
I like the idea with one change: they either support it or they have to release the source. Their choice.
Your letter has some glaring problems:
Microsoft is far, far more anti-competitive and abusive than the US DOJ vs. Microsoft antitrust case [usdoj.gov] discusses.
If it is beyond the scope of the case then it is beyond the scope of the remedy. The findings of fact and law have been affirmed by the Appeals court and if the remedy doesn't follow those findings them Microsoft has valid ground for yet another appeal.
Secret file formats are anti-competitive. -- A good partial resolution of the case would be to prohibit Microsoft from using secret file formats. Then there could be competition again.
This case wasn't about Office. In fact Microsoft has a monopoly in both areas and therefore can't (by definition) use a monopoly in one area to GAIN a monopoly in the other. I don't believe there was anything in the findings about file formats and if not then applying those in a remedy would likely get it overturned in appeals. Sorry.
Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME all have articifial limitations which cause them to crash even though there are plenty of hardware resources. These are called "User Resources" and "GDI Resources". The memory for these resources is artificially limited to 128,000 bytes in some cases and 2 megabytes in other cases. When these resources are exhausted, the operating systems stop functioning.
These aren't arbitrary limits. There are valid technical reasons (regardless of how ugly the solution was) for them being there (namely the use of the Win16 GDI layer as the drawing engine in Win9x). These restrictions no longer exist in WinXP so your argument here is quite a joke.
What sort of programmer are you?
Microsoft deliberately allows piracy.
So I take it you support their moves for product activation?
Seriously, this is a stupid comment. Microsoft are perfectly within their rights not to prosecute every report of piracy they find, just as you are within your rights not to press charges over someone trespassing on your property. What are you really asking for here?
Microsoft is ending support.
This is a standard business practice. All businesses define an end of life for a product and try to get consumers to move to the next version in line. You can't support an old product forever and NOTHING is stopping a company from continuing to use the software. You are not forced to upgrade, the company just doesn't provide a particular service for your software any more.
In the end, it seems what you are trying to do is introduce new facts to a case which has already had those findings affirmed by the Appeals Court. Perhaps you would be far better off pushing for a new trial with these ideas of yours rather than somehow introducing them into the remedy which would almost certainly result in a successful appeal from Microsoft should they be addressed.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage."
--Lord Alexander Tyler on the fall of the Athenian republic
I figure in the face of this and the recent Anti-Terrorist Bill (the signing of which has scared me more than Bin Laden and Anthrax combined) that we are on our merry way back to bondage. The good thing is that the first to be lined up and shot will be those stupid green fuckers who were so high on pot and their rose tinted hippie glasses that they voted for Nader in the last election.
Hey, you think your house is cool?
While some of you are calling for MS to open their various file formats to the OpenSource movement, let's call on a few others since they are being anti-competitive too. McDonalds - Give up the BigMac secret sauce ingrediants. KFC - Yep, time for the secret recipe to be put up at SourceForge. Taco Bell - Don't really want the recipe, just wanna know what the hell is in the taco meat. Orange Cleaner - Come on, it can't just be oranges.
My sig of choice is Marlboro
Sounds like a good idea. Glad you suggested it.
Microsoft gave $1m to the Republican Party. End of story.
Oops, looks like I forgot to take my anti-cynicism tablets this morning.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
An overpriced, mediocre product. No wonder the USG rushed to settle -- they're soul mates.
It is sad, that even with their billions of
dollars, the leaders of Microsoft are so afraid
of free software.
What does it profit a man to gain the world
if he is constantly afraid someone will take
back some samll piece.
Perhaps, one day, they will grow up and realize
God has given us everything we need, and the
scarcity is an illusion born of fear.
Greetings,
In light of the previous findings of fact, that Microsoft is a monopoly, I would like to
propose that all Microsoft dealings be readily available for public scrutiny.
This should be a part of any settlement with Microsoft.
More specifically, all contracts in effect between Microsoft and other
companies should be a matter of public record--in both existence and precise details.
This includes, but is not limited to, partnerships, joint ventures, acquisitions, and product sales.
