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Sun Files Suit Against Microsoft for Anti-Trust Violations
Herve writes "Sun Microsystems announced it has filed a private antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft Corporation. The suit, filed March 8, 2002 in the United States District Court in San Jose, CA., seeks remedies for the harm inflicted by Microsoft's anticompetitive behavior with respect to the Java[tm] platform and for damages resulting from Microsoft's illegal efforts to maintain and expand its monopoly power. In June 2001, the Federal Court of Appeals found Microsoft guilty of illegally abusing its monopoly power with respect to Sun and the Java platform. Sun's suit seeks to redress the competitive and economic harm caused by Microsoft's illegal acts."
...the suit is also seeking access to the APIs used by Microsoft software and the IE source code.
Would be interesting to see if there are "hidden interfaces" exposed in the Windows API.
...the combined political payoffs of Microsoft's enemies will become greater than that of MS itself.
What a nice little thought.
Given the government spearheaded antitrust suits of the past (Ma Bell springs to mind) I'd say about 5-10 years. At which point the decision, one way or the other, will no longer matter.
El riesgo vive siempre!
Companies like Netscape and AOL and now Sun are just now all sueing MS simply because they have lost faith in the Justice Dept to hand down stiff penalties on Microsoft, so companies harmed by Microsoft are now seeking to send down their own penalties (as in most of these lawsuits will end in MS paying off the plaintiff).
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
that the DOJ has gotten 'orders' from higher-ups in the executive branch to "Let Msft Be free to Innovate" and get govt off the backs of big business.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Well, I for one do not find it boring. Microsoft has gotten away with crimes for which other corporations have been crucified. MS just played the politics better, betting big on a Bush victory.
I hope that the facts found in the government case will at least allow many other companies to successfully sue them now.
Here is the text of Microsoft's stance on the issue found here.
.NET to ECMA and are following through on our commitment.
.NET supports over 20 languages from Microsoft and third parties, and Java will also be supported as a full-fledged language for the .NET platform. We believe that is a better definition of choice.
An Open Letter Regarding Windows XP and Java Support
Sun Microsystems has invested a great deal of their marketing dollars and lobbying efforts in attacking our yet-to-be released Windows XP operating system, claiming that Microsoft has hurt Sun, the Java language and PC industry customers at large by not including the Microsoft virtual machine in Windows XP.
We feel it is important to outline for our customers the facts on this matter.
Sun Microsystems has taken every step possible to prevent Microsoft from shipping our award winning Java virtual machine. In fact, Sun resorted to litigation to stop Microsoft from shipping a high performance Java virtual machine that took optimal advantage of Windows. The settlement agreement provides for a termination of Microsoft's existing license with Sun and phase-out of the Microsoft VM, so Sun's professed surprise is mere spin. It should be noted that, since the settlement, a Federal Appeals Court has upheld Microsoft's development of a high-performance, well-integrated virtual machine for Windows as pro-competitive.
When Microsoft and Sun settled their litigation earlier this year, Sun was quick to pronounce the settlement a great victory. Sun's CEO said, "It's pretty simple: This is a victory for our licensees and consumers. The community wants one Java technology: one brand, one process and one great platform. We've accomplished that, and this agreement further protects the authenticity and value of Sun's Java technology."1 Sun got what they said they wanted: the termination of the existing Java license with Microsoft, and an agreement that Microsoft would phase out its Java virtual machine.
Sun now professes surprise and unhappiness, and is complaining publicly. But as industry analysts such as Bob Sutherland of Technology Business Research point out: "Sun can't have it both ways. They don't want Microsoft to have monopolistic control, but at the same time they want them to control their Java. No matter what Microsoft does, Sun is going to try to demonize them."2
Perhaps most disturbing, Sun is being disingenuous about the impact on customers. Microsoft has taken several steps to make its Java implementation available to Windows XP customers while adhering to the settlement agreement and protecting Windows customers from any future litigation by Sun. While the Microsoft virtual machine is not on the Windows XP CD, it is still an integrated part of the product. Customers who upgrade to Windows XP from recent prior versions of Windows can easily and automatically take advantage of their existing Java virtual machine. Customers with new machines or who perform a clean installation of Windows XP will automatically be offered the choice to perform a one-time download of the virtual machine the first time they browse a Web page containing a Java applet. This download is then available for any subsequent applet a customer may encounter. Finally, Microsoft has made its virtual machine available to any PC manufacturer to ship with new Windows XP systems, to save customers even this one-time download.
At Microsoft we are proud of the Java virtual machine we created, and the value our customers see in it. It has a long history of high quality and superior performance. It is also the only Java virtual machine that offers an integrated applet browsing experience with Internet Explorer. And it offered customers a choice - just as Windows XP will enable customers to choose and run other third-party virtual machines.
Sun works hard to create an image of itself as a leader in openness and choice with Java. The notion that Java is "open" is simply incorrect - Sun's actions ensure this, as again clearly demonstrated when it submitted Java to an industry standards body and then reneged on the submission, not just once but twice. Contrast these actions with Microsoft, where we have submitted the underlying specifications for Microsoft
Sun's idea of choice is that you can have any language you want, as long as it is Sun's version of Java under Sun's control. By contrast, Microsoft
We all knew they were going to sue. Sun's lawyers just wanted to know what they were up against from a legal standpoint. Sun should be careful. Legal disclosure can harm both parties.
Unbundle tied products like Internet Explorer, IIS and
I think microsoft should be forced to release RFCs for anything proprietary that they use to extend their monopoly.
I for one would be so so so glad to see IIS go away permanently. Has microsoft even begun a next generation "secure" implementation of IIS yet?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Stright from MSNBC,
Sun sues for 1 billion!
http://www.msnbc.com/news/721268.asp?0cm=c30
Some more info...
http://java.sun.com/lawsuit/
For an opinion about this antitrust issue and Microsoft's behaviour check Cringley's column this week.
Pedro Côrte-Real.
Okay...we all know that there are some beefs with MS and their way of doing things. I can even see the Sun whining about the fragmentation of Java (not that Sun isn't doing that well enough on its own - Java 2 version 1.x - yeah that makes sense.)
But why oh why should MS have to include anything of Sun's in their OS? Okay...XP pulled out Java support. And now it really looks like Sun is complaining that the only way they can get Java everywhere is if MS is forced to include it.
Still sounds like whining to me.
Steve Case spent years whining about MS and trying to get the government to act. I've heard he's an Ayn Rand-style libertarian most of the time. It's good to see Sun actually trying to do something about the problem instead of pushing the DoJ to watch its back. I think parts of the federal antitrust suit were legitimate, but this type of thing may be better worked out between the companies themselves.
pot calls kettle black.
Karma: Professionally Doomed (mostly affected by inability to keep opinions to self)
Atleast you know that they didn't make the story up. Noting the source is always a Good Thing (tm).
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
For all those of you just tuning in...
If Sun wins the suit, they stand to get treble damages, because MS has already been found guilty of abusing a monopoly.
Frankly, it's this type of stuff that's really going to put a serious drag on MS.
I do wish the JD and GWB would actually DO somthing about MS, but it appears that they won't. Hopefully the states will be able to continue. The reason I want this, is it seems, well unseemly, that Sun et. al. use this forum to get MS. Sure, MS deserves it, but it's not like Sun wouldn't be doing the same thing, should they be in MS's position.
It just seems better for the Gvmt to strike MS, and split the company. They should also levy massive fines, as the value of competing companies could have been very large - but instead they're bankrupt or playing the small time. (Think of DR-Dos, OS/2, Netscape, WordPerfect, Novell etc.)
Why do I think splitting the co is the right action? Well, that way the Gvmt doesn't have to be invloved in the day-to-day activites of the company. The problem now, is that what benefits MS's is often not what benefits the customers. It's better for MS to keep the client locked to Windows, and locked to Office, as well as all the other "tightly-integrated" MS apps - think tightly-insecure!
If the Office group were a separate company, then they wouldn't care who used office. Any copy sold was a buck in their pocket. So, port it anywhere it could sell decently. But right now, it's to their benefit (high stock-price, better profit sharing etc) to help sell Windows the OS. More Windows, more bucks. Don't sell office on other platforms that threaten Windows, because it cuts into your pay.
By breaking the company into smaller function specific pieces, we can align the best interest of the company with those of the consumer. Ala - a MARKET based solution - stemming from necessasary Gvmt intervention. That's the way it should be.
But, if our good old DOJ can't do it's job properly, I guess we'll just have to settle for a box or rats all biting each other to cut MS back to size. It's sure not pretty, but it'll probably help. I guess the guilty verdict is the the good thing to come out of this so far...
Cheers!
Microsoft pissed me off royally a while ago, in what I'm sure they would have called a "feature" but was probably, in reality, a way to counter Java somehow (even though this relates to JavaScript), or Netscape, or somebody. All it ended up doing for me was causing me unnecessary work.
Several years ago I was responsible for creating the website for my Dad's company. Just a small business thing, a source for information on their products, manuals, etc. After a while we started thinking that it would be great to have something that could help his customers choose which model best met their needs (a procedure my dad would spend 15 minutes on the phone to do), so I coded up what I considered a very nice little JavaScript program to do that. Worked great and without problems for about 2 years or so until the "latest and greatest" version of IE came out which "just happened" to have changed some of the JS commands around, and the program no longer worked for IE users. The day I discovered that probleam was the day I downloaded IEradicator and I haven't missed it since. And, coincidently, my dad sold his business and I didn't have to be bothered by that problem anymore.
