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EU Releases Microsoft Antitrust Report
Hassman writes "Ever wondered the reasoning behind the EU fining Microsoft and ordering them to sell a Media Player free version of Windows? Well now you can stop wondering. If you aren't up for the full read (it is 302 pages), check out the Reuters summary. Want more? Check out a quote from the summary: 'There is a huge switching cost to using a different operating system [as in not Windows],' he [a MS exec] wrote Gates. 'It is this switching cost that has given customers the patience to stick with Windows through all our mistakes, our buggy drivers, our high TCO, our lack of a sexy version at times...' Mmm...sexy indeed." Reader BrerBear writes "News.com is reporting that the European Union has released its report on Microsoft's conduct, to which Microsoft has pre-emptively responded. Inside are more classic examples of what one should never write in an internal memo: 'In short, without this exclusive franchise called the Windows API, we would have been dead a long time ago,' from Microsoft Sr. VP Bob Muglia."
For those who won't RTF 7 page MS response, here's my "flaimbait" quote from Microsoft's response.
All other contemporary operating systems, such as Apple's OS X, similarly tout their integrated media capabilities. The Decision expressly rejects (Para. 822) the principle that tying analysis for finished products should focus not on whether there exists a separate demand for a component but on whether there is any demand for the finished product with that component missing. For example, the fact that there is a market for shoelaces does not mean there is a market for shoes that have their laces missing. Common sense dictates that it would be misguided for regulators to require shoes to be sold in such a manner, even if this would create greater opportunities for companies that sell shoelaces. 1 The Decision goes on to dismiss the fact that all other operating systems also come with media playback software, ostensibly because some (but not all) of these finished products incorporate media players developed by other suppliers. (Para. 822.)
Go ahead, mod me down for common sense ...
..about these internal memos, sometimes they're too funny to be true, its like they feel compelled to give us even more ammo!
It's hard enough to remember my opinions, never mind the reasons for them..
This is news to whom?
Can I bum a sig?
So, the memos point out things we already knew. At least they are smart enough to admit that they don't have a great product. If only they were smart enough to fix it and do right in the future.
Evolution or ID?
Well It's About bloody time! I feel like it might be the best thing the EU has done for us, what with the Patents and all.
I can't wipe my ass without Micro$oft patenting the technique!
Keep the faith, share the code
Then why don't make the one without WMP as expensive (or more expensive even) as the one with and let the market sort it out?
Or would the EUC be so bold as to tell some company how their products should be priced?
The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
QuickTime is used by no one else commercially except for Apple themselves.
In addition ... QuickTime pops up every Goddamn time with "upgrade to Pro?" To be fair to Real, they have removed the spyware ... it is still nearly impossible to find the free version to DL though ... but yeah, it's all Microsoft's Fault! Damn them for making a better (or atleast more consumer friendly) product!
'It is this switching cost that has given customers the patience to stick with Windows through all our mistakes, our buggy drivers, our high TCO, our lack of a sexy version at times...'
I wouldn't exactly say patience is the right word, how about ignorance? It was very difficult for most computer users to leave the more comfortable Windows enviroment, but then again I learned DOS when I was 6 yrs old to play Montezuma's Revenge. So it cant be that hard.
> 'It is this switching cost that has given customers the patience to stick with Windows through all our mistakes, our buggy drivers, our high TCO, our lack of a sexy version at times...' Mmm...sexy indeed.
Let me just say, there is no switching cost: you have been fooled. It's not your fault; Microsoft has been fooling billions of people the same way you have been fooled. Offset training and allocation of new resources in your company for purging out Microsoft as being standard operating costs (upgrade costs), not "switching" costs; it's a farce to think otherwise.
Long term benefit in using a reliable system makes any switching price worth every penny. Short term benefits are that you can simply ignore the next bout of viruses, your staff will love you and you can also take credit for the increased profits from operating a tight ship.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Those two words do NOT belong in the same sentence.
I'm amazing. You aren't. SUCK IT
Don't forget that in the US MS was convicted as well.
The fact that they are convicted twice won't change a thing until they actually *PAY* the fine.
MP3 Search Engine
The United States has declared the enforcement of a sovereign nation's own laws to be weapons of monopoly destruction.
Doing the Right Thing should not be preempted by making a buck.
Not to mention that ASF/WM is THE cross-platform format. It works on Windows (via WMP or any other media player), Mac (WMP v. X), and ... Linux! (MPlayer)
It's the #1 player why?
Probably because there hasn't been any alternatives, since Microsoft has been stifling them. User indifference matters here; re Netscape vs. Microsoft.
Try using the free Media Player Classic.
Doing the Right Thing should not be preempted by making a buck.
Which is exactly one of the reasons the competitors get no chance and why the EU has made this decision.
BTW, QuickTime works just fine on Windows afaik and I see it used quite a lot by people other than Apple (though often alongside other formats, rather than as the only format)
I've always figured that MS execs were smart enough to know that their products are garbage. This just confirms that.
It's nice to rely on the fact that most people have this installed.