Furthermore, the contracts should be available on a Microsoft funded website overseen
by the DOJ. The DOJ should ensure that the site is
- complete
- accurate
- well organized
- searchable
- continuously available
- responsive
- optionally downloadable as a single archive
Sincerely,
Curt Cox
IE was a better product
IE 1.0 was just a repackaged Mosaic. IE 2.0 was buggy as all hell. IE 3.0 was finally useable, though it lacked many of Netscape's features. IE 4.0 was useable *and* copied Netscape's features.
Microsoft has often been compared to the Borg from Star Trek; this is an excellent example of it. They adapt. They can't be stopped. You might win a few battles against them for a while, but they learn from what you're doing, and eventually your tactics stop working against them.
If Microsoft had been the size of Netscape, and had to deal with earning revenues and winning accounts just like Netscape did, then this would have been a fair fight -- but since Microsoft never had to concern itself at all with actually earning money from IE to sustain its development, since they had near-infinite money to throw at it from Windows revenue, it was inevitable that it would eventually become better software than Netscape.
An excellent point. Of course, Word was already involved in a scam, so maybe Microsoft didn't want mix them up.
MS Word is part of Microsoft's scam of predatory pricing. I wrote an article for MacKiDo a few years ago that is still relevant today. In it, I discussed how Microsoft was pricing the components in Office to bury the competition.
For example, if you buy Word, Excel, or PowerPoint individually, you pay $379 each. So if you want Word and Excel, shell out $758. But, for $459, you get Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Entourage, and a helluva lot of clipart. So no one in their right mind would buy an office product by itself, and no one can release a product that competes with any product in the Office suite.
I feel sorry for PowerOn Software. They worked pretty hard making improvements to Now up to date (their contact manager suite), but they'll have very little luck getting anyone to buy it for two reasons: (1) Entourage is bundled with Office and (2) Microsoft Exchange Server requires Entourage for an email client (or the older Outlook for Mac). So Power On is in the same situation as Netscape; they have to charge for something (to stay in business) that MS has decided to give away for free.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
Let's get serious MS managed to defeat NeXT and Apple in the 1980's. Apple had a real GUI and an easy to use system, MS had DOS, NeXT was selling their cube in 1987 which was sold for as much as a highed pc but had many more capabilities. Hmm lets see on technical merits can dos or even WIN3.1 stand up to the Mac OS or NeXT which was a GUI on unix with some of the neatest features of the time, better processor, real gui graphics, multitasking, multithreading, superior programming environment, and a core with UNIX goodness. I really do not see how but it comes down to thee word. MONOPOLY POWER ABUSE.
I think that one of the requirment of a settlment involving Microsoft is that they should be required to publish ALL of their file formats and protocols used to transfer any sort of data between computers.
These protocols should include such things as their SMB protocols, and their broken version of Kerberos.
As far as file formats, they need to publish the specs for all their office formats. This should not need to include such files as the PST file for Outlook and or the data files for their servers such as SQL Server which aren't intended to be moved to another computer and accessed by another person.
Two points:
We never seriously considdered implementing anything other than CSS once the decision to rewrite the layout engine was made. Again, I don't think your point is valid since the the "proprietary crap" solution was born exactly because engineering resources were stretched thin.
IE 6 and NS6 both have the same DOM, so you are totally wrong. IE6 just has some extra proprietary extentions (like transtitional effects, etc.), but so does NS6 (XUL). 99% of websites will work fine on both, as long as they are coded properly and do not purposelly alienate one browser (a-la MSN.com).
Now, I just need to figure out what to tell them!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
that the settlement was a lot simpler than people let on?
After all that went on over the past several years it come down to:
The DOJ bends over and shouts "Windows ME! Windows ME! Windows ME!"
Because when you think about it (with a warped spin on reality) "Fsck ME!" and "Windows ME" really have the same ring to them.
Ah, the power of integration.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Gee, God forbid that somebody actually throw their money around to improve their software. I mean, anticompetitive practices and such are all well and good, but when a software company starts improving their software, that's where we need to draw the line.