Some men spend their entire lives trying to kill themselves for having been born. --Ross MacDonald
At yesterday's conference call, Sun admitted that its sales are falling below expected "linearity". In other words, Sun is having trouble in exceeding last quarter's revenue.
Sun is losing market share. Read " IBM claims win in bruising server battle" As Sun's finances continue to sink, Sun will increasingly pursue lawsuits to boost its finances.
As another sign of desperation, Sun recently announced that it, too, will sell Intel-based servers running Linux. To understand the level of desperation, we note that Sun has been touting itself as the SPARC-only shop for the last 15 years. Sun claimed that it would never resort to selling Intel-based servers.
You can't really take sides. For several reasons:
On the one side:
1) MS has offered a decent VM from the start.
2) MS tried to screw people in adding uncompatible java calls (non-JNI) without labelling them properly. They were trying to break Java.
On the other side:
1) Sun VMs have taken a long time to match MS VMs in perfs.
3) Sun hasn't done much good in client-side support. Java applications are memory-hungry and just slow. Chances are that MS would have done better.
Hence, yes, Java has failed under Windows as a client application framework. Sun is to blame for that.
Microsoft did play hardball, but this was settled a long time ago.
Sun can't blame MS for Java's failures. Client-side Java failed under Linux too! Mozilla doesn't install Java by default!
This would be a lot more interesting if Java had been an open technology, not something controlled by Sun.
i agree this is going on too long. i agree that closure would be welcome.
but i don't think that the fact that Microsoft has been in court a long time make this subject cease to be important. i do think this is a hope that Microsoft has. The consumers will stop caring or forget that they've been screwed and spend even more money with Microsoft.
This isn't an isolated case; this is part of the way people think (it seems, especially here in America). People are so bombarded with information and so used to quick gratification that when something important takes a while, they just stop caring.
i'm not trying to say cases involving Microsoft should take their sweet time. i am saying it is important that people keep caring what happens. When people don't care if they get screwed, more bad things will certainly happen.
maybe you didn't mean to be a troll, but you did snag me. so it was successful.
you probably shouldn't have read this.
but linking to a page when the entire contents are in the article seems a little goofy.
It's called citing your sources. Otherwise, not only do you have zero credibility, but you're also plagiarizing the original article. (Plagiarism and copyright infringement are considered separate offences.)
Will I retire or break 10K?
Wow. It would be nice, but is there any way it could actually happen? We are talking Microsoft.
-... ---
Hmmf. The AOL lawsuit is going to result in Microsoft putting Netscape's management on trial to show that they caused Navigator to tank...and this trial is going to result in Microsoft putting Sun's management on trial to show that they caused Java to go astray.
Forget the XFL...NBC should sell tickets to the software industry.
- adam
-- Find the Truth...
What took them so long? Going in to fight Microsoft in the courts isn't a fun thing to do. Sun has had experiance with this in the past. The legal costs will probably be large. It might also distract people from Sun's own message and product line. This is the sort of decision that has to be made with lots of care. I'd guess they had hope the courts would have smacked MS around a bit more, but decided they needed to step in since the administration has had the DOJ roll over and play dead.
MS's attitude was that there was no way they were going to allow Java to take over the Windows programming market in a way that might make Windows irrelevant underneath. They succeeded.
Sun's attitude was that there was no way they were going to allow Java to become "just a better way to write Windows apps." They succeeded.
As a result, Java is virtually irrelevant to Windows client app development, and since Windows is the vast majority of all "computer-scale" clients, Java is irrelevant for almost all client programming. Go team!
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
As a programmer, Sun and Microsoft matter to me only in that I need to be able to deliver products that are stable, fast and flexible.
... but rather I would say "we can sue you ... or you can teach us how to improve our runtime on Win32 as well as other operating systems."
.. I fofgot there are egos on both sides .. and much to be gained and lost financially and in terms of world domination.
Which is why much of my previous Java programming on Win32 platforms used the MSFT runtime versus Sun's. Yes, I was coding myself into an evil-empire box, but that's what the client wanted, despite my warnings.
One of the reasons I used the MSFT runtime was because it was fast-fast-fast, and it was much easier (at least for me) to instantiate windows, COM services, etc. than it was via straight-up J2EE.
If I were Sun, what I would have done was NOT sued them to remove it, and NOT sue them now to put it back in
Oh wait, I just snapped-back into reality
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
There is also the fact that they had included it before which I am sure makes a huge difference. So in essence they are not choosing to not include it, they are taking it out of windows, and the motivations behind that are very obvious.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
I don't think Sun is shooting for money. More likely they want to hurt MS. They are in a mindshare war between Java and .Net . If .Net prevails, we're talking very bad things. If .Net totally dies.. well Mr. Gates says he bet the company on it. The stakes are much much higher than Sun trying to collect some cash by piling on an extra lawsuit. They want to prevent MS from taking advantage of the gains they earned illegally. If MS hurt Netscape illegaly (and by association Java) and made major gains off that. Sun can seek to cripple those gains. We're talking IE to every App that could have been remade by a competitor as an Applet. Remember, Java over the browser had the potential to allow platform independant applications. In other words, applications which could undermine MS's big advantage (the desktop monopoly). MS killed this as a Java distribution platform when they illegally beat up Netscape. I could go own, but I think you get the point. Sun wants much, much more than a payoff.
Distribute Sun's current, binary implementation of Java Plug-in as part of Windows XP and Internet Explorer.
Stop the unlicensed distribution of Microsoft's Java Virtual Machine through separate web downloads, instead of incorporating within Windows XP and Internet Explorer, in accordance with Jan. 23, 2000 settlement agreement.
In other words seeks to undo in this Microsoft suit what it 'won' in its other Microsoft suit.
Last I heard there was no law that said that Sun could decide what Microsoft distributes with their O/S.
Essentially what Sun are demanding that the court do is to tie the distribution of Windows XP to a proprietary Sun product. Sun has consistently refused to allow other companies to extend Java in any way that Sun does not sanction. Meanwhile Sun are demanding that Microsoft be prevented from distributing their .NET CLI which competes against JVM.
Jackson's rulling is not going to be as much use to sun in the suit as many here think. Sun can bring it up at the trial, great, but Microsoft can also bring up the fact that Jackson was dismissed from the case and his 'findings of law' thrown out by the appeals court for gross procedural violations, apparent and actual bias. They can also quote from the Appeals court judges statement that the fact that Jackson describes something as a finding of fact does not make it a finding of fact.
All told I don't think that any sensible lawyer for the Plaintif would want to rely very heavily on the Jackson opinions. They are unlikely to have much weight with the judge and would be very likely to backfire in front of a jury. The appeals court rulings are much narrower.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Could they stop MS shipping C# on the grounds that it is a java rip off?
I hope not. Linux is a UNIX rip off, isn't it?
I can't believe actually I'm defending the right of MS to "innovate".
Just mosey over to your dictionary.com
treble Pronunciation Key (trbl)
adj.
Triple: "treble reason for loving as well as working while it is day" (George Eliot).
Music. Relating to or having the highest part, voice, or range.
High-pitched; shrill.
Cheers! [Moron]
That's the exact reason for my question though. It's been apparent for quite sometime that MS was going to be going around in circles with the DOJ and States, and nothing serious was going to be done. At least not without 10-20 more court dates for Microsoft.
/. is about a Microsoft involved lawsuit.
You can bet your wallet Sun is going to be cautious about filing a suit against Bill (think countersuit) but it still seems delayed.
One does have to admire their use of current events to their advantage, in the current situation. They are basically positioning themselves as the saviour in the fight against the monopoly.
I say yawn, only because it seems every third story on
From www.sun.com/lawsuit/summary.html
.NET framework.
Sun is seeking remedies that include:
Preliminary injunctions prior to trial requiring Microsoft to:
Distribute Sun's current, binary implementation of Java Plug-in as part of Windows XP and Internet Explorer.
Stop the unlicensed distribution of Microsoft's Java Virtual Machine through separate web downloads, instead of incorporating within Windows XP and Internet Explorer, in accordance with Jan. 23, 2000 settlement agreement.
Permanent injunction requiring Microsoft to:
Disclose and license proprietary interfaces, protocols and formats.
Unbundle tied products like Internet Explorer, IIS and
Treble damages.
Attorneys' fees.
On January 23, 2001 Microsoft and Sun settled on the lawsuit about Microsoft shipping non-standard versions of Java. Part of the settlement was the following: "Sun has agreed to grant Microsoft a limited license to continue to distribute its current version of the software, provided that all future versions of such products pass Sun's compatibility tests. This part of the agreement lasts seven years. Beyond that date, Microsoft can not distribute Java technology or use any of Sun's intellectual property."
Ok, so Microsoft can't distribute any Java after 2008. But Microsoft decided not to included the Java VM with Windows XP, kind of saying we don't need your stinking POS. Now, on this new lawsuit Sun asks among other things for: "Preliminary injunctions prior to trial requiring Microsoft to: Distribute Sun's current, binary implementation of Java Plug-in as part of Windows XP and Internet Explorer." Why don't they make up their fucking mind?
It seems to me Sun is just looking for some money to pad their lackluster balance sheet. If you think Sun is doing any of this for the good of the public you should stop watching the Teletubbies.
That's the information for Sun's previous lawsuit against Microsoft not the current one.