Kinda like how it's nice to rely on the fact that everyone uses Internet Explorer. How irritating.
President Ed Black wrote letters to Secretary of State Colin Powell and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, telling them he knew they had been asked to "take extraordinary actions" because of the European decision.
Black urged them not to intervene. He said Microsoft was pressuring the U.S. government to pressure the European Union to ease off Microsoft.
Am I the only European here scared by this snipet from the Reuters article? Are we going to be bombed? Colin Powell is involved, next will it be Rumsfeld? What kind of excuse will he find this time?
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
The worst that would happen though, is that MS would strip the player from the windows CD.
People would still be able to download it from their website for free, just as they have with every successive recent version of WMP.
True, a lot of consumers wouldn't realise and wouldn't bother - at least not until websites and files started telling them that they needed WMP to play the file they're trying to view, but I'd hardly say that it would be a disaster.
We wouldn't have to deal with Real's bullshit if Media Player didn't force them to go to such steps. There was a time when Real player was spyware and adware free. Anyway, I think this would be a good time to get an official port of mplayer to windows so it could spank them both like a couple of bitches.
You just need to insert "is not" between them.
The Erogenous Zone
i dont se how its more cross platfor than anything else
quicktime works on osx
on windows
and on linux with mplayer
real works on windows osx and linux
so wath makes wmp more cross platform
yeah and the ting with real player being sucky thats true but those companies want to make money
from the media streaming companies.
but reals marketshare sems to be to low to purley make money from the streaming companies so then the have to make some money from the player.
and lets faceit aslong that wmp is integratet in windows wmp will be the only format that streaming media providers can rely on wich means that the marketshare for new companies wont be bigg enuuff to make money without getting some from the player.
I would be appaled if this is a reason NOT to pull it out. "Its nice to rely on thefact that most people have it installed"
Sjees, since when is the internet made to make -YOUR- job easier? How hard can it be to make one for download on your site? Why dont we all just design flash websites, its easy for webdesigners, since -most- people have this installed.
"/Dread"
Standards are needed - and despite Real's protestations to the contrary, there are two main reasons their "product" has lost market share left and right.
#1, they feel the need to load it down over and over with spyware - especially that Gator crap. And then they put in the constant-nagware messenger of their OWN with that "Real Messenger" garbage.
#2, their encoding schemes SUCK. Compared to the visual quality of Divx encoding, WMF, or even earlier-series Quicktime (which had some real nasty blocking problems), even modern Realplayer blows chunks.
This exec spreads fear and dissent. But it is all lies. He lies. Alternatives to Windows for individuals (Customers, if you will) are often obtained for the cost of 720MB of bandwidth, which is often "unlimited" or "unmetered" over the course of a month and already paid for. The only cost involved for an individual to switch is the time and effort to learn the other operating system. The cost for a company will be high since they are expected to compensate their employees for their time. But the cost for individuals to switch is low. If they are a homeless greasy bum with nothing else to do, naturally this cost will be very low.
We will surround their pricey vendor lock-in, and then it will be they who will be surrounded. We will continue to give away our free alternative operating systems for the price of what it costs you to download it, and a shoe.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
I think that if M$ had decided upon an open source standard media format, this would have been a mute point, but since they created a proprietary format (for better or for worse), their monopoly of the OS Market puts them in a uniquely vulnerable position. By essentially forcing all Windows users to use WMP whether they want to or not, they have carefully, if not cleverly, created a situation where a monopolistic practice can almost be explained away. I think that we can all agree that Real is destined for the garbage heap. Back before WMP, Real survived because of their accidental monopoly. It is a sad day when even Microsoft can make a product better than yours. Quicktime may become a contender faster than everyone thinks. Apple gives away their Quicktime Streaming Server software for FREE, with unlimited user licenses. They do bundle Quicktime with the Mac OS, but only because the only other medial player available for a long time was Real. I now have Windows Media Player, Quicktime, and Real running on my Mac. The only one that I want to get rid of is Real. WMP for Mac is a very simple interpretation. It only plays the Windows Media format files, but it does it well enough and finally is integrated with the Web browser so that I don't have to download all of the links anymore.
Why doesn't anything interesting happen when I have mod points?
My options are
At a cost of CAD $399 (not including the box) my choice will be #2
And really, MFC gets a bit of a bad rap. Sure, Document/View is horrible, but other parts of MFC are pretty well done. That, and one thing MS has done pretty well is release a good IDE. It's mostly consistent, and yeah, .NET IDE is drastically different at first, but it took me about 5 minutes to get it to behave like VC 6.
Now please just don't get me started on the clusterf*ck known as COM/DCOM or the abomination that is .NET... both of which make me glad I switched to Linux 3 years ago at home.
'This would be very bad for the Internet.'
Why is that? Nobody has forbidden the user to install media player if they wish to - or indeed if they have any opinion about the matter.
Well now you can stop wondering. If you aren't up for the full read (it is 302 pages), Although the PDF is only around 1.42 Mbytes. How much space would the same document take up as a powerpoint presentation?
