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Microsoft Not Out Of Anti-Trust Hot Water
tickticker writes "EWeek is reporting on the Anti-Trust follow up, and of course it sounds like a victory for Justice: 'The judges 'were encouraging in the sense that they went to the heart of the case,' Robert Bork, who represented the Computer and Communications Industry Association and the Software and Information Industry Association, said following the court arguments. Bork formerly was a judge on the appeals court.' Microsoft comments included the 'abundance of choice' defence. Which to me means that Microsoft wants the last of the hold-outs to choose Microsoft."
Is that the article goes on to explain that "[...] there is no evidence indicating that the settlement will have a meaningful impact.", and that "To restore competition, the settlement must go further than allowing OEMs to remove the Internet Explorer icon-it must require the separation of middleware code from the OS.".
On the subject of API Disclosure, Michael Lacovara (who represents Microsoft), said that "the challengers' request for greater API disclosure is not based in fact.", and further went on to state that "The theory of the states is that more is better.".
It's really no wonder they don't like Linux, when not even their own API's are open. For crying out loud!
With great numbers come great responsibility!
Justice for the small companies that got stomped into the ground by Microsoft illegally using its monopoly position on the desktop to move into other areas.
The agreement that was reached on the penalties MS had to suffer as a result of being found guilty is a joke.
Just keep in mind that MS was found guilty, they had broken the law of the land, they were in the wrong.
"As an avid Linux user who doesn't use any Microsoft products, allow me to play devil's advocate here: Is Microsoft a monopoly?
Since I'm sitting here typing this on my Linux machine, my response is no.
If there is a viable alternative to a product, then how can said product have a monopoly? Some people need Windows to run certain critical applications, in fact almost all corporations do, but the alternative is there."
This is astoundingly missing the point. In economic terms, the issue is whether a company has "monopoly power" which means that it controls so much of the market that they can artificially control the market (i.e. inflate prices, suppress competition, etc.). This does not mean that it has 100% market share -- in many other markets, it's been sufficient that a single company controls more than 30% of a market to establish that it has "monopoly power". Given that Microsoft controls well over 90% of the desktop OS market, it's pretty clear that they have "monopoly power" in the desktop operating system market that gives them great leverage to suppress any competing operating system (witness the contracts that prohibited Windows OEM's from also shipping BeOS), and to leverage that monopoly in order to have an unfair advantage in other markets (witness the contracts with Windows OEM's that inhibited them from shipping Netscape).
The fact that there are some alternatives such as Linux that allow some users to avoid running Windows doesn't change the fact that MS could shut down any PC company at a whim by withdrawing its Windows license. If Microsoft had even 1/2 the desktop OS market, they'd still have "monopoly power" that would trigger limits on their behavior.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Point 1 - Java started life as Oak, a language for small devices, and the JVM was designed to be portable to CPUs with limited numbers of registers. That is why it is a stack-based VM. Oddly enough, this also favors Intel architecture more than Sparc. The only person to claim that the JVM was designed expressly for Sparc was a single professor funded by Microsoft.
Point 2 - The Microsoft VM, while performing better in some cases than the Sun VM for Windows, was buggy as hell.
Point 3 - There is no law requiring Sun to sue Netscape like they did Microsoft just to satisfy your sense of "justice". Netscape was a strategic partner, what was Sun supposed to do?
But thanks for posting your revisionist bullshit. Have a nice day.
"And this is my boy, Sherman. Speak, Sherman." "Hello." "Good boy."
"Wrist slap, a million in free software to schools, lawyers get money, MS expends monopoly even further, profit. "
Recent history doesn't show any expansion of the MS "monopoly". They have no made that much headway into the server market, and linux competitveness in the the desktop market is growing by orders of magnitude in ease of use and software availability.
more prone to read for exact compliance with the letter language of earlier rulings, without questioning larger issues, keeping a careful, limited view.
Judges are given a wide latitude in determining justice, but the above is really what they're supposed to do. Particularly if any decision on the matter has come from a higher court (US Supreme Court or an Appeals Court under whose jurisdiction the lower court falls), they are essentially bound to that precedence.
Now, they can decide that the matters are somehow different--which is what most do--or they can decide that the matter is more important to be decided one way or another than to follow a previous court's decision. The latter will often be overturned on appeal. (It is said, however, that the Supreme Court reviews its decisions every seven years or so.)
Is that the right way to do things? Maybe, maybe not. On the one hand the best thing, in terms of justice, is to evaluate every case individually on their merits and make the determination in a vacuum. However I'm not sure how feasible it is to have different legal decisions floating around in different jurisdictions. Lose your case? Just move to the next town over!
It's not ideal, but it might be the best we can do.
If you read the complete Title 15 Section 2 (15USC2) and look at the amendments log at the end you'll see that the fee was updated to $10m in 1990 as part of Public Law 101-588, and a few times prior to that as well. In fact the original law in 1955 was only a $5,000 fine and only a misdemeanor. Note that those fees/punlishments are for the felony act. That doesn't necessarily limit what the government can do to end the monopoly or act in the public's interest.
However while pretending to be an informed /.'er, you should really read the whole law as it aplies to monopolies, not just the small section 2. See the 15USC Chapter 1. In particular you may want to read section 21, 24, 37 among others.
> by any measure, Intel is a bigger monopoly than MS.
I'm sorry? That's simply not true.
If I look in the ads in any computer magazine, I can find an advert for PCs with Intel processors, and on the next page one for PCs with AMD processors. Sometimes even from the same OEM.
But both sets of PCs are supplied exclusively with Microsoft(r) Windows(r) XP Home Edition.