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New Documents Shed Light on Microsoft's Tactics
Tigen writes "As the NY Times reports, even as MS prepares to face penalties from the European Union, testimony during the second week of trial in the consumer class-action lawsuit in Minnesota has revealed some embarrassing internal documents from Microsoft which were not disclosed in the 1997 federal antitrust lawsuit. Items include a 1990 letter from Bill Gates to Andy Grove, and Microsoft's illegal tactics against the Go Corporation, a Silicon Valley startup."
"Armed forces abroad are of little value unless there is prudent counsel at home" - Cicero
Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $10,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $350,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding three years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
It's quite essential for the prosecution to show intent to attain a monopoly on Microsoft's part, which can only be done with this kind of evidence. By your logic, evidence in a murder trial establishing a motive would be thrown out, as the defendant was not yet a murderer at the time.
Please explain how pocket, portable computing would have been possible even ten years ago.
What about the Newton, circa 1993?
The opposite of progress is congress
For those of you wondering about the refernce:
2 -23
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2004-0
tbdean
Please explain how pocket, portable computing would have been possible even ten years ago.
:-(
While Americans might think that Palm (or Apple/Newton) invented pocket computing, I suggest you take a look at Psion. This company made several successful pocket computers more than ten years ago. They released the Psio series 3 in 1991. In the later models they managed to include word-processors, spread-sheets, graphical software, games, web browsers, in a tiny ROM. The computers were truly innovative.
Sadly, they recently decided to get rid of their innovative technology (Symbian) and focus on WinCE devices instead. No more innovation from Psion. From the leading edge to a me-too M$ slave.
)9TSS
Not 75Mhz, but 30Mhz would have been easily possible: 10 years ago, the 30Mhz version of the ARM6/7 was available (and shipping in production hardware). Designed for low power consumption and low cost, not much different from the ARM processors we see in portable devices today, really. The Apple Newton was shipping too, and it had an operating system that would not have looked out of place in modern hardware. Plus the original Palm Pilot was shipping, and the OS there hasn't changed much in that time.
As the ARM was shipping in hardware in those days, a full set of support hardware and software was available, Digital was licensing the technology in order to develop the StrongARM (1995/6 for the 200Mhz version IIRC - got a Palm on my desk that's powered by one of those). ARM didn't have quite the same profile in embedded systems markets in those days, but they were well aware of the potential of their CPU: the ARM6 was the first CPU they specifically designed for embedded applications.
So no, the hardware was *NOT* the limiting factor. The main limiting factor was the will to make the devices, especially as the (ARM6 powered) Newton was not exactly setting the world on fire.
See Here for example, discussing the ARM6 core - in 1991!
I bet that calculator is powered by an ARM7/8. A direct descendant of a processor available in quantity 10 years ago, not that much faster, and it wasn't the only one around.
UK company called Psion had portable computing, including word processing, scheduler, database and a programming language with a keyboard you could actually type on in the early 1990s (Psion3 in 1991). They used Flashdisks for portable storage and you could even get modems for them to fax with and, if you connected them to a PC/MAC there were printer drivers to allow the Psion to print and just use the PC as a spooler. I used to use terminal softwatre on my Amiga to communicate and I could swap files between the Psion and my Miggy
t m
This device was pocket sized, heavy but not as bad as the Jornada 620/720 and used two "AA" batteries with a watch battery for backup.
History of Psion here
http://3lib.ukonline.co.uk/historyofpsion.h
If you want the whole story of GO, read Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure by Jerry Kaplan. It's a great book. And it shows just how evil Microsoft really is!
The trial exhibits (including the documents mentioned in the NY Times article) are being posted on the court's website.
Frustrated with PowerPoint? Try Apple's Keynote. It's everything PowerPoint should have been years ago, and then some. Smooth drop-shadows and alpha-blending of everything. High-quality 2-D and 3-D transitions. Photo cutouts. Integrated chart support.
All that, and it even imports and exports PowerPoint documents, so you don't have to start from scratch.
Yes, it only runs on Macs. But if you give presentations a lot, it's nearly worth getting yourself a Powerbook just for Keynote!