QuickTime also sucks donkey balls on Windows... it's slow as molasses, the browser plugin is buggy, and it constantly pops up that nag screen to "Go Pro!"
>Try using the free Media Player Classic.
or how about VideoLan Client?
http://www.videolan.org/
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Quite aware of that.
The difference is in what they don't do. Windows Media Player also has those links to "buy music" and has the license management/DRM. Media Player Classic plays media, that's about it.
Doing the Right Thing should not be preempted by making a buck.
I have to agree, this is one of the most frustrating things I run into on a daily basis. One funny thing I found was a company we are partnered with told us they were a strictly Java shop and they displayed their hate for microsoft. I went to their website to get more information and the site would only work with IE 5.5 or greater. My boss and I had a field day with that one.
Johnkoerner.com
I have been thinking all week why the NIST should standardize the windows API.
I think that NIST would be better than ISO/ANSI/IEEE, and they have a working agreement with ANSI. Also the specification would cost less (if at all) than an ANSI/ISO version.
By standardizing the API, you immediately have the government buy the software that uses this standard. It would make our country secure not to be dependent upon one single supplier of an OS (as much as Microsoft thinks otherwise).
It also means that Windows stops being the moving target that it is.
Before you troll me with free enterprise/right to innovate/unnecessary/linux blah blah blah, anything that lessens the cost for everybody is a good idea. The OS is the only thing that has increased in cost as compared to other parts to the computer.
I know linux is free, but the fact remains that the vast majority of computer users use a Microsoft product, and wants to keep their software investment minimal (even though all the software companies want us to continually upgrade).
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
"Inside are more classic examples of what one should never write in an internal memo...."
I disagree. It is sometimes one's duty to point out that one's employer has weaknesses. These are exactly the sort of things one *should* write in internal memos to people who can and should do things about them. *Good* leadership wants to hear about the company's weak spots so that they may be addressed.
Yes, sometimes bearing bad news gets you fired. In the short run that's really bad, but in the long run I'd rather not be working for weaklings and cowards anyway.
Maybe... but recent steps of Microsoft seem to prove it tries to head in the right direction. Giving up remaining a monopoly at all costs, cost of customer comfort being not the least, and finding a decent, wide niche in the OS market, as one of many, competing with others, but often cooperating too, accepting better solutions than their own without trying to cripple them (see Java VM, crippled Quicktime, forced integration of seriously inferior MSIE 3.x). It seems Microsoft noticed their destruction may be a completely unintended side effect of Linux growth if they don't stop being so evil, and just like IBM who was seen an evil empire, but nowadays is quite liked, Microsoft may try to do the Good Things because even if they don't pay in short term, as direct marketing profit, they will pay in long term, improving their reputation?
Several more kicks in the ass, just like the WMP case definitely help getting there. You might want to see Microsoft destroyed, sure. But would you really mind seeing Microsoft just becoming true Good Guys?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
umm..this memo is from one guy that may have been in charge of MS's C++. It was written in 1997 and reflects this single person's view of the products MS had released in 1997 and before.
Anyone who claims that Windows 2000 is buggy and unstable is in error. And an idiot.
Fortunately, more Iraqi's then not are happy to be rid of Sadam and are looking forward to ruling themselves.
If I lived under a brutal dictatorship, I'd want someone to intervene on my behalf so my children would have a better life. Maybe that's just me, though...
Shoe laces wear out and snap. Media Players don't.
It's a bad analogy (from Microsoft - I realise it isn't you who put this analogy forward).
Cheers,
Ian
Why the hell is this modded +5 Insightful? This guy hasn't got a clue about the costs involved in corporate level IT.
This is a common tactic that is used to confuse people into thinking that Microsoft is just trying to do normal business and not using monopolistic tactics to keep people from switching OS's. Almost everything Microsoft does is designed around keeping people from switching. That includes, extending standards, proprietary file formats, licensing agreements ect. You can never stop Microsoft until you break their tactics. Of course, they camouflage their real tactics with simple analogies that they expect everyone to believe.
You're forgetting Ogg.
All that is changing in Iraq is who is doing the brutality, and who is getting the oil profits. There is not less brutality, and it doesn't appear there will be less brutality in the next several years.
Precisely why I'll always be avoiding websites such as your own, like the plague. WMP has a trashy interface, its functionality sucks and it hogs resources and takes up space on my HDD that could be used on something usefull. I also HATE the video and audio previews in windows explorer, but thats almost a different arguent. If M$ remove media player it's an improvement and I'll be using mplayer classic or something decent thankyou very much.
There is a huge switching cost to using a different operating system
The switching cost definately is a reason for large companies not to switch to Linux, but there is a totally different reason for small companies. I have been working with, for, and around small companies (25 employees) for years and almost all of them are running some flavor of windows/windows server because Bob from accounting knows about computers and knows how to fix issues if they come up. These companies do not have the budget for a full time system administrator, so they make do with what they've got. Since most people are running windows at home, Windows is going to be the easiest thing for these companies to use at work.
Johnkoerner.com
Actually, no they don't HAVE to take on a greater responsiblity; as they have shown all along. But if the market is going to get better instead of worse then they must be forced to.