Sorry, I'll reformulate the question:
Could they stop MS shipping C# on the grounds that it is a java rip off, and it is bundled with windows , and only run on windows (as of yet).
Basically it is the same strategy they followed against Netscape, with impressive results. Create a clone of the competitor's product, bundle and integrate it into windows.
If MS weren't a monopoly it wouldn't be a problem to me. but...
Also, I am not taking tha position that they shouldn't be allowed to ship C#. I just say that Sun could take it in that direction.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
The fact is - Sun's right. And Microsoft knows it.
However, since justice belongs to the highest bidder in this crony capitalist country - I predict Microsoft will successfully defend themselves against these warranted charges.
Naturally, this will employ tons of lawyers - and since they're tech lawyers, this is probably Good For The West Coast.
-
[sorry about the prior post - hit the Enter key by mistake]
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
The lawsuit is not about java. Most of the complaints relate to workgroup servers, web-browsers and productivity suites.
Does anyone know what became of the DR-DOS/Novell/Caldera complaint that Microsoft illegally tied the OS to the window manager (GUI)? I remember running Win95 on top of DR-DOS even though Microsoft claimed the window manager and OS were inextricably linked.
What crimes?
This is, as others below me have pointed out, another example of Microsoft's competitors taking the easy way out and ligitgating their way into success, rather than earning it and convincing a larger share of the public to buy their products. No matter how you frame it, the consumer has the ultimate choice in the matter...to buy or not to buy. If the majority of consumers cared about this, they'd change their buying habits.
Dismiss my opinions as you will, but please give this article some thought. Antitrust laws are unobjective and arbitrary, punishing successful companies for the "crime" of being better than their competitors.
"All mankind is at the mercy of a handful of neurotics". - Norman Douglas
I guess the killer question is, is this lawsuit really a veiled threat because of the potential success C#, or because XP doesn't include the Java VM?
I for one cannot say. Both of these giants are vying for world domination, one through J2EE, the other through
As a programmer, I just want tools that help me get the job done so I can go home and play with the kids at night.
As for the similarities and differences between C# & Java, I'll leave that up to smarter people than myself, including one lengthy article by Dare Obasanjo entitled "A Comparison of Microsft's C# Programming Language to Sun Microsystem's JAVA Programming Language.
.
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Actually, I'm considering suing Sun for forcing Microsoft to include a Java VM, when I don't want or need one.
The harm: excessive anxiety over the amount of diskspace taken up by Sun's VM and worry about compatibility issues.
The remedy: about $250 in real damages, and $500 million in mental anguish, lost time, depression etc.
The terms of this suit are way more reasonable than Sun's wishy-washy attitude on shipping their VM. The thing is available for download if you need it, and if you don't, then you don't have to download it.
This is the equivalent of suing every Linux release for not including Jahshaka (a Linux-based video editing/effects package).
It's stupid and it sucks.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
They are hardly so high minded.
A little cynicism would do you good.
They are suing because Microsoft has deep pockets and that reason alone. In sun's case, they weren't harmed, they were helped. And only their bizzar temper-tantrums have hurt them with respect to Java.
But the fact, not the idea, that they are using court rooms as away to improve their bottom line and not a place to seek redress makes me want to vomit. Those are the types of people at sun. Amoral sophists. That's what they stand for. It's only a matter of time before that attitude permiates everything they do.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No matter how you frame it, the consumer has the ultimate choice in the matter...to buy or not to buy. If the majority of consumers cared about this, they'd change their buying habits.
at the danger of being accused of being 'dismissive', and of feeding a troll..
have you even looked up the definition of a monopoly? exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action. basically that means the monopolist has such leverage in the market, individuals no longer CAN choose an alternative. that is the point.
Antitrust laws are unobjective and arbitrary, punishing successful companies for the "crime" of being better than their competitors.
Far from it. It is fine if Microsoft is so much better than their competitors that they control most of the desktop operating system market. That is fine and good, a monopoly is not in and of itself an evil thing. But, if a monopoly uses that monopoly position to: (1) artificially inflate prices of a necessity (such as a desktop OS); (2) tie their products in other markets to their monopoly position in the desktop OS market (such as a web browser); or (3) use illegal 'blocking' means to prevent and/or stifle competition (such as agreements with computer vendors to bundle Windows and only Windows or pay the consequences).
note that i'm not trying to 'dismiss' you, just point out that maybe you don't realise that people do NOT have the choices you claim they do.
-rp
They were forced to take it out by a previous Sun lawsuit.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Gosh, it's almost as though the Microsoft monopoly had a deleterious effect on consumers.
(Yes, I do know how to fix this. Just thought it should be pointed out.)
-- Support Ometz le-Serev.
Meaning, that the next 3 versions don't have a -prayer- of being secure.
In space, no one can hear you moo.
Hmmm, it's hard to imagine anyone being as rude as MicroShaft. Can you imagine that Sun is not in Microsoft's possition becuase they did not act like Microsoft? Ever heard of a BSA raid on Solaris software? No? That would be because Sun is not a member of BSA
Funny how people are saying that Sun is being abusive for asking for redress of wrongs that M$ has been found guilty of. The trial will be as short and sweet as Microsoft desires. In fact, they could settle out of court for their wrongs, but they won't. Microsoft brought themselves to this by refusing to co-operate with anyone. Java is a small piece of the damage Micorsoft has done to the world with their silly little tricks to break other people's software. Sun managed to survive Microsoft's abuse because they had their own hardware and platform. Other companies were not so lucky, and their employees lost their jobs while M$ pushed their inferior garbage on people. Sun will, we can be sure, put together some reasonable costs they suffered from Microsoft not living up to their word. It is right that Microsoft pay, but they won't. They are going to spend all sorts of money on defending their wrongs and then complain that all the lawsuits are bankrupting them.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Seriously, if you MS spies or whatever you call yourselves are going to come onto slashdot and post up pro MS drivel in the face of criticism, the least you an do is try to mask it a little bit. Good Lord. That entire post is possibly the most ignorant, Microsoft Certified Shit Comment I've ever read.
I realize that I should not attack your post with only insults, so I'll give an example, but only one since I don't have much time.
You cannot honestly ask any company to ship their competitor's product with their own. That is an absurd idea at best.
The problem is not that MS Windows doesn't come with Netscape or Java or any other competition. The problem is that Microsoft makes contracts with resellers that say if they're going to sell Microsoft Crap.X version of the OS then they have to include certain things, and they have to leave out certain things (like netscape and java.) Therefore, the illegal action is not leaving the competition off their CDs, but forcing the computer sellers to only have MS crap on their machines. That's mafia-esque and just as illegal.
~ now you know
To quote Billy Connelly, "Jesus Suffering Fuck!"
Did you look at any of the articles in the right pane? What a pile of bigoted, inflamatory nonsense! If you're going to cite a source, at least pick one with a semblance of credibilty.
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
You know, as I understand it, the basic problem with Microsoft is that they use their market power to lock other people out, rather than compete with them.
Netscape: Hey OEM! We have this product! It's great! It adds value to your system! We'll license it to you cheaply! Please bundle it!
OEM: OK! Sounds Good!
Microsoft: Hey OEM! We don't want you bundling this product. Stop it or else we'll yank your Windows license... or maybe you'll just lose your "discount".
OEM(1): Yikes! We'll stop... hey, that IE 3.x product looks OK.
OEM(2): I don't know, our customers really like Netscape... maybe we could display IE prominently and still include Netscape?
Microsoft: Well, the price of producing Windows _is_ going up.... but you are a good customer, maybe we can work something out.
So it's easy to see that at first, Microsoft didn't compete on quality or even simply bundle. They tried to lock Netscape out. To a great degree, they were succesful. Netscape lost licensing revenues and mindshare which might have been used to fund good development....
But I don't see how this happened with Sun. Does Sun have contracts with OEMs to distribute JVMs or class libraries? Did they try, and were locked out? Or is it that they distributed with Netscape, and were locked out? Or are they still whining about incompatibilities with Microsoft's own terrible Java?
I may not know the facts here, but I don't see how Sun is a victim in the same way that Netscape is, much as I think Microsoft's business practices are deplorable.
Tweet, tweet.
1) Several folks say the previous Sun suit was to get Java off Windows. I beleive it was to force MS to follow the contract and keep the MS version 100% compatible with the established standards. When MS LOST that suit, they decided to pull all support. If Sun didn't want Java on windows they wouldn't have licensed it to them in the first place.
2) Did anyone consider that maybe the MS Java VM being faster than the Sun Java VM had something to do with MS not makeing their full APIs available for other companies to use? Just a thought.
Part of Microsoft's investment deal was Corel's agreeing to waive any future law suits. It may have saved them at the time but Sun's claim is peanuts compared to the damages Corel could have claimed due to Microsoft hijacking the Office suites market.
All may not be lost. Earlier this week news came out that the former antitrust chief under
New York AG, Stephen Houck, has joined the rebelling states' legal team, throwing Ballmer
and his legal eagles off balance. The NY AG's office was leading the
enquiry into the Office suites monopoly case until they shelved it to
concentrate in the still-lingering Netscape case.
The Office suite case files are there to be picked up again, and this
time MS has already been convicted of monopolist behaviour; it's just
the "remedy" that they're busy watering down, despite Enron hanging
over quite a few high-placed Republicans' heads.
If the Netscape case, as it would appear, gets sold down the river,
what are the chances that the angry states will try again using
heavier ammunition, such as WordPerfect Office? Or if Java is deemed worth billions
under a private antitrust case, what would the former main competitor
to Microsoft's profit center Office be worth?
