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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!
"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."
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.