Real use to be such a superior product until they thought that Microsoft was going to buy them out.
Okay, I'm sure there's a valid reason, probably legal, but to make porting easier to another OS, like Linux, why hasn't anyone tried to port the Win32 APIs? Put them on top of a windowing toolkit (or just use the raw XLib) and make all the appropriate changes under the hood, so to speak. Mono's doing something similar with the whole .NET libraries, but presumably even .NET on Windows is making Win32 API calls underneith all that wrapping.
:) ).
I'm not saying this is easy, or even necessarily desirable (see: slipperly slope) but since Microsoft has tried making it "easy" to port apps to Windows, why hasn't anyone turned around and make it easy to port Windows apps to Linux (we'll leave MFC & ATL for later.
I'll place my vote with "Because the competition spends more time complaining about fairness then they do producing a quality product" option.
For years, I hated installing RealPlayer. For a long time it was the standard when it came to streaming media. I hated having to mount Sherpa guided expeditions through real.com in order to find the real player. Only to have to do so again a month or two later after my version 'expired' and had to be 'upgraded'. I hated having to uncheck multiple check boxes in order to keep from being bothered by requests to buy the full version, but those prompts would still appear.
I came to prefer Windows Media Player for most streaming as it offered a far better experience then Real did. Feel free to blame Microsoft for driving Real to such tactics if you want... always remember that it was up to Real in the end how to treat their customers.
Yes, there are alternatives to Real, however for my needs, Windows Media Player does handles most of them. (although more recently, iTunes is beating it out for almost anything audio).
I for one welcome our new/old Microsoft masters! Almost everything I need in a single box? I call it Windows 2000.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
One man's switching cost is another man's hobby. The MS antitrust suits are still total BS, althought I'm basically on board with Windows haters.
I don't know if this is true but I suspect that there is less brutality now than under Saddam. The difference being that it is now visible and (mostly) under public scutiny.
Kiss Mighty Fine MicroSoft?
There is absolutely no need to trash Microsoft this time... they did it themselves!
'There is a huge switching cost to using a different operating system [as in not Windows],' he [a MS exec] wrote Gates. 'It is this switching cost that has given customers the patience to stick with Windows through all our mistakes, our buggy drivers, our high TCO, our lack of a sexy version at times...'
and
'In short, without this exclusive franchise called the Windows API, we would have been dead a long time ago,' from Microsoft Sr. VP Bob Muglia.
and isn't that the truth? I write software for a living. If I did my job as bad as Microsoft has over the years, I'd be fired!
From the perspective of most web content developers, that is nice.
Skipping cross-platform compatability testing and corrections eliminates at least half the time for your typical HTML monkey.
If I lived under a brutal dictatorship, I'd want someone to intervene on my behalf...
If I lived under a brutal dictatorship I would do everything to end it myself.
Oh wait... I did that already. But it was another country and another dictator I got rid of. So maybe my opinion doesn't count.
And for sure: I would curse the country that basicly said: You are incompetent to deal with your dictator on your own, which we let go 10 years ago because we didn't want him away at this point. So this time we will bomb you into shock and awe, then we wreck or let wreck every public service that is and stop you from rebuilding it because we promised the contracts to our buddies first.
What happened to let people decide for their destiny themselves? How long would Saddam Hussein have been in power if the U.S. just said: We don't care? One year? Two? Ok. There is the argument that this would have meant another 10000 or 20000 dead people on the hand of Saddam Hussein's regime every year.
How is that worse or better than the probably 30000 dead young men enlisted to the Iraqi army and the 15000 dead civilians? The so feared Republican Guards just disappeared. Those actively supporting Saddam Hussein knew when to hide. But not the young people who were serving an army they probably didn't like, but which died by defending the home of their families.
I can't hear anymore the argument that it was best for Iraq to get rid of Saddam Hussein by first bombing the land into chaos and then fail to have a contingency plan. What if Iraqi people were able to sort out Saddam Hussein themselves? Did anyone ever looked at the alternatives?
Or was it that Saddam Hussein had to be removed by external force because otherwise the Iraqi would have dealt with him, and then the U.S. couldn't close the ring around Iran and Russia, because a selfliberated Iraq may have had no incentive to let them in?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
.... is not what you use to make your clothes smooth and presentable....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Seriously i dont understnad linux zealots sometimes. He uses linux instead of windows but because he doesnt use mplayer-mozilla plugin he's a dumbass? What if he liked Opera or Dillo instead? And keep in mind streaming media also includes audio and having mplayer eat my ram/cpu to listen to a stream that xmms could handle no problems doesnt make much sense. But someone with half a ass for a brain already knows that.
Forget that the application is installed by default and bundled with the SatanSpawn Windows.
Which is the best bit of software out of Quicktime, Real and WMP?
Quicktime does a reasonable job (normally image quality's better). In fact, I quite like it. Files are typically slightly larger (because of the higher quality) than WMP. But an alternative.