Whatever rights Burney signed away in order to get that "life-saving
investment" from MS, surely those clauses can be annulled by any
fractionally competent lawyer. The second task would be get injunction
against MS-Office...
Of course someone would need to take over this company first, but
they'd get all the products, including the WPO, for practically
nothing! In this climate some high-profile law offices might even want
to take the private Office antitrust lawsuit on a commission basis. BTW Corel's market cap is a little over $250 mil while they have over $100 mil of cash. So for $150 investment someone could get a chance at a big settlement and the company/products would be a bonus. Anyone out there from IBM or AOL interested?
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
If you can't beat them at their own game, file suit.
Seems to me Microsoft's game IS to not compete fairly, and resort to everything EXCEPT write superior products. Microsoft should be flattered.
Infuriate left and right
Sierra game company will sue MS for illegally bundling solitaire with windows, claiming that their wonderful solitaire product just couldn't compete with the one shipped with nearly every version of MS Windows since the early 1980's. "People will generally use whats on the desktop as long as its good enough" By MS using their monopoly power to illegally integrate solitaire into their OS and restricting vendors from selling Seirra's product as an OEM, the downfall of sierra is eminant.
The settlement for the previous lawsuit dictated that Microsoft is allowed to use JDK 1.1.4 (read: old as time) and nothing further.
That is the only version of Java that M$ is allowed to use.
Microsoft did not want to offer old technology to people, so they opted not to offer it at all.
Odds are that any Java technology that Microsoft is currently allowed to offer wouldn't be able to run any applets or applications written in the last couple of years. Thus, people would just have to go download a new JDK anyway!
What's the difference?
T
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Could they stop MS shipping C# on the grounds that it is a java rip off, and it is bundled with windows , and only run on windows (as of yet).
It's not bundled with Windows. The runtime libraries must be installed first. Only XP Server will have them preinstalled, unless they rerelease the XP CDs. Hell, you have to pay for the development tools seperately. Hardly bunded.
IANAL, but it looks as if they are alledging that Microsoft built the CLR off of their "illegal" Java VM. I have to say, it *was* the first thing that entered my mind when I heard how the CLR functioned. Proving that they are one and the same (with many many many additions and modifications along the way) could be the thrust of this whole lawsuit - carefully buried in item #184 all the way at the end of the document.
I'm a 2000 man.
With Microsoft, you can't just walk away from them. It doesn't work. Nobody will associate with you. Just try not using Microsoft and do business with a large set of people? I use Linux on my desktop. I use StarOffice. I don't have any MS products installed anywhere on any machines that are my personal workstations. However, I have to produce and interact with MS products all the time. Microsoft goes out of there way to make it hard not allow you to use 3rd party tools with there tools. They have just as much authority and power as a King in most IT departments. You can't just ignore microsoft and have them go away. There are too many people who believe. Monopolies are bad just like Monarchies are bad. After a while, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
On a side point, it isn't illegal to be a Monopoly (at least not in the US). You can be a monopoly all you want. What is illegal is that monopolies get absolute power in there area. When they start to abuse the authority they have that is when they get into trouble.
Ah, one last point, with Microsoft in a lot of ways there is no choice for the consumer. If the OEM signs up to pay for a windows license for all the machines they buy, I can't change that short of finding that out and buying from somebody else. The problem is MS use to line that deal up with all the OEM's for something like 60-90% of all computers sold in the USA. There is a reason people jokingly refer to it as the MS tax. You don't get many choices on sales tax either now do you?
Don't get me wrong. Microsoft has done a tremendous amount of good for the computing world. They have impowered literally 100's of millions of people in the world. Their original goals they had were incredibly good for society. I appreciate what they have done for me. I truly do.
However, I think in a lot of ways, I would appreciate it if they did things that allowed somebody besides microsoft to do good things. I'd like it if they would publish the API's so little guys can interact with the OS well. I would like it if they would publish specifications on how Office documents work, so somebody could write reliable filters so I can vote with my dollars and use another office program. I can't vote for that with my dollars. Its not possible. The government can make it happen.
If microsoft truely is the best at what they do, they have nothing to fear from publishing information on how to interact with the software. They have nothing to fear from allowing OEM's to bundle any software they want. If they are the best, people will vote with their dollars. If microsoft blew the doors off of all the other products, its what I'd use. Microsoft does a lot of things that don't involve being better for the consumer and that is how they are winning.
Yes I.E. is a better brower. Wasn't at the beginning but it is now. Media player wasn't better then Real Audio. Microsoft didn't/doesn't allow an OEM to bundle software that is better then theirs to be bundled onto the base install which is in fact bad for the consumer. Microsoft didn't compete and beat people in an open market. Instead they do things to make it hard if not impossible for another competitor to work as well as microsoft.
The crap they do with auto-executing extensions and other nonesense makes it much harder to use programs they don't want you to. They aren't beating people with better products. They are leveraging the control from the OS market to run people out of every other market there is. That is bad. It is bad for the consumer. They do make good products. But if MS doesn't fell like implementing a feature I want, or feels like telling me I must register all my products and have them phone home that is hard to do. It just like the phone company dictating that you can't use anybody's phone but theirs on a phone network. It isn't hard to produce a good phone, but it is a real bitch to laydown a nationwide network just to make a good phone and sell it. For similar reasoning it is bad for the OS makers to be able to make it nearly impossible for software to interact well with the desktop. It isn't economically sound to develop an entire OS because you can make a better windows widget. It'd be nice if I knew how to make a good widget that I wouldn't have to create an entire OS and all the supporting superstructure just so I could see my widget. It's bad for the consumer, if you can't see that, you don't want to.
Which is the real joke here. Sun is crashing because of the competition from Linux, Microsoft is practically irrelevant to its market.
Sun grew fat during the Internet dotcom craze because there were lots of VCs out there throwing obscene amounts of money arround. The VCs would typically demand that their companies applied the latest, sexiest technologies - regardless of whether there was a point. Some friends of mine had to recode their system from Lisp to Java just to please their VC.
A lot of the startups were buying high end Sun gear because it pleased the VCs for whom Sun meant Java, meant 'sexy', meant a red hot IPO.
Today their are two factors that are causing trade to shift from Solaris to Linux. First Linux is now sexier than Java. If your VC demands buzword compliance then Linux is fine. Second companies no longer have unlimited amounts to spend on unnecessary hardware. A company like Google that uses low cost Linux/Intel boxes is thought of much better than one that blows money on Sun gear that costs much more.
Propietary UNIX is doomed. But Microsoft is not the reason, Linux is.
The only proprietary UNIX vendor I would put much faith in long term is Apple. They do have a major base of desktop software and they are the only folk in UNIXland who appear to understand what a user interface is. But even Apple may well end up having to jetison the quasi-proprietary kernel and moving to an open source core some day.
Sun's problems are not going to be solved even if they do force Microsoft to distribute Java. At this point .NET is rapidly becoming the hot issue for enterprise customers. While .NET has lots of hype features, the core advantage of .NET is it provides the means by which the WinTel market can transition from 32 bit x86 architecture to 64 bit Itanium.
A company can transition to using the .NET CLI with a simple re-compilation. The Java VM requires them to rewrite their application, it is a non-starter as an Itanium migration strategy.
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Isn't it a fundamental contradiction to say "this company hurt competition by being a monopoly?"
_______
2B1ASK1
I think they want to check to see if the CLR is based on the "illegal" Java VM they sued to have MS stop developing. I'd be surprised if the CLR and their JVM *didn't* share some code.
I'm a 2000 man.
Did you see the size of those PDFs?
another example of Microsoft's competitors taking the easy way out and ligitgating their way into success,
Well, to be fair, Sun has already achieved plenty of success without the need for litigation. But at the same time, this is absolutely ridiculous. Everyone knows Sun hates Microsoft, and Microsoft is already taking so much damage from their federal case (please don't troll me on this, just look at how much it cost them and how much it affected the stock).
So, a biased company who is an arch competitor files suit against a company who is already responding to these allegations in a separate suit. This is frivolous. Worse yet, I'd call this harassment. I like Sun, but I don't like this move.
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...the web browser is a core part of the computing experience today...
...just like a graphical user interface...
Bullshit!
Bullshit!
Next, Sun claims they illegally tied IE to the operating system. As noted above, web browsing is now an essential part of the PC expierence; it only follows naturally that it should be included as part of the OS.
Bullshit!
Now, here is where Sun really flies off the deep end and displays the true motivation behind the suit, which is Larry's obession with trying to beat Bill Gates and his highly successful company.
Larry is CEO of Oracle. Scott is CEO of Sun. Are you always this moronic in public, or are you trying to entertain us?
Sun also claims that Microsoft has illegally tied IIS into its server OSes. This one strikes me as really odd, because IIS isn't installed by default, it is simply included on the CD.
That is false. IIS is selected for installation by default on Win2K, and on XP it is installed without even asking you whether you want it.
In fact, for NT 4.0, you had to get a separate CD or download to install it; it wasn't even part of the standard distribution.
NT 4.0 is no longer sold or supported by Microsoft.
You cannot honestly ask any company to ship their competitor's product with their own. That is an absurd idea at best.
