Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's Long-Playing Business Record
khendron writes "The Globe and Mail has an article which tells it like it is. Microsoft is looking at it constant court costs and anti-trust fines as simply 'the cost of doing business,' and has no intention of changing. A telling quote 'Losing or settling case after case, Microsoft has tested the bounds of antitrust and patent infringement law, with little evidence that its power has waned or that its behaviour has been substantially changed. Rivals and many legal experts say antitrust law itself has come out the worse for the skirmishes, while Microsoft appears to have built the ongoing scrutiny, fines and remedies into a strategy showing scant sign of reform.'"
Didn't Crimly just cover this?
/. too.
You mean Robert X. Cringely in "Now the Only Way Microsoft Can Die is by Suicide". Yes, and it was discussed on
MS is not alone in this behavior. Large local telephone companies are regulated by the states in which they operate, and many of those states require certain levels of company responsiveness when customers call -- eg, that 95% of calls be answered by a person in less than 30 seconds. Staffing to the necessary level has historically been quite expensive, and the level of fine that the states can impose for non-compliance relatively small. When you have to decide between spending $20M on additional staffing, or pay a $10M fine, the answer is fairly obvious.
I suppose extensive outsourcing to India or the Philipines will change the equation...
I think I remember seen something about this... somewhere
The car was a Porsche 959. Gates worked within the confines of the law, even offering sacrificial 959s for crash tests. If you read the article, he became a partner in a business to federalize the cars. The only sign of shady behaviour may be trying to import the car that wasn't approved for the U.S. streets.
To help put this into context, motorcyclists do this all the time, licensing rare imports (a.k.a. "grey-market bikes") and two-strokes or dirt bikes for the street.
I highly recommend the article, it's an interesting read and is quite apropros.
link to billg's toy car story.
SIGFEH
But as of Windows XP SP1, while the components might be physically present on the hard disk, you can block access to them. You can do this as part of the installation in a SIF file, or post installation using the "Set Program Access and Defaults" button. This can be used to (for instance) configure a new default Internet browser (I use Firefox), a new default mail client and a new media player. If you use the "hide" option, the applications are simply not available to the user. I use this in corporate environments to prevent access to Outlook Express
And you can lay very high odds indeed that that functionality is almost entirely due to the first antitrust case. Had that case not gone ahead I very much doubt that Microsoft would be offering such functions. And in the end you still have to have them installed.
I think the european decision was interesting - they have to produce a version of Windows with no WMP, so that OEMs can bundle whatever they prefer instead, or if they want, they can get and bundle WMP. Under such a situation, it would be interesting to see what media players the OEMs choose to add to a Windows install.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Personally, I think they should be able to intregrate whatever features into their operating system whenever they want. When Microsoft uses skullduggery (like funding baseless lawsuits) to inhibit their competition that is absolutely wrong - but there is nothing wrong with adding features. Ever since operating systems were invented features that at first were provided by outside programs have been moving into the operating system - and if they had not installing an operating system on a computer today would be a patchwork nightmare. Also, I don't see many Linux people crying foul when features are bundled with the Linux operating system even though it would tend to reduce the use of other programs that provide those features. Everyone should be allowed to offer whatever software they desire to sell. If Microsoft (or anyone else) wants to offer a software package that will provide all the features of all the programs in existance, that should be their prerogative.
I don't remember it that way. Here was the the way I remember it. Bill bought a very expensive Porsche that was is not normally exported to the US. At first it could not clear customs because in order for a car to be street legal, it has to meet minimum saftey and EPA guidelines. At the time, in order to meet safety guidelines, they have to crash test the car. At $300K each, there was no way the US government was going to buy a few just to crash test them.
Years later, they convinced the NHTSA to accept Porche's crash test data. However there were problems with emissions. During the 90s, emissions standards got tougher on passenger cars. Several sports cars stopped being imported because of this reason (the Nissan Z, the Toyota Supra, etc). Finally, these Porches were modified enough to pass emissions. The cars in question doesn't have as much horsepower as the original but still are powerful machines.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I don't see what politics have to do with what you say.
Of course for your argument you are going to use a reference provided by the military, which will show no toxicity whatsoever. Perhaps the military has a vested interest in showing those results, same as they've denied for years the gulf war syndrome in veterans.
In fact there is research in the toxicity in DU and there exist guidelines for exposure.
DU is at least as toxic as lead (that much is obvious), with the added problem that unlike lead, Uranium oxidizes very easily upon impact and becomes a fine dust which is breathable. So DU is not very toxic in unexploded ammo, because it is not in dust form. However after use it turns into dust which is quite toxic. Also it can pass into drinking water and become toxic there. As a heavy metal it can concentrate in the body (it is not excreted) and the chemical and radioactive components do have a cumulative effect.
So it somewhat safe to handle but not good for you to visit a battlefield where DU has been used and much less to drink the water there.
Other references: here, here, or here .