Real. Ugh. Try stopping it starting at boot on a Windows box. Even if you remove it, you'll find it back again. Same with quicktime (even deleting from the startup registry and it comes back). Real's so full of adverts etc that the view window by default's tiny in comparison.
Well, WMP. I'm not going to make too strong a case for it, but I'm not going to do it down either.
Personal opinion: WMP is the best out of the three. It's a personal opinion, but one formed from years of use. I don't think that way because it's bundled - it's the feeling I'm left with after trying out all the major competitors.
If you're going to get at MS for anti-competitive workings, do it for something REAL like the bundling of IE. IE is comparatively BAD to most other browsers, but people use it because it's installed by default. Don't do it over the one piece of software that's actually pretty darned good.
In philosophy there's a saying, "there is no natural law." One could say of business, "there is no business ethics."
Errrrrr, yeah, so I guess all those pr0n shops that use Quicktime are all owned by Apple? Holy hell!! No wonder they have a few billion in the bank and are pretty much debt free ;-)
So, yeah, let us not forget the driving force behind a lot of the internet expansion does use Quicktime _commerically_ as well as MS products.
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
(*) Yes, I know WMP is available for Mac, but how long before Microsoft stops developing it, just as they did with IE?
The lack of compiling kernels the lack of playing hunt that package the huge libary of games "yeah windows really sucks huh"
Ahh... the old "huge library of games" argument. Because, as anyone knows, all the discriminating IT professional cares about (as opposed to, say, some random 14-year-old kid on Slashdot who forgets to hit the 'f' key some times) is playing games.
Ironic that the EU used Windows pdf software to create this report.
"Acrobat Distiller 5.0.5 (Windows)"
.... hasn't been caught conspiring to ONLY include their brand of shoelaces, and browbeating the other lace and shoe manufacturers to "follow their lead..or else", nor that shoes be so constructed that using another brand of lace makes your shoes fall apart, or to make the task of inserting new laces so difficult as to be near impossible without getting the "secret shoe lace instructions" that are "licensed" and "propietary".. and even if you get the shoelaces inserted, they constantly fall apart and won't hold a knot. There's the difference.
They got caught, with more than enough evidence, of being serious crooks and liars and have gone well out of their way to stifle competition using illegal tactics. It's more important for them to maximise profits at the expense of following the law or building functional products, or NOT building stuff that breaks other peoples stuff. Just reality. They are crooks, plain and simple. Just very wealthy and powerful crooks. If they WEREN'T, then we wouldn't have all these people pointing it out. If they hadn't strong armed the box vendors, then it wouldn't have come up. If their stuff wasn't designed on purpose to break other peoples stuff, no one would have brought it up. And yada yada yada, but they did all these things, it's pretty clear they have a deep seated corporate culture and mindset and practice of serious lawlessness that goes directly to the top guy, then goes back down and spreads sideways. And they accept getting busted because it won't matter, they can absorb any of the fines and still keep doing lawless acts, over and over again.
They need to have their corporate charter revoked, not just a pussy fine. I mean, busted, jailtime for gates and some others. gone, out of business. tough beans to the investors, maybe they shouldn't "invest" in crime, it's called being a skunk and being part of the crime. Anyone who holds their stock now and DOESN'T realise the company is crooked does not have my synmpathy, it's been proven over and over again. and if they do and still wish to "make money" off being crooked, being part of it,well, IMO they are just as guilty. Same with several other large mega corps,REVOKE their incorporation, that's the ONLY THING that willwork with this sort of thing, until "they"-the serial crooks still out there- get the message to stop being crooks and bullies just because they think they are big enough to "get away with it" and it's just "part of doing business". I got a clue stick for those people, it's quite possible to be in business and make money without being a crook.
Are we going to be bombed?
Shees, does this mean that I will have to fit my Linux boxen with a laser spoofer, missile warning system and an ECM pod?
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
If I lived under a brutal dictatorship, I'd want someone to intervene on my behalf
Are you really sure about that?
I live in Spain, which had a dictator (who was sometimes brutal) up until about 25 years ago. But if you ask people today I think most would tell you that they wouldn't have wanted the USA to invade to get rid of him.
People everywhere have pride. They like to sort out their own problems. That's as true in the USA as anywhere else. I'm sure if Bush suddenly decided he was a dictator and was going to halt democratic elections the people of the USA wouldn't be clamouring for the Europeans or Chinese to "liberate" them.
No, WMP as a standard is very bad for the Internet. Maybe instead of wishing for one company to have their media player installed everywhere, we should wish that every media player could play the same digital compressed audio and video files?
Standards don't have to be imposed by monopolies.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
And WINE.
Most of those business specific applications are low-powered database front-ends that would run perfectly in wine.
And considering the cost of training and switching versus the recurring costs of Windows licenses...
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
It goes beyond pride. If my country was so bad that my family was in danger of being killed (Rwanda/Kosovo/Iraq) or being starved to death, I'd swallow my pride so my kids might have a better life someday.
Get a hold on yourself. This is nonsense. There is no reason to rely of the fact that most people have [WMP] installed.