What does a "fair fight" have to do with anything? There's no law (or common sense) that says that you have to lower the playing field so that everyone can get on. Your argument generally says that "because NS couldn't match the pace of IE's improvement, IE should have been reined in until such a time that they were equal again." Isn't this the same
If you want to complain about monopolistic practices, go ahead. But claiming that there's something wrong with building a better browser is ridiculous.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Does atr stand for anti-trust or atrocity? You decide! Send your e-mail votes in now.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Below is a copy of the letter which I sent to the Department of Justice.
---
Dear Department of Justice:
I have read the recent ruling and proposed resolution to the Microsoft anti-trust case. It is my strong belief that the proposed remedy will have almost NO IMPACT on the current market abuses by Microsoft.
There are three items in the proposed remedy that need to be brought to light:
- Microsoft was given a similar ruling in 1995 to disallow the bundling of Internet Explorer and Windows, in an attempt to prevent Microsoft from illegally leveraging its Desktop OS monopoly into the Web Browser market. Six years later, we see that Internet Explorer has over 90% of the web browser market. The Department of Justice FAILED to prevent Microsoft from illegally extending its monopoly into the Web browser market.
- Microsoft has dealings with OEMs which prevent them from installing any other operating system except for Windows on a new PC. The proposed remedy makes it more difficult for Microsoft to continue doing this. However, the issue that it fails to address is this: What other operating system would OEMs install? There could have been an opportunity two years ago to help out Be, Inc. gain a foothold with its superb desktop OS, but they are gone now due to Microsoft's abuse. This leaves Linux, (which is either a toy for hobbiest geeks or a server operating system), or OS/2. It's doubtful that OEMs would want to install either of these on a desktop PC. Thus we see that the Department of Justice IS FAILING to prevent Microsoft from continually reaping the benefits of its past illegal behaviour.
- The proposed remedy makes a provision to force Microsoft to disclose protocols to qualified 3rd parties for the purpose of interacting with its software. This alone could have been the single most important part of the remedy, if it hadn't been de-clawed by the "Security" except granted later on. Microsoft can propose that its implementation of the SMB / NetBIOS protocol uses password encryption, whose protocol cannot be published due to security concerns. Therefore, Microsoft will continue to keep that protocol a secret, and use it to enchance interoperability between Windows systems and destroy / eliminate interoperability with non-Microsoft systems. (such as Unix / Samba) The security clause in the remedy MUST BE REMOVED, or the Department of Justice WILL FAIL to prevent Microsoft from leveraging its desktop monopoly into a communications protocol monopoly.
Thus we see how the Department of Justice has failed, is currently failing, and will continue to fail to protect the industry from Microsoft, unless the proposed remedy is altered significantly to address past abuses, current abuses, and future abuses that inevitably will happen. I propose the following:
- Microsoft be forced to disclose _every_ protocol used for communication between two PCs, or between two separate services or programs on a single PC. This disclosure will be UNCONDITIONAL, regardless of the protocol's intended or actual use. (Note that this will not require the disclosure of encryption keys.) The availability documentation for said protocols must be prominently displayed on http://www.microsoft.com, and endorsed as enthusiastically as the current flagship product. The documentation must be available for free download in a simple, open format (such as HTML 1.0, or plain text), and must also be available for hardcopy , costing no more than the printing and shipping cost.
- Microsoft be forced to not make _any restriction whatsoever_ on the freedom of OEMs to modify, change, add to or delete from the hard drive of the system which they sell. OEMs must be given the ability to modify any and all parts of the PCs hard drive, regardless of whether that section of the hard drive contains a Microsoft product or a non-Microsoft product.
- To address the benefits that Microsoft currently enjoys due to past abuses: Microsoft be forced to make known the availablity of competing software products. (such as Red Hat Linux, Sun StarOffice, and Opera Software) The method by which Microsoft makes these products known shall be up to them, provided that they, at a minimum, display a link to at least one competing product on their home page for EACH of their own products featured on the same homepage. The link to the competing product must be as prominent and enthusiastically displayed as the link to Microsoft's own product. This specific remedy shall be in place for 3 years.
While it is doubtful that my proposed changes would have a significant impact on the Desktop OS monopoly, it would raise awareness of the availabily of competing products and ensure that those products are able to interoperate with Microsoft's. It is my hope that the Department of Justice will consider these changes and avoid falling into the same pitfall which they previously have, are currently, and are about to fall into.