Of course you can, when the company in question is a monopoly. The ILECs were (admittedly ineffectively and half-heartedly) forced to open up their monopoly infrastructure to competing service providers. Why should the monopoly OS be treated any differently? It shouldn't.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Then could AT&T stop Sun shipping Java because it is a C/C++ ripoff, or along the chain to BCPL, CPL, Algol 68, Algol 60?
My complaint about Sun and Java from the start has been that they have been entirely closed about the design and development of Java. Now it appears that they are trying to argue that Java somehow gives them a monopoly on the future development of all Algol like programming languages. That might be news to Tony Hoare who now works for Microsoft and was one of the main inventors of the original Algol.
Java is simply not that novel to allow such a claim. Most of the changes in Java simply fixed longstanding errors in the design of C that had been documented decades before. The main innovation in Java was to partially fix the broken inheritance scheme of C++.
Unfortunately Gosling and co did not go further and take advantage of any of the advances in CS that occurred since the mid 80s. No functional types, no concurrency model and no formal model.
C# is not .NET, it is only one of the programing languages supported by the .NET framework. In fact there are some 20 odd languages supported including languages like Perl and Rexx which were not even designed for compilation. Microsoft is also encouraging universities etc. who are designing languages to use the .NET framework. so people who are designing the next Eifel or Python don't need to spend their time writing code libraries, they can share the existing code. You get a development environment, debugger and the compiler back end for free.
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They can't call it J#... there is a J# that's part of Visual Studio.Net. In fact, J# is mentioned in the complaint, since Sun alleges that J# is in violation of the Java injunction in a couple of ways!
We are the Music Makers, and We are the Dreamers of Dreams...
First, they claim that Microsoft has effectively monopolized (through illegal actions) the OS market for Intel machines, the web browser market, and the Office suite market.
Yeah, what a ridiculous claim. The fact that MS has found to be a monopoly which uses their monopoly to crush competition in other markets and LOST all their appeals somehow escapes you.
While they may have engaged in questionable activities regarding the OS,
They are NOT questionable, they are ILLEGAL, and have been proven so in a court of law.
the web browser is a core part of the computing experience today, just like a graphical user interface, TCP/IP and network connectivity, etc (all of which were separately purchased products at one point in the x86 history.)
Uh-huh, network connectivity and a full featured internet browser are equivalent. One is a protocol (layer 2/3 in the OSI model) the other is an application (layer 7).
Sun is also claiming that they tried to monopolize (using illegal tactics) the workgroup server OS market. This one is absolutely silly and absurd. Until some recent blunders by Novell, Microsoft did have hefty competition.
Yeah, and things like forcing Office (oh, 90+ %market share - another monopoly) workgroup intranet publishing to REQUIRE IIS which ONLY RUNS on a MS Server, that is just peachy with you, huh? That doesn't smack of abusing a monopoly in one area to force your way into another area. Should we delve into the relationship between W2K AD & W2K pro?
However, I doubt anyone can argue that there is anything which is better than Microsoft's solutions for the workgroup and small business market.
Of course! The reboot-a-week club and the endless security patches that define the ver MS solutions you describe are just WONDERFUL for business. The TCo of running MS crapware is ridiculous because you have to hire 483 trained reboot monkeys just to keep the crapware running.
Next, Sun claims they illegally tied IE to the operating system. As noted above, web browsing is now an essential part of the PC expierence; it only follows naturally that it should be included as part of the OS.
And one you can remove and replace with a competing product if you wish. Which you can't. THAT PLUS THE EXCLUSIONARY CONTRACTS IS THE ISSUE. Keep reapeating that until it sinks in.
Sun has been milking political sources behind the scenes throughout this whole antitrust situation for their own benefit.
Oh, and Microsoft's political contributions have remained entirely unchanged during said time period huh? What a bunch of drivel. MS has increased their political contributions on both sides of the aisle EXPONENTIALLY during this time.
What scares me the most though is the idea that they might be successful. I would dred to live in a world where Sun controlled the desktop and server.
Like most rational people, I dread to live in a world where ANY ONE COMPANY controlled both the desktop and the server.
How this guy's post isn't modded as a troll I will never know.
I agree.
The problem is, how do you quantify damage? How many OEM's wanted Java, but couldn't do it? How many other companies could have made money if not for the restrictive contracts? Who knows.
But we can fix the future. Somehow prevent MS from making the contracts, make them pay a fine (to taxpayers), and then who cares about what's bundled with Windows - because OEM's can bundle whatever the hell they want with Windows.
What would have happened if Sun had not licensed Java to MS, and had instead been going after the restrictive contracts from the beginning. Perhaps they would have convinced OEM's to include their Java VM with Window's machines.
But I don't think that's likely what would have happened.
.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Right, because "strong private industries" don't own any politicians. Microsoft is the only one. Man, that part where the MS-owned DOJ almost broke up the company was such a great fake show. And yes, I think Intel especially should sue them, I mean MS is putting Intel out of business with their MS Processor division. Please, next time, back up your facts.
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Java is only irrelevant if YOU choose another development platform
.Net may give us the best of both worlds: even more fun to work in than Java, yet feeling to the end users like an app written in C++. Unlike Sun, MS has no qualms about producing a "better way to write Windows apps."
My own choice of Eiffel or Scheme or any other niche player would have negligible effect on the mainstream market.
Java is a better language than C++ for *writing* client apps, but not for *running* them. Likewise for Swing vs. MFC. The developers love Java/Swing -- I sure do, and I've used them for a lot of personal projects. But the customers prefer the results of development in old icky C++/MFC. I simply couldn't sell a Java/Swing app on Windows against a C++/MFC app with equivalent features. Customers wouldn't buy mine.
Several big companies with lots of resources have attempted to switch to Java for significant apps such as browsers, word processors, etc. Virtually no successes in mainstream app dev, just in scattered in-house or niche apps -- the sort of things where VB has an edge over C++, and for similar reasons.
The good news is that C# on
The bad news is that that benefit may remain limited to the Windows platform (go Mono!), but with Windows accounting for >90% of clients, that isn't going to slow it down very much.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
This sounds correct, but I still don't find myself feeling any sympathy for Sun. They're a competitor, and a strong one. First they sued so that Microsoft wouldn't include Java in the OS, and now they're suing because they didn't. MS tried with Java, and Sun thwarted them at every step (remember that MS started working with it even before Sun submitted it to standards bodies). So in XP, MS says forget this, we don't need the hassle this time around, and don't include it. And of course they're in trouble for it again.
I sure wish I had some Widget Software and could sue MS every time they released their OS without support for my Widgets. I mean, how dare they, they're putting me out of business here! Now every person who wants to use my Widgets has to download them for his or herself, which is costing me DAMAGES. That just doesn't seem right, does it? Please, dear Government, get this popular OS maker to include my Widgets and a link to my widgets.com site on their desktop.
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Control of the market is still control of the market. It doesn't matter if this control comes directly or through more "indirect" network effects. The fact that "being compatible" is critical in consumer computing is not a fact that can just be glossed over or used to discount Microsoft's control out of hand.
If you find yourself reaching to freeware to disprove Microsoft a monopoly, you are simply admitting that Microsoft is infact a monopoly.
"Simple logic" is simply lying.
KDE and GNOME exist outside of the market. They exist outside of the market due to the problems of competiting commercially against the "most compatible" player. No gratis-ware can be used to refute the existence of a monopoly. The fact that gratis-ware is the most likely competition against the market leader is infact a demonstration that the market leader enjoys a monopoly as defined by the Sherman Act.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
NOW Sun is suing MS because MS isn't including their particular little technology into Windows?
Stop the circle, I want to get off.
Really, where else does this go? Can any company sue MS because they decided to not include something in their OS? I don't see any complaints that you can't install Java on your own, so any enterprise company that wants a Java solution on MS platforms can do it, it's just not bundled.
This is a load of horse-shit IMHO. If you want to accuse MS of abusing its monopoly power by bundling technology in, then fine. But don't tell me that their competitors can dictate what non-MS technologies have to be included in an MS product! That's the exact opposite of a market system!
Somedays it's just not worth chewing through the restraints...
Not flamebait at all. I don't want to have a day when I go to buy software I have to look and see if it's HP Windows, Dell Windows, Sun Windows, etc.
:-)
... I'm not. I just happen to like the fact the industry has been standardized. I know that's not a popular opinion, but I don't think it's flamebait at all.
Yes, I did forget Tandy DOS. Sorry
As for being an MS Apologist and thowing up their same arguments
And yes, what Microsoft did to DR DOS sucked. I remember finding out about that when I tried to install 3.1 in a compnay who solidly was using Novell products. Quite a shock.
Sun has a different cause of action actually.
Also, if they feel that they are being harmed by Microsofts actions they have every right to file suit. Such suits are how accoutability is maintained. Also, they have reason to believe that the government will not do their duty in the current cases, despite a sustainted guilty verdict, due to polictics.
Criminals should not get away with subsquent offenses merely becuase an inneffective prosecution is already underway by an administration friendly to the sort of criminal in question.
Tolerance of Microsoft is just a tip of the Monopoly iceberg created by Reagan-Bush-Bush.
Gates was just too stupid to keep a low profile.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It'd be too bad if suing a putatively abusive monopolist became the market's self-adjusting technique for dealing with monopolies -- just suing them to get a payoff which is enough to benefit you but doesn't correct the monopoly or actually punish them that much.
I mean, what kind of a lawsuit that paid out in cash could actually *harm* Microsoft? $1 billion? 5? 10? 100?