I use linux exclusively at home and I have no problem with any kind of streaming media format. If mplayer won't do the job xine will. I'm sure there are others.
The reason why I might not be able to play a stream is because some IE-only javascript monkey had coded a cruftly custom interface to play the streams.
Offer your streams as a normal url (mms:// for example) and let your audience choose the player of their liking. You'll be fine.
I hate to jam my finger at your otherwise decent post, but it's MOOT point, not mute point.
> Upgrading for the sake of upgrading is ridiculous.
I would have to agree with you, for Windows. But for Open Source systems, you don't have to pay to upgrade, so it's nice to have the latest stuff, and it's free so, why not?
But Microsoft's been playing this security card for some time now and they have the house almost beat! But the house always wins.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
My reason for still using Windows isn't switching cost as such, but simply that I am used to Windows, and I've found 2000 and XP to be stable and convenient to use. Convenient, simply because I'm used to it. Of course, there are numerous security holes, and that is worrying. I would have felt better using an alternative operating system, but I am simply too used to Windows, and it is convenient enough that I can't be bothered to switch. Apart from Windows, I don't really run any MS software, apart from perhaps Notepad. My browsing, e-mailing, newsgroup browsing, image editing, document editing, etc. is all done in non-MS software. Windows is just a convenient way for me to launch this software, and then there's games of course.
But I digress. Back to the point, which is that these quotes are seriously outdated, and Microsoft has actually come a long way with their products since then.
That said, you have a good point when you call it lies that the switching cost is huge. I agree with you on that. When it comes to money, I think switching cost isn't a major obstacle, as long as you can be bothered to learn something new. I do use Linux every day for work related things, but to work efficiently, I still use Windows as my primary OS.
A company would probably save a lot of money by moving away from Windows. Training cost shouldn't be too much either, as long as the employees get systems that are set up and ready to go, with all necessary software available.
Maybe the claims from MS that the switching cost was huge nearly ten years ago was what saved them, since their products were really terrible. Today, Windows is actually rather decent, and people tend to stay with what they are used to. Internet Explorer is a really bad browser, though, so Windows is the only thing I really use which is created by Microsoft.
Clever signature text goes here.
how much am I paying for NTFS compression then? I mean that was more than ten years ago.... You'd think they'd start charging money for it eventually....
.bombs flamed out. And it's not because Microsoft is evil, but rather the market is unforgiving.
The job of the OS is to take input from the user, and render output to the user. There is no reason an OS shouldn't just understand what audio and video are, and what to do with them. Windows having a media player is both obvious and good. To bad linux makes it a hassle, but there's that whole soundcard mess to get through first. Now Windows forcing one to monogomously use the microsoft approved media codecs, that is very bad. And also what they didn't do. Far from just real and quicktime, there's all the dvd software, of course software that really whips the llama's ass, and well, in perhaps an ironic twist, there's always mplayer.
Car manufactures all colluded to install car stereos, in every car! The horrors! They're an evil cartel and must be broken up! I might add, installing software, at least on windows, is a hell of a lot simpler than installing a car stereo. The only two people I know with stock stereos drive an Avalon and a Jaguar respectively. Microsoft's media player is a non-issue.
If companies could come up with something superior enough to offset modest effort of installing something, people would install it. People install bonzi buddy, so that barrier for entry is very VERY low. If you want to make it something people will buy, well that's a little trickier. Which isn't microsofts fault. Most media players are free. And even the versions that aren't have alternatives that are.
The simple fact is Microsoft is the 600 or so lb gorrilla not because their bastards, but because they grow as their customers demand. Perfectly? No. Servicably? Yes. They don't wander around resting on their laurels content to fiddle as the new little guys plan their "operation crush." IBM did, they died, and have since been resurected. Xerox, wow. Everyone knows that story. Netscape was full of such talented programers the founder now specializes in moving programing jobs to india, and couldn't keep up with the underfunded academics who continued developing Mosaic when Mark was pleasuring himself with a fist full of franklins. It's not a coincidence Google, Amazon, and Ebay lived while other
Is that anything like a moot point?
I have no mouth but I must scream!
Moot point. Moot. Not mute.
Ta.
> Sure, there's no switching cost as long as you get your ass over here and show my company how to use this damn Linux thing
Do you know how to use Windows? Okay, do that, without all the goofy bloat. Hire some people who know what they're doing with Linux and fire your Windows staff, or retrain them (which likely would be a good investment, considering loyalty and other business factors).
> and you find, install, and train us on business apps that are as good as the ones we have now.
It's called Google. Have you heard of it? Oh and Source Forge is pretty damn sweet, too.
> And of course, you should be able to train all of us instantly after you do our conversion
Yes, but with your attitude, I'd have to recommend the company fire you and hire someone who isn't so antagonizing. That way some Open Source programmer could actually get money and you would learn a valuable lesson -- that Windows makes you cranky.
> since any time spent learnign a new system IS A SWITCHING COST.
When God created humanity, he killed the dinosaurs. Some species survived, but the really big badasses are no longer. The choice is yours; you can be a dinosaur, or you can evolve.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I didn't know that.... maybe you could lend me the half you're not using....