Sincerely,
(name removed to protect the innocent)
To Whom It May Concern,
.wav files for your logon is nice, a help system all but required, it is possible to have these without bundling applications as Microsoft has.
.wav files. It ships a crippled Wordpad, not the latest Microsoft Word.
The opinions expressed herein are my opinions and are not influenced or the responsibility of my employer.
I would like to point out the difference between an operating system, and operating system distribution. For this analogy I would like to use Linux. For Linux, the operating system is the kernel. The kernel is the heart and soul of the operating system, the kernel provides functionality to manage computing resources. It manages the hardware, aka the CPU and RAM memory. It provides very basic building blocks - semaphores, mutexes, memory allocation, and communications to external devices. This is a kernel.
By design, an operating system kernel can also talk to additional devices - Hard Drives, CD-ROMS, sound cards, Ethernet cards, USB devices, PCI bus controllers, etc. However, all these components are merely drivers that use the core functionality of the kernel to accomplish communications with these devices.
Most Operating system bundles come with lots of drivers, because there is a lot of hardware to talk to, and not being able to talk to a hard drive leaves one with an operating system that only sits in an idle loop on the CPU, because it can load no useful programs or drivers from a storage device.
Most operating system bundles also come with lots of Protocol drivers, such as TCP/IP (the protocol under HTTP/Web) services, USB, Firewire, Bluetooth, Wirelsess LAN, UDP, SNMP, etc. Wait, Microsoft doesn't provide all of those. Many of them you install when you install a PCI card that provides the underlying hardware functionality. In fact when I installed my new motherboard, I overrode all the Windows drivers for the PCI bus, with those supplied by the manufacturer. I did this casually, without effort, no complaints from Windows2000, and Windows2000 did not try to use its default drivers, ever again.
So far, I have limited my description to the operating system kernel and hardware drivers. These could be viewed as essential for using the hardware that a PC has. As of yet I have made no mention of applications. Applications which operate through drivers and the kernel to gather, store, retrieve and manipulate digital information.
To be fair some applications belong in an operating system bundle. The TaskManager is an excellent example. This application talks to the kernel and allows the user to inspect and, if desired remove, processes running on the computer. Could someone write a TaskManager for windows? Yes, if they wanted to reverse engineer the unpublished kernel API. Linux has an innovative task manager that operates like a first person shooting game, I have seen nothing of the sort for Windows.
Why do people buy Windows?
Mainly they buy it because it has a large library of applications that run on Windows.
What are these applications?
Until, say 1995 (prior to the web browsing phenomenon) the most popular app was the Office Suite. WordPerfect, Word, Lotus, and others fought long and hard for dominance. Did Microsoft EVER bundle Office with Windows - NO! Did Microsoft ever co-erce vendors to bundling Office with Windows, offering unbelievable deals? Why don't you ask Compaq, Dell and Gateway? I don't honestly know, but I seem remember a time when the original Microsoft Office was nearly as cheap and plentiful as water. Now Microsoft owns over 80% of the market and charges $400 for the basic edition.
Why are internet browsers and media players so different? They are all applications. While the Task Manager may be an essential application, playing
Software is infinitely flexible. If Microsoft wants to use HTML for the help system, this is fine. But the abiltiy to open HTML help files in no way requires the ability to open http://msn.com! The codec needed to play a wav file, is completely independent from the one needed for proprietary Windows MediA (WMA) files. Microsoft has gone a long way to provided needed functionality: a pluggable digital media player, configurable device drivers, standardized and extensible HTML rendering engines. Windows even has Wordpad, which can edit basic Word documents, even though there are few, if any files in the operating system bundle in Word format.
I can replace a faulty hardware driver, I can install a more secure TCP/IP stack, but I can't replace the HTML rendering engine, no one makes one, and no one can, because the full API is probably not available. I can only install my custom engine alongside the Microsoft one, and explicitly open my browser. However, the next email worm can still exploit any holes in the Microsoft engine.
Microsoft is clearly bundling its way into lockin, and the remedy does nothing, possibly protecting the lockin under the guise of security.