Actually, the commodore 64 was VERY widespread, as was the sinclair spectrum and a number of other systems, most big games were ported to multiple systems so the users had a choice, and porting games was much harder in those days.. nowadays with API's like opengl and such, porting games and other apps should be very easy
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Their innovation continues to exist in Symbian Devices.
:)
I own a SonyEricsson P800 UIQ based Mobile Phone. Based on the Symbian 7.0 platform, you can still see the Psion/Epoc influence underneath.
The result, a sold stable computing platform, which arguebly crashes FAR less than equivelent MS Smartphones. (this is from personal experience amongst me and my collegues)
A MultiTasking/Multithreading operating system that is easy enough to use (MAC/Palm style), yet DOES allow you access the filesystem (C drive, ddrive, etc), and other system details via freely downloadable software shoudl you wish to tinker.
Its Handwritign recognition is exemplar, and far better and more "user friendly" than Palm's old Graffiti system which was very good for what it was.
I use it as an Ogg player (who needs an MP3 player, its sound quality is excellent), a PDA (it synchs with Outlook contacts/mail/tasks/diary/notes, and has dynamic contact spaces (it dynamically adds new fields even when they are not provided in the main set of fields, try that with palm its its infuriating 5 max fields for numbers/fax/email/web and one address field)
For those not wishing to submit to Outlook, it also has excellent vCard and SyncML support. You can back up the contacts by selecting "send all" and pointign the Infrared or bluetooth at any computer (Win/Mac/Linux) and selecting send. it will create a standard vCard file with all contact details stored in it. and to send it back to the phone, just send the single file. Even outlook on the PC cannot handle a vCard with numerous contacts so simply and elegantly, heaven help Mobile Outlook users!
it is simply the best PDA i have ever had, and does follow to some extent Jerry Kaplan's original vision...
Oh and i forgot to mention, its a damn good phone too!
Have a nice day!
what monopoly?
Legally Microsoft is a Monopoly. Microsoft was shown in court to control nearly 100% of it's market. Obviously a single person running a different OS does not alter the fact that Microsoft has monopoloy power. Even 5% of people using non-Microsoft not enough to signifigantly diminish that monopoly power.
Monopoly is not defined as absolute 100% perfection. It is (roughly) defined as an overwhelming dominance and control of the relevant market.
Microsoft was further shown to have (1) illegally abused that monopoly power to maintain their monopoly, and (2) to have illegally abused that monopoly power in an attempt to extend their monopoly into other markets (and thus exterminating competitors and competition in those markets).
Examples from the court case include Microsoft abusing it's Monopoly power to force all major computer sellers to sign contracts forbiding them from selling dual-boot machines. Computer sellers could have included Window/Linux dual boot option at essentially zero additional cost (or Windows/OS2 dual boot at merely the cost of an OS2 licence). The public would have greatly benefited from a completely FREE additional Linux system on their machine, and from the option for a low-cost OS2 (or other) second boot option. Illegally maintaing a Monopoly.
Micrsoft further worded that contract such that the seller had to pay Microsoft for EVERY machine they sold. If they offered a system without an OS, or with Linux, or with OS2, they STILL had to pay Microsoft for that machine. That has the twin effects of increasing the cost to the consumer to buy a Linux or OS2 machine, and it allows Microsoft to effectly collect a tax on its competitors products. Illegally maintaining a monopoly.
Microsoft also illegally leveraged it's OS monopoly in an attempt to create a new monopoly for itself in the web browser market. InternetExplorer has obtained a somewhat overwhelming dominance, but that doesn't matter. Even if InternetExplorer failed and had merely 1% of the market, the tactics they used in the attempt were themselves illegal. Illegally attempting to abuse a monopoly to create a monopoly in another market.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
In 1991, the hardware for portable computing just wasn't there. It.. just... WASN'T. I mean, where did PenWindows go? Yep, right into the dumpster.
Here's a loose quote (I don't remember it exactly) from Marlin Eller's book referenced at the end of the article: "This wasn't about 'grow the market,' it was about 'block that kick.' Go Corp spent $(millions) creating their product, we spent $4 million shooting them down. They'll never sell their shit again." That's not the exact quote, but it's pretty close. I remember it so clearly because I was completely shocked to read such a thing.