BM3
Let's say Apple ruled the domain. Everyone ran on Apple's hardware, ran OSX, etc. Would everyone start treating them like they treat Microsoft?
/.'ers have toward Microsoft truly due to their business practices, or simply because they dominate the market?
I guess where I am going is... is the hatred
hmm, 'Capital Depreciation Analysis' software notwithstanding, 90% of computers in offices could be replaced with something like Linux tomorrow, and the users would notice the change of desktop background and not much else. Word processing/spreadsheets are not complicated, nor are they platform specific, and the needs of many business users are not very advanced.
To avoid locking yourself into any one platform you could build vertical business apps with java or serve them through a web-browser, and you wouldn't have any problem switching client computers (assuming your OS of choice hadn't tried to lock out java as something which would allow their business users the freedom to, oh, wait...). If current software on Linux isn't up to the task, consider OS X.
I'd use Windows where it is truly your *only* choice, for the rest of the computers, it's time to consider the alternatives (and there are several, not just linux). Windows costs a huge amount to maintain, and you have to spend a lot more on protection from things like viruses/worms and locking down the clients in the first place (because of the continual flood of security alerts).
If you're talking about switching costs you should consider the cost of staying with the platform you're on too - it is by no means negligible.
Take, for example, the open source "MPlayer" (it states to be the media player for Linux, but AFAIK it compiles and runs on Windows as well) - it can play all three formats along with numerous others, and is in my experience much better optimized than any of those three individual players you mentioned. It doesn't have the clutter of WMP's interface as well, nor commercials or "upgrade noticies" etc...
Of course, noone uses MPlayer (on Windows, that is) since Windows Media Player comes with Windows. Why would they take the time to switch, after all, especially when they're not even made aware of MPlayer's existance?
> You're talking about operating costs. Completely different.
Microsoft has been selling this line since they first recognized Linux as a major competitor. There is no cost to switch. It's a lie.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
> Then your computers must be from some magical fairy land where patches never come out, new versions of XXX are never released and users never break anything.
Oh Jesus! That made me laugh really hard. I remember trying to show a new website to a manager once. The site was coded with XHTML and CSS. He was running IE 5.0 at the time; this was about a month ago. I guess up until that point, he thought his system was running perfectly, too. And he was wrong. When he pulled up the site to look at it, the CSS didn't show up so all he could see was the basic web page -- and he got hopping mad about it; asking why we spent so much money developing it. He basically shot first and forgot to ask questions later. He's the manager nobody likes very much, so I guess IT just kept skipping his office upgrades, as punishment. When I updated his system, he asked what I did with the old crappy site because he wanted to show someone how much money we wasted. He liked the *new* site though.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I want to see network protocols and file formats, and I want to see them freely available. Interoperability with other operating systems is what matters.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
So do I (use Linux I mean). Except that I always have problems with people offering files in MS formats because those morons won't setup the proper mime types !!! So all I usually get instead of a video file is a screenfull of garbage send as text/plain.
And I have given up on educating them since most of the time they have no idea how their web server works anyway.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Oh, wait. WMV is a locked MS format and they won't let anyone tap into it.
Wow, I guess Winamp uses magic powers to play WMV/WMA files.
Or you could just use Mplayer to view the files, like the population of Linux users with greater than half an ass for a brain.
I bet it works really well if he's running Linux on a PowerPC.
They deserve to have it ripped out.
One of the reasons it is so wide spread is that MS has been quietly paying content providers to use Windows Media player, especially porn.
It is pretty easy for your product to become widely used when you pay people to use it.
Do you really want to concede control over multimedia content to MS?
This would be much worse for the internet.
Your business is quite particular though, as it's an engineering shop with lots of specialised apps, thus you have to stick with Windows, as that's what you chose. Fair enough. Switching costs for *you* and other shops like yours would be very high.
I was just pointing out that for the majority of corporate users (at least that I've seen, in large Insurance companies for example), there are perhaps 1 or 2 bespoke apps (for accessing the mainframe databases), and everything else was standard and available on other platforms than Windows. Thus switching would be relatively painless, particularly if they'd thought ahead and hadn't allowed a vendor to lock them in.
Java isn't the only choice obviously, it was just an example of something that was designed to address the issue you have (high costs if you ever have to switch to an incompatible version of windows/other OS). You do say that 60% of your computers are not running anything special, but perhaps you have other reasons for wanting them on Windows.
Many small businesses don't use their computers for much more than email and typing letters, but as you point out, yours does.
oh, you weren't rude at all : )
How did Microsoft come to dominate the market, if not through their business practices? They got big not necessarily by being better, but also by kneecapping those who did better with system "improvements" which happened to break their implementations. (see also "anti-competetive practices.")
Would people treat Apple as bad as Microsoft if they were as big as Microsoft? Maybe not quite as bad. It'd be close, anyway. Sure, they user experience would be better (for most, anyway), but Big Apple'd probably still keep their architecture closed, and given their history of litigating against people who try to copy their look, their legal department would eventually need their own zip code. For that alone, people would come to despise them even moreso than now.