According to Microsoft's latest filings, they have about $38,229,000 USD in either cash or short term investments. Corrections appreciated, but to me that sounds like moderately liquid assets.
Let's say we forget about those additional assets awhile, and focus only on new profits. For the last four quarters ending in December 2001, they announced a total of $26.91 billion. This amount of profit is above the previous year by a minimum of 10% in each quarter.
So, let's say that Microsoft looses two major cases -- Netscape (AOL/TW) and Sun -- and that the courts have no patience or mercy and award $2 billion each for a total of $12 billion. Let's also say Microsoft makes no effort to fight the settlement, and they fork up the $12 billion in installment payments over a span of 12 months.
At the same rate as last year, keeping it at a modest 10% growth rate, MS's profit would have grown to around $29.60 billion or a little over $81 million a day.
That means that at Microsoft's current rate, they would hand over the profit from the first 148 days of 2002 -- ending just before June kicks in.
No doubt, that's a lot of ifs. Chances are any settlement will happen years from now, and will be much more modest. Also, this does not touch the short term investments and liquid assets -- only the new profits and only using the fictional example up till June.
Corrections, additional calculations welcome.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
I also love the fact that Sun wants MS to:
.NET
.NET Framework is a development technology. How do you unbundle that? Always make 2 versions of your programs, ones that use COM and ones that use .NET? This is absolute bollocks. Sun is scared of .NET and wants to use this lawsuit settlement as a chance to give Java a boost and set .NET to fail. Perhaps we can let the marketplace sort this out.
1) Stop bundling
2) Start bundling Java
Let's think about this for a second. Microsoft should make all their technology available only as a separate download, but Sun's technology should be integrated and available in Windows?
I could also understand the argument of unbundling IE, I guess you could have an OS without a browser (nowadays, we'd call that crippled software), but
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Criminals should not get away with subsquent offenses merely becuase an inneffective prosecution is already underway
.NET accusation, b/c that's brand new, but this is still the same case that's been dragging on for years.
Hmm, perhaps you have called of this little document called The Bill of Rights? They kind of added it to the Constitution after the fact, so you might have missed it. Let's see...
Amendment 5: Grand Jury indictment required to prosecute a person for a serious crime. No "double jeopardy" -- being tried twice for the same offense. Forcing a person to testify against himself or herself prohibited. No loss of life, liberty or property without due process.
I think the "no double jeopardy" part invalidates what you said. This isn't a subsequent offense Sun is discussing, it's still the same IE bundling crap (because we all know an operating system is only meant to open and close file handles and load VGA drivers, web browser functionality should not be included). Of course they're also tacking on the
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Those that are really serious about hacking Microsoft products need to see the source code in order to figure this out don't they? Let's just hide it away and keep building products based off of it - it'll be secure that way won't it?
Don't kid yourself. If you think that looking at the source code is all that it would take to force your servers to replicate with a hacked BDC then perhaps you shouldn't be running NT. Look at what the SAMBA group has done with regards to reversing NT's mechanisms, do you really think that someone else wouldn't be able to do that if there was only something obsfucated hiding the problems? Did the SAMBA group have access to soource? Nope! You've got the source for Linux available to you and everyone else yet for some reason the result hasn't been massive failures but rather betterment of the code.
Hiding problems isn't the way to secure a machine, you sure you don't maybe work for Microsoft? You certainly sound like you might. Microsoft would love nothing more than to keep their security issues out of the public eye. That will do nothing but drive exploits underground - not that he DMCA hasn't already contributed greatly to that very thing (sigh).
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Well, I'll stand by what I said. I do believe that Sun had a point about MS creating this bastardized version you mention, and they got what they wanted - MS stopped supporting it.
.NET Framework later this year. Which is once again meant to produce potentially native code using Java syntax, but I would put forward that there's really nothing wrong with that.
At the same time, while most on here will say that MS was doing it to get Java to fail, I understand why they did it. We all know native code is faster than interpreted. MS was getting comments from most Windows developers saying "What the hell is this? How am I supposed to use J++ instead of VB or C++ when the stuff it produces is so slow?" So they added a possibility of making it native.
Yes, they broke the cross-platform nature, but how about a wild example. I lease a car from a company, but instead of using it for driving, I take off the wheels and try to resell it as an exotic paperweight. I don't think any of my buyers would buy my paperweight if what they really wanted was a car - they'd go back to the original company. People programming J++ wanted fast native code, but liked Java syntax, and they were denied that.
Of course we can look to even more rehashing of this mess when MS adds J# support to the
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Until there is a level playing field, your arguments are simply fantasies. One should expect a MUCH better product from a company that has money to burn.
Since Microsoft has an unfair advantage against AOL and Sun, employing lawyers to level the playing field is not at all unreasonable.
Sun still builds servers that puts anything that runs WinDOS to shame. You short SUNW at your own peril.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
How about fraud, like when Bill Gates told IBM that he had an OS ready for the IBM XT when he didn't, so he went out and bought QDOS? How about purjury, a crime which they have admitted to, in the videos showing Windows 98 falling apart (supposedly without IE), where the tapes were just faked.
The reason for this antitrust suit is that the consumer doesn't have a choice. If the collective consciousness of the US were to decide that Microsoft were terrorists or something tomorrow, there wouldn't be a consumer-level OS waiting for them. MS killed them all. Now they have a huge market share, and they continue to use the same tactics to quash competition, and there are foolish naieve fools like yourself going "why? They commited no crime! Why are they being punished for being successful?"
It's been a long time.
Man, you are smoking some good stuff. I don't know which of your fantasies is crazier:
.NET.
(1) J2EE, which currently dominates the Enterprise software market, losing out anytime soon to
(2) Itanium rescuing itself from its current death spiral.
KDE and GNOME exist outside of the market. They exist outside of the market due to the problems of competiting commercially against the "most compatible" player. No gratis-ware can be used to refute the existence of a monopoly. The fact that gratis-ware is the most likely competition against the market leader is infact a demonstration that the market leader enjoys a monopoly as defined by the Sherman Act.
I was suprised when I read this. It's not often an attitude shown on slashdot, but it is true. When it takes a completely free OS, with tons of completely free Applications, and free access to the source code of all these Applications, to get a tiny 1% market share, the market has failed miserably. I have tremendous respect for Linux and it's supporting projects, but it isn't a good example of how the market isn't being monopolized. BeOS, a commercial project which showed incredible potential, and had even met some of that potential(and I'm running it right now), on the other hand, is a good example of how it is monopolized.
It's been a long time.
Can OEMs indeed do this, without getting stiffed by MS? Why are those licensing deals trade-secrets?
First they sued so that Microsoft wouldn't include Java in the OS, and now they're suing because they didn't.
.Net architecture and C#. Once again, if they don't sue, Java will not exist in a form we can recognise in the future.
No, first they sued MS because MS was trying to pull and "embrace and extend" on their language. MS is famous for this tactic, of embracing a standard, then extending it to be a MS only standard. If they hadn't sued then, Java wouldn't exist in a form we'd recognise today.
Now, they sue MS for removing Java from their OS because it's obviously meant as a way to destroy Java. MS is trying to displace Java using their
They became a strong competitor by staying under MSs radar. Now that they are one, it is only intervention by the US Government which keeps them from being taken out by MS.
I know in your little world of Linux, KDE, StarOffice, where you don't have to put food on the table, and MS isn't trying to destroy you at every turn, it's easy to say "oh, those competitors are just poor losers! They shouldn't try to sue anyone!". In the real world, when one company has a hugely unfair advantage over it's competitors, those competitors can't just lay down and say die. They must use whatever force, including the courts, to survive.
It's been a long time.
Let me comment on some of what you said, from my "little world."
.NET and Java can coexist, although most likely not peacefully. If the only thing that allows Java to survive is to get MS to bundle it with Windows, then it doesn't deserve to survive (but of course this is not the case).
... I'm glad MS isn't trying to destroy me in my little world of "Linux, KDE, StarOffice."
they hadn't sued then, Java wouldn't exist in a form we'd recognise today.
So, if they forked Java development, Sun's branch would have surely died? It might have definitely added confusion to the mix, but you don't see any scenario where native apps would continue running on Windows, and cross-platform apps would not use Windows native performance extensions? You make Java sound pretty weak by saying it would have died over this.
Once again, if they don't sue, Java will not exist in a form we can recognise in the future.
Well, gosh, things just keep getting worse, it sounds like. So the only thing keeping Java on the market is lawsuits, according to you? I'm hearing "If Sun doesn't keep suing, Java will die." Hmm, it's a pretty well established technology, let's give it some credit. I know it's easy to forget that market forces can allow technologies to survive or fail, why with daily lawsuits, but
Actually, in rereading the last 2 paragraphs, I really can't tell if you're joking. If you are, I didn't mean to respond with sarcasm. If you weren't, well
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I can already see the "but Microsoft is a criminal!" responses to your post, though not from me. You might have been right if the only thing Sun seeking is cash. But they're not - check out what they're seeking, including getting government to force MS to include Java with the OS, open up their source code, and "unbundle" .NET (which is like saying, please unbundle use of C++ and DirectX). If that's not "looking for legal action," I don't know what is.
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Hey, I already do that, but when they can go to my vendor and say "Kill quicktime- yes we want you to 'knife the baby', and by the way you need to kill that Cyberdog stuff and support only IE- here's a bunch of system extensions to build into your operating system to 'support' it... have them installed as default"... then trying to use another vendor is obviously not enough.