Microsoft is playing us for idiots, it ships full versions Windows Media Player, instead of one that only plays
If Microsoft wants to bundle applications then give us everything! I want the Office Professional and don't stop with Solitaire, I want Civilization III and all the others as well. Bundle me that for just $300.
---- Smokin' another sig.
I have a novel solution...
MSFT likes to bundle stuff with windows. Why not force them to do so.
Cap the price at $300 and force them to bundle Office Pro (to replace Wordpad) and all of the Microsoft games (to sit alongside Solitaire). The full version of Outlook (instead of the weak Express edition).
Wouldn't that bundle benefit the consumer! (*insert evil smirk*)
---- Smokin' another sig.
When reading this I am strongly reminded of a lesson I learned back in 8th grade history. See, in early America, there weren't all the laws that protect companies now. Monopolies and trusts abounded. Big companies trounced little ones.
A specific example (well not specific enough, it was way back in 8th grade ya know) was the steel industry. The big monopoly in the steel industry stayed that way. Why? When someone else came along they would undersell the startup, who couldn't afford to keep up. Then big monopoly raised it's prices again and continued making money without competition.
This situation has many analogies, but also differences. The situation was just a few years ago when the internet was taking off with a bang. Netscape was (nearly) the only player in town. This was back when Netscape was version 2 mind you. Then Microsoft sees the internet is taking off and decides to take over. They toss some resources at throwing together an internet browser. They (of course) don't take as much effort as Netscape did, they just copy Netscape. Now there's a competiton. Over the course of few months, both Netscape and IE jumped a few major versions. To any lightly computer-savvy individiual, it's clear that the rate these improvements were coming out, the code behind them was sloppy. The products just needed something else to have a chance at catching the consumer.
So, bloat, bloat, bloat, feature here feature there. Then MS turns IE free. BAM end of development. NS can't afford to continue. MS slowly recoups IE as a decent product since they are of course still around and NS has turned around like a hurt puppy licking it's wounds. NS is crap just like IE is crap because they were very rapidly thrown together, then the potential profit from increasing the quality fell to near zero.
Health is simply dying at the slowest rate possible.
Don't waste your breath with the DOJ -- they have already signed away the public's rights and are legally bound to support the settlement.
Instead write to the Court, during the period for public comments, which is all that is left between today and Microsoft's next to final "out." Even if you do not compel the Court to refuse to ratify the settlement, under a standard VERY favorable to Microsoft, this will be the same judge to hear the penalty phase in the case with the remaining states. As a human being, she will remember what you tell her.
The DOJ box is a diversion. Write there as well, if you like, but only after you have registered your thoughtful comments with the Court.
I'm not to savy on IEs history (I came in about 3.0) but I would think what you said is correct, as it sounds just like the history of Direct3D, except D3D started at about DX version 2 or 3, and later versions copied OpenGL, and now it surpasses it in some respects (but not all).
They are not unstoppable, especially considering that the final clenching feature any piece of software could have is open source. Once innovation drys up and newer versions of the software are becoming less important, opening the source can reinvigorate any software product (provided there is a sufficient amount of freedom in distribution).
It should also be noted that the secondary clenching feature any software could have is a low price (free as in beer). And that can make the crappiest products better then the highest quality products. Giving it away for free, set a standard that Netscape had serious trouble meeting, no doubt.
disclaimer : My views do not represent those of every one else in slashdot.
"This might be a good way for Slashdotters to do their civic duty."
/.
send'em links to the ms antitrust discussions archived here on
with simple instructions for score-filtering.
--oxomoxo
plan:"wait for the spaceship which will take me back to my people"
Let's play a game of Monopoly, as in the board game. Except that you're just starting out, so you have nothing, while I get to use all the money I've earned in dozens of other games of Monopoly I've won.
We're both able to buy properties and build hotels, as long as we can pay for them, right? So this is totally fair, right?
I believe you are corrrect. There is a law of estoppel. If you deliberately don't enforce your rights, you cannot enforce them later. There may be something in copyright law that says that estoppel does not apply. However, Microsoft might lose their right to enforce the contract of their license, anyway, because of other issues.
I don't know the law in this case. Also, it would be necessary to prove that their lack of enforcement is deliberate and widespread.