IIRC, this was said in response to Eller expressing his opinion that Pen Windows was a failure because it didn't take off, and the person who spoke the words above explained that Pen Windows was a success because all it was supposed to do was cock-block Go Corp from building a presence in the market.
~Philly
Didn't we just set a bunch of foreign nationals free because they were wrongly imprisoned? I think they also had some young children imprisoned. This report indicates 88 of the 100 people transfered out of Getmo were released to be freed (the other 12 remaining in detention in their home nations).
It would be one thing if these were prisoners of war being held until the war ended, as per the Geneva Convention, but this is an ongoing 'war against terror' (except Iraq, the terrorists followed us there) basically giving Bush the ability to hold these people indefinitely. Besides 'Mission Accomplished' has already been declared in Iraq and there are plenty of Iraqis in the camps.
Now, it would be one thing if there was any accuracy at all in the determination that the detained people are terrorists or terrorist supporting individuals. And noone is asking to 'open the floodgates' and let em all run free and noone would be complaining if all of these people were dangerous. But we've already seen plenty of cases where people were improperly detained and without any representation at all bad things happen to good people... 88 of them so far and counting.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
Sorry, why do you need unity?
When home computing first took off in the early-to-mid 1980s, businesses were already using the first IBM PCs but very few people had them in the home - the reason being was that they were incredibly expensive machines then and most home users wanted a small, cheap home machine to play games on and to maybe do a little programming, type a few letters simply, etc.
So what started out as Sinclair Spectrums, BBC Micros & Commodore 64s as 8-bit machines became Commodore Amigas and Atari STs as 16-bit machines in the late 1980s & early 1990s.
Even at this point, with PCs getting cheaper, STs and Amigas were still in widespread home use because they had much better capabilities, at the time, than IBM PCs had for graphics and sounds.
It was this point that Commodore made a big blunder, by not considering development of bigger and better Amigas that could compete with the 386 PCs that were now starting to get upgradeable graphics and sound cards. This was long before Windows, now at "Windows For Workgroups" stage, became a viable gaming platform - I for one cannot remember a game that was written specifically for WFW 3.11.
The fact is that it was the modular nature of the IBM PC that meant it had an advantage cost-wise for upgradability - if you wanted to upgrade an Amiga, you had to buy a new one or buy a very expensive third-party addon. This was nothing to do with Windows, at least at this point in history.
Never mind that computer ownership skyrocketed after Windows 95 came out.
PC ownership was already increasing by the time Windows 95 came out. Windows 95 was a very clever marketing decision by Microsoft because it forever tied PC games to a Microsoft operating system by virtue of DirectX and forcing hardware manufacturers into writing Windows drivers. However, it crashed a helluva lot more times than MSDOS, OS2 or AmigaDOS and the Workbench ever did because Microsoft had no reason to make a stable OS anyway - it sold purely because of it had a stranglehold on the home computing market from the word go, not because it advanced computing in any way.
Remember, when Windows 95 came out, it sold initially to home users - businesses took a long time to move from WFW and NT 3.51.
Also, unless you ever used comparable OSes of the time, like OS2, AmigaDOS or a UNIX, you would not appreciate what proper multitasking actually meant. Windows 95 was *just* a GUI for MSDOS and still, technologically, far behind the other OSes - although it may have looked prettier!
Anybody remember the Commodore days?
Yes, a Commodore screwed up big time with bad marketing decisions - this happened despite Microsoft although MS would probably have killed them anyway had they laster longer - but again, this would have been through clever marketing and industrial sabotage.
Having a computer was like driving a moped.
In what respect? Again, if you'd have used the Amiga Workbench, the 14MHz 68000 CPU inside an Amiga gave Workbench a much slicker feel and speed than anything MS ever did on an Intel 486 running at anything up to 100 MHz - because the hardware multitasked properly and the OS was much slicker due to the tighter memory constraints on an Amiga.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not an Amiga zealot in any respect but it wasn't until Pentium-class CPUs came out that I found any reason to change to an IBM PC. Even then, Windows was a step backward from Workbench and I'm pleased that I can now get similar reliability and usability on an IBM PC with Linux.
The only good thing about Windows is that Microsoft have always been excellent at marketing it, not because it ever has been a technological leader.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.