Sun want's to be a monopolist (or at least a market leader).
Microsoft IS a monopolist.
So behaviour in one company can be considered being competitive. In another anti-competitive.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
That applies to crimes, not civil actions. In fact it says "crime" right there in your post.
This is why, for instance, OJ was the subject of a civil suit (which he lost) after being acquitted in criminal court.
Maybe I'm just too cynical in the market after seeing so many promising platforms taken out by MS. It does seem to me that the only way to survive in this marketplace after you've been targetted by MS.
Maybe I'm just getting old.
It's been a long time.
My point, all I'm saying, the reason I wrote all that junk, is that the state of the industry makes it a very fragile business, staying above water, these days in the tech industry. Whether or not my predictions are correct, they certainly have been proven accurate in the past with MSs other competitors(most of whom are long dead). Sure, it's easy to say that Java will survive, but in practice, something like this is often enough to put a competitor over the edge. It's foolish to be saying that sun shouldn't be suing, since they are among the oldest survivors of this fight.
It's been a long time.
With J++ 6, MS pushed Java as _THE_ language to write COM components in, which were then compiled to native code. Sun filed a lawsuit, J++ got castrated and MS pushed VB forward as the language of choice to write com components in (for n-tier apps), with all the drawbacks.
.NET is here, and all that's left is the courtroom... or at least it seems that way.
:(
I still find this THE missed oppertunity for Sun to win the Win32 developer for their camp. Sun didn't want MS to just use the LANGUAGE java and leave the PLATFORM java behind. Well Sun... big mistake, and after years of urinating MS in the face, it's finally over:
Too bad... J++ was a great RAD tool for writing fast com components without the overhead of C++ and without the drawbacks of VB.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
I was suprised when I read this. It's not often an attitude shown on slashdot, but it is true. When it takes a completely free OS, with tons of completely free Applications, and free access to the source code of all these Applications, to get a tiny 1% market share, the market has failed miserably
Or it could mean that Linux applications are a pile of horse-shit where the developers are too stupid to even go out and see what their users actually want in terms of usability...
Just a suggestion.
Take Lego for example. A lot of other companies have come up with their own block-like toys but to my experience they just do not approach the quality of Lego blocks. I, and several others, willingly pay more for Lego bricks than we do for the imitations. Is that a sign that the market has failed? I think not.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Letsee, I predicted the rise of the Web in 1992, that the Interactive TV model would fail 1993, that the established retailers would see off most of the etailers 1994, that the supermarket distribution model would kill Webvan et al, 1995. All of which was against the general consensus of the day.
The risk to J2EE is very real. Microsoft's CLI technology can run Java faster than any JVM. No amount of JVM tweakage can make up the difference, CLI is simply the intermediate stage of the standard C++ compiler and contains all the optimization info needed to make the highest performance code. Expect a rash of server adverts benchmarking a .NET server against J2EE.
Itanium is only having difficulty because there is diddly squat to run on the chip. Once Itanium can run everything that x86 can it will wipe the floor with the older architecture.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I know it's a waste of time replying to such empty Rhetoric, like most /. posts by paid for by M$.
>Sun is fighting MS now for several years, but not on the front of great softw
Java's not great software? StarOffice isn't? Solaris isn't? Looks like your definition of great software is limited to M$.
>Sun: put your money where your mo
That's exactly what they're doing, and in the best possible way. M$ monopoly is the worst
thing that ever happened to computer users. Just look at how it has stifled browser development, word processor development, and spreadsheet development. Look at the loss of security and privacy that M$ users are forced to endure. There's nothing Sun could do to address these issues that M$ couldn't leverage their monopoly and defeat.
The issue is anti-trust. The issue is a level playing field. The issue is an open markplace. Bravo to Sun for sticking to these basic goals and looking out for consumers where nobody else has.
Microsoft wrote their own JVM, and therefore owns its source code. Sun didn't sue Microsoft because of theft -- they sued to protect their trademark. Even if the CLR could directly run JVM bytecode, Microsoft could legally redistribute it. They just wouldn't be able to use the name "Java" for it.
The difference between theory and practice is that, in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
I think the whole case is a silly one, considering that one of Microsoft's goals with .NET is that you can write .NET apps even with Java--and I mean the real Sun-certified Java.
Think about it: can you run Sun's own JDK's in Windows XP? Sure you can. Indeed, Sun's Java VM can be easily installed into Windows XP--and Sun even provides a web page to do so.
And the way that Sun tried to get ISO and ECMA certification for Java turned into a major joke, if I remember correctly. Javascript became popular because Netscape allowed it to become the open ECMA-262 standard.
You seem fond of Windows technology - to each his own. Enjoy the embrace of Mr. Bill. I would rather be outside of the pack.
Using Java/Swing for client-side apps is indeed outside the pack, which is my point. The pack tends to use C/C++ for widely used client apps and VB for large numbers of narrowly used (custom or niche) client apps. Java/Swing is anywhere from a minor player to virtually nonexistent, depending on how you choose to define popularity.
I regulary attend JavaOne, and even there the buzz around AWT or Swing-based apps faded years ago. Like most Java developers, I'm disappointed at how much of a flop it has been for client-side development. Using Swing as your preferred client-side technology is outside the pack, even among Java developers.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
To be honest, that's what you get for using a proprietary language wholly owned by a particular company.
Java is not an open standard, which is why Sun was able to sue Microsoft over Microsoft's implementation, as they had licensed the technology.
It shouldn't be suprising now that MS wants to stick with its own homegrown alternative.
Hint to Sun: If you want people to pack your technology - it might be a good idea to to sue them.
Erg:
It just hit me: The OSF and/or Gnu should sell software licenses. Like: real licenses, with the hologram seals, serial numbers and everything... They chould shrink-wrap thim with a copy of the GPL and they should do all the administrative work of keeping track of them.
That's right -- Licenses to use free operating systems. The end-user would then be free to {,buy and} install the free OS of {his,her} choice.
{gnu,osf} could sell them to OEMs for $10 a piece. It would do two things:
- It would help pay for OSF work, and
- it would give people a well-documented way to get around the License-per-CPU MicroSoft tax.
- (I can't count.) It would also provide a way to more accurately gauge how many Gnu boxes were being shipped.
I can think of people who would buy a copy of the license just on principle.Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
(please don't troll me on this, just look at how much it cost them and how much it affected the stock)
I'd just like to point out one little thing about the stock price. Although people who support MS will sometimes pull out the fact that the stock price has suffered ever since the original verdict, they often overlook the fact that none other than Steve Ballmer stated back in 1999 that their stock was overvalued.
I can, right this very minute, go out and get any number of alternatives to their products for a wide variety of prices.
You are saying that you can go down to CompUSA, K-Mart, Wal-Mart, Ultimate Electronics, Sears or any other national retailer and buy a big name brand (IBM, HP, Compaq, etc.) desktop or laptop computer with "any number of alternatives" OS on it? I don't believe it at all! You must be shopping on some other planet. Excluding Apple, I have NEVER seen in ANY national retail store, ANY name brand PC with any OS except Windows. In fact I have asked several times if I could buy a PC without an OS on it and you can't even buy that. Until I can walk into Sears, K-Mart or Wal-Mart and buy a PC running Linux, BeOS, OS/2 or *BSD on it, Microsoft has a Monopoly.
Using exclusive contracts and binding OEMs to license argreements may sound odious, but those companies didn't have to sign them.
No, they could have chosen to go out of business instead.
They could have taken their business elsewhere.
Where else are they going to take their business? They can't sell enought PC's to stay in business, until there is a competitive OS that has enough users to sustain it. There aren't going to be enough users of an OS, until there are enough Apps for it. And there aren't going to be enough Apps for it until there are enough users to make it worthwhile for the developers.
The only way then for a competitor to Windows to break into the biz is to do what Be tried to do. Get a hardware manufacturer to put your OS on a machine alongside of Windows, until you have enough users for the developers to start making apps. Then once you've got the ball rolling and you have enough users THEN you have a viable alternative to Windows and the hardware manufacturers can tell Microsoft to stick their contracts.
But the thing is that all Microsoft had to do to maintain their monopoly was keep the hardware guys from ever putting another OS anywhere near a PC (as they did with Hitachi and Be). If you can enlighten us as to how Be could have (or any other alternative OS can) break into the market, I and many others would really like to hear it.
There is NO WAY you can convice me that there isn't a market out there for a competitor to Windows. Of all the people I know (most of them are in the computer business), I can count on one hand how many of them claim to like Windows. Wheras, I know a hundred or more who would drop Windows like a rock if they had a viable alternative. For an real good laugh (at Microsoft's expense) scope out the Operating System Sucks o' Rules Meter. That alone is enough to convince me that there is a market for an alternative to Windows, if somebody can stop Microsoft from continuing their monopoly maintaince tactics.
Finally, I want to say that choice is a *GOOD* thing. When there is no competition, there is no incentive to create a quality product. In fact it's quite the opposite, if there is no other choice they can keep selling you buggy version after buggy version because that's how they make money and you have NO other choice but to keep buying the upgrades. I firmly believe that if Microsoft didn't have *BSD and Linux breathing down their necks, Windows would be every bit as buggy and unreliable as it has been for years. (I'm talking about servers here.)
Personally, I think it's great that everybody is lining up to take a swipe at Microsoft. Bill and CO. have cheated their way to the top and they deserve every blow. I especially hope that Be gets a huge chunk of change from Microsoft, because it was truly a crime the way Bill & Co. deprived the world of an excellent computing platform.