Note that is why they had the court case in which I was a witness. The Microsoft operator gave me the legal department phone number, and I talked to someone there with little experience, extensively. They could not ignore this. I was VERY upset with them. There were 5 distributors in the area, and ALL of them were selling illegal copies of DOS. I made it VERY clear I thought their behavior was deliberate.
That may be why it is NOT possible to get the phone number of the legal department now. When I called to make a similar complaint about Microsoft Office 2000, they blocked me from telling my story.
An explanation of how the U.S. became the target of terrorism: What should be the Response to Violence?
Bush's education improvements were
The DOJ does use Exchange, but the INS uses cc: Mail (and Windows 95). Nothing like the cutting edge of technology...
Sorry, that one is good, too. This is the one I meant to point to.
f t. html
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.11/microso
Liberty uber alles.
From: * /dev/null
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Magius_AR
The following is my opinion. I have had extensive experience in supporting computer use by businesses, and it may be an opinion worth considering:
The Microsoft web page says that Windows 98 will only receive FULL support until June 30, 2002. After that date support will be limited. The limitations will have many effects that are not detailed on the web page. For example, if severe security bugs are found, Microsoft may refuse to fix them. This is a big issue with Microsoft products, because there have been so many security bugs in the past, literally hundreds.
Remember, this means that the great majority of people and companies will not be completely supported after June 2002. If they want complete support, they will be forced to go through the difficulties and re-retraining of an upgrade. They will also have to pay Microsoft more money.
Maybe the biggest effect of companies going to Windows XP is that they will eventually be forced onto the planned Microsoft treadmill, in which they will pay Microsoft money every month whether they upgrade or not, and whether Windows XP works or not. They will also be forced onto the Microsoft advertising and security treadmill, as Microsoft tries to pressure them ecomonically in any way it can.
Because Microsoft has, essentially, a monopoly, it has more extensive responsibilities. The law says this, but the law is not being enforced. Instead, Microsoft uses its power to cause a situation in which almost every arrangement is in some way bad for the buyer and good for Microsoft, the seller. It is an economic dictatorship. One-sided contracts have been found to be illegal in the past, but the courts don't understand the technical issues, so they aren't sure that the Microsoft contracts are one-sided.
Many companies use applications that work fine under Windows 98. When Windows 98 is used with only one or a very few applications, it may crash only once or twice a week, which depending on the applications, may be acceptable.
Companies that use Windows 98 with an accounting application, for example, may be growing and improving rapidly, but may be happy with their accounting methods. Such companies may not need or want to change software for a period of 10 years or more.
If you use a computer for your own personal needs, you may buy a new computer every 2 years. But try to put yourself in the frame of mind of a business manager. A computer owned by a business may be used for only one purpose, like data entry. With data entry, greater computer speed makes no difference. A company may simply not need to change this business method; the data entry computer is only one of many business tools.
The Microsoft web page talks about "Product Lifecycle". This is misleading. It is as though you have used the same stapler for 15 years, but Microsoft says you should buy a new one whenever Microsoft dictates, even though you don't need a new one. It is as though Hoover stopped selling bags for its older vacuum cleaners, and was somehow able to prevent others from supplying bags, also.
The larger issue is that Microsoft is saying it can dictate the use of its products after they are sold, and in an extremly prejudicial fashion. It is doing this by imposing numerous entirely artificial limitations.
Not all computers running an un-supported operating system will need support, of course. Also, the lack of support from Microsoft will no doubt cause the development of an un-official support network.
Monopolies are not in themselves bad or illegal. The conditions that make the Microsoft monopoly negative for the customer are: 1) Microsoft is often extremely adversarial to the needs of the customer if by doing so it believes it will make more money. Over the long term an abusive Microsoft will make less money, of course, because the company is gaining a very negative reputation. 2) Microsoft products are often sloppy about security. 3) Microsoft may have been compromised by the secret agenicies of the U.S. government. Microsoft software is sausage software; who knows what is in it?
These conditions are excellent for Linux. Unfortunately Linux is still much more difficult to configure.
An explanation of how the U.S. got involved in terrorism: What should be the Response to Violence?
Bush's education improvements were