Here, I'll make one for you:
The suit is less about the choice (or lack thereof) of a browser, and more about MS attempting to use their current monopoly in the desktop computer market to get a monopoly in other markets (Server OS's, Web Service Applications, et. al.). Ever heard of .NET? Hmm??
Pretty crappy is right. Sun declared that lawsuit a victory because it stopped MS from writing illegal extensions of the Java language that would only run on Windows platforms. If MS had been allowed to do that, they would have used their desktop monopoly to effectively break one of Java's best features: platform independence. Microsoft plainly violated their Java licensing agreement, and Sun had to take them to court to prove that.
Um, yeah. Every modern VM uses native threading code... that isn't considered cheating. Have a look at IBM's VM -- its threading performance is even better than Sun's, yet I guarantee you won't see a Sun -vs- IBM suit over that. As I mentioned previously, that law suit was over MS's breach of the Java license.
For a decent summary of the suit, have a look at CNET's News.com coverage. The FAQ there covers the basics.
--Mid
Care to back this up with some real thoughtful explanation, instead of the imminent demise of Unix(tm) conspiracy theory that's been floating around for ages now?
Maybe you mean Linux, whose lead kernel developer has no interest in making his kernel scale to more than a handful of processors, is going to kill Solaris, which scales well over 64 procs? I hardly think so. Every tool has its use, and Solaris stands alone in its class at this point. Anyone who was previously a real competitor has folded or gotten Linux religion--a religion that makes no more sense than any of the others and just provides one more way for people to stick their fingers in their ears and go "la la la I'm right, you're all wrong."
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Let's see...
Sun has lots of licensing/partnership agreements with VAR's big & small. I don't recall ever hearing one of them that said "You can be a VAR for us, but you can't sell any other equipment by any other vendor, nor any other software that does the same stuff that we do." Let's see, VARs are selling Veritas Cluster Server, a direct competitor to Sun Cluster, all the bloody time. Do we spank them for doing this? Do we force them to stop selling our equipment? No.
Tell me again about opportunities and why Sun doesn't take them?
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Don't forget BeOS is currently at 10 cents a share. There's one week left before they delist, so if you want in on the settlement, start buying.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Great post. It's clear now and I have you to thank. You've really helped out alot of people with your little tutorial on programming.
Thanks. I hope so.
Now, it's past your bedtime little troll.
Oh you were being sarcastic. Well, gosh, I guess you got me good, huh?
I take it all back. Optimizing to the underlying architecture using standard (if you read Richter, or the Addison Wesley system books) is obviously not going to give you performance improvements. How silly of me for even thinking such a thing, or knowing such a thing because I've DONE it in my own apps.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
That's got to be one of the most incoherent posts I have ever read.
I wrote a simple server in under 50 lines of code. I wrote a mass mailer in about the same number of lines. And I didn't even pay for any components. BTW nobody sells VBXs anymore that was VB3 technology.
War is necrophilia.
...And when linux, with it's faults, is Microsofts nearest competitor in the OS market, and, despite being completely free, is still hurting badly in market share, the market has failed.
Way to get an ignorant stab at linux there. Despite the fact that you obviously have no clue what I just said up there, good work. So what if I was talking about market forces and not Linux. Good work nonetheless. Maybe while you are bitching about Linux's terrible UI, you could check out the other OS I mentioned? BeOS blows Windows away in the UI department, especially in terms of consistency. It's just that ignorant folks like you assume that every alternate OS out there uses a 9x shell lookalike.
It's been a long time.
Perhaps you didn't see my earlier post.
How Lew Gerstner at IBM?
If he was a self-important prick, he certainly didn't let that image show to the outside world...
Just wondering what your reaction might be...
Thanks again,
Cheers!
"But spent one day per line? I am arguing mostly about total programming effort, and not resulting lines-of-code. "
What kind of a programmer spends one day per line? Usually the efficiency of a programming language is measured in lines of code.
"I have also written a Spam-A-Tron using Xbase in about 50 lines of code. (I felt guilty about automating spam, but that was the biz at the time. Also, the Xbase called a command line IIRC to do that actual sending.)"
Well duh! anybody can write it in 50 lines if they has an add on. I could do it in 50 if I had an OCX in VB too. The point is that this is all built into java.
"Sorry, I should have said "OCX" or something, but MS keeps changing the name every year or so based on their rapidly rotating buzzmarketing tactics and thus I lost track."
Well they have to do that to keep VB programmers forking over the dough. The poor suckers fall for it every time too!
War is necrophilia.
Better late than never. Here is the text of the agreement not to sue from Corel's 8K on sale of prefered shares to Microsoft:
.
.
4. Covenant Not to Sue
Subject to the terms and conditions of this Section 4, Microsoft
covenants to Corel that neither Microsoft nor any of its Affiliates
shall sue Corel based on any claim that current or past versions of
Corel Office Professional or Corel WordPerfect Suite (and successor
Corel WordPerfect office productivity products) (collectively,
the "Covenanted Products") infringe Microsoft's U.S. Patents
5,510,980; 5,272,628; 5,287,514; and 5,437,036. This covenant is
personal to Corel and may not be assigned or otherwise transferred
(including without limitation by operation of law) without the prior
written consent of Microsoft, and any attempted assignment or other
transfer without such consent shall be void and of no force and
effect. All obligations of Microsoft and all rights of Corel under
this covenant shall continue until the last of the patents described
above expires, provided that all obligations of Microsoft and rights
of Corel under this covenant shall automatically terminate with
retroactive effect upon the occurrence of any of the following: (i)
any attempted assignment or other transfer of this covenant without
Microsoft's prior written approval, (ii) a Change in Control; (iii)
the commencement of any legal proceeding by Corel or any of its
Affiliates against Microsoft or any of its Affiliates alleging patent
infringement, antitrust violations or anti-competitive conduct; (iv)
breach by Corel of any material term of this Agreement; and (v) any
sale, assignment or transfer, directly or indirectly, of the
businesses and/or assets related to the production and sale of any of
the Covenanted Products. The foregoing covenant does not constitute a
patent license to Corel, and except as explicitly set forth above,
Microsoft does not, directly or by implication, estoppel or
otherwise, grant any other patent covenants or patent rights under
this Agreement. Further, the foregoing covenant does not constitute a
license under, or assignment of any interest in, any copyright or
other intellectual property of Microsoft.
5. Compromise and Release of Claims
Corel and its Affiliates and predecessors in interest (to the extent
that Corel has a legal and/or contractual right to bind such
entities), in return for good and valuable consideration, the
sufficiency of which is hereby acknowledged, hereby release and
discharge Microsoft and its Affiliates, and the present or former
officers, directors, employees, representatives, agents, trustees or
other legal representatives, successors and assigns of each of them,
of and from any and all claims, counterclaims, actions, causes of
actions, suits, rights, debts, obligations, damages, liabilities, and
demands that each of them ever had or has, in law or in equity, known
or unknown, from the beginning of the world through to the Effective
Date of this Agreement (the "Corel Claims"). Corel represents,
warrants, and acknowledges that it has not relied on any
representations of Microsoft in entering into this Section 5 or in
releasing and compromising the Corel Claims. Corel and Microsoft
further agree that this Release and the Covenant Not To Sue set forth
in Section 4 hereof, as well as the other terms of this Agreement,
are a compromise of the Corel Claims within the meaning of Federal
Rule of Evidence 408, and shall constitute full satisfaction of the
Corel Claims.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
It's becoming obvious to me that you have no idea what you are talking about.
If you are unable to to use the JAVA API then fine. Apparently millions of other programmers are able to do just that without problems including me. This is a shortcoming with you and not the programming language.
Also there is a huge difference between "this call is depreciated" and this VBX that you paid 500 dollars for does not work at all. Again you don't seem to be able to tell the difference.
War is necrophilia.
"Perhaps, but why is the OCX approach simple for me but the Java approach not? IOW, why am I allegedly brain-damaged under one but not the other? You have not explained the inconsistency."
I have no idea why you are not able to grasp java. Only you can answer that. Considering that there are millions of java developers all around the world it is obvious that the reason is not java itself. If people of different colors, races, languages, religions, cultures, and world views can grasp the fundementals of java then I'd say they are on to something. I am not saying you should be ashamed or anything it's just that you can't grasp it. I can't grasp baking a pie that does not make me dumb either. People are just wired differently.
"Is the choice being married to MS or married to Sun? They are both mud-crawling greedbags. "
Not true on both counts. First of all you can JVMs from IBM and MS not to mention open source ones. So no you are not married to sun. Secondly I'd say on the evil scale MS is much more evil then sun. At least sun has not been convicted in court twice. That's not to say that sun is "good" like mother theresa just not as evil. In a very real sense you are choosing the lesser of two evils. If you really want to be on the side of good you'd get a job programming in an open source language like python, perl, php, ruby etc. Open source is the good in this case.
War is necrophilia.
"BTW, how come there is no open-source VB? I once heard of a project called something like "Arizona", but never found it."
Most likely this is due to several factors not the least of which are patents MS holds. And to be fair who would build VB from scratch? It makes no sense when you have perl, python, java, c#, delphi to clone VB. Even MS ditched VB in favor of C#. They introduced VB.NET which is nothing but a baby step to wean VB developers to C#.
There was a project one time called envelope or something but it didn't go anywhere.
War is necrophilia.