In any case, there would be many happy and complacent with the leader, even if that company were chaired by Satan himself. At a dinner out a few years ago, my father voiced the opinion that the world should standardize on Windows. (Hint: he's old and doesn't want to learn anything else)
And then some are just never satisfied with the leader. Some like buying cars, fully loaded, off the showroom floor and tooling around in them the same day. Others like assembling the parts themselves. For those who like getting into their boxen up to their elbows and rewriting parts of the operating systems to fill their need, there would still be a need for Linux.
It also bears mentioning that if Big Apple is anything like Current Apple, they'd probably be finessing and romancing Linux instead of using FUD. Except where Linux copied Apple's looks, in which case in go those damned lawyers again! So Big Apple's business practices would earn them a few less brickbats, that's all.
And as for your other question:
Sadly, some /.'ers hate anything that isn't Linux.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
You can't put a price on evolution. It's priceless. The payoff for us humans, for developing minds, has put us on top of things, but we could just as easily go the way of the dinosaurs if we fail to take the next step. Windows was great for the Nineties. But this is the new millenium.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Real is more cross platform infact...
realplayer has been ported (poorly) to lots of unix flavors, including many running on non x86 hardware, mplayer on the other hand requires x86 dll's from windows which restricts it to x86 hardware.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Microsoft uses a nice analogy... from the analogous world. In the digital we live in and where Microsoft has its business it is completely wrong.
Everyone can make "compatible" shoelaces. I can do it, you can do it. A better analogy would be, if Microsoft constructed their shoes, in such a way, that no other party could produce compatible shoelaces.
It is the closedness of their APIs, not the bundling of the Media Player, which made the EU perform its actions.
I find the low comment count (for an anti-Microsoft article) amusing. Clearly people are just bored with this whole agenda that OSDN has against its competitors, using a "tech news" site it just so happens to own in order to post negative articles. The damn JPEG patent article has more comments than this, and I see more and more people rising up and posting about how tired they are of the mindless drone "M$"-bashing and RIAA-bashing and whatever else.
I guess I just remember when Slashdot was a good source for interesting technology news. Now it's a proactive, agenda-driven website that bills itself as a news site. OSDN owns Slashdot--is it any coincidence so many articles negative toward OSDN's competitors get posted? If Microsoft owned a website that posted anti-Linux articles all the time and called itself a "news" site, all of Slashdot would be up in arms. But too many fanboys have joined this site, bought into the groupthink, and formed their worldviews entirely from Slashdot headlines. That's how you get the whole Linux-is-100%-perfect mindset, the everything-M$-does-is-bad, the piracy-is-just-free-advertising, and whatever other drivel Slashdot pushes down our throats.
If it's not a headline entitled "Microsoft Violates Human Rights In China" (a real article) that blames Microsoft for the Chinese government's actions (and--surprise, surprise--ignoring the fact that China has its own custom Linux distribution, and Red Hat changed KDE flags to sell there...yet no "OSS Violates Human Rights In China"), or a new user-ran executable that somehow gets labelled "New Microsoft Hole" (a real article), or a study showing Linux as the most breached OS on the net with a headline that magically gets changed to "Linux Most-Attacked OS" instead of "Most-Breached", or theaters arresting some guy for bringing a camera into a theater, and Michael posts it as "Theaters Using Night-Vision Goggles" and magically turning it into some bizarre privacy issue...hell, I could go on and on.
Not to mention that for a site which has such a pro-Open Source agenda, the way editors run things is decidedly closed. CmdrTaco never listens to anything you say, and e-mails you send him are either never answered or receive very nasty, sarcastic replies. I can't begin to imagine how many people will never get mod points again because they dared reply to "The Post." And of course, there are Michael's modbombs and user insults.
Anyway, I imagine this will get modded Off-topic at least once, but I accept that because I just had to say my piece. Slashdot has become really rotten. A lot of new OSS guys come here and have their whole worldviews shaped by the agenda-driven, fact-twisting articles posted here. That's where all the asshole zealots come from that hold Linux back. Everything here is accepted as truth, and nobody seems to realize that outside the little niche here, nobody knows or cares about "Linux," "RIAA," or even "M$."
I always thought it was so cheesy when the villian in some movie would capture the hero and say, "I want you to die knowing my evil plot. This will be my last punishment." Then you just know the hero is going to escape, and use this newfound knowledge to thwart the villian. This has been so overdone that you'd think everyone would have seen it at least once and gone "mental note..."
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
I would be appalled by any web site that assumed that everyone runs with the Microsoft media player installed. Fortunately, I find the alternatives supported by most respectable web sites, and I will install most alternatives as required.
** It is unethical to use unlicensed Microsoft software -- just because it is unlicensed does not change that it is from Microsoft **
If you use an operating system that commands less than 1% of total market share and cannot view a format that is viewable by 92% of the market share you have to, sadly, expect that some sacrifices will have to be made.
Yes it sucks, but it's no different from any other markets and life has never been and will never be fair.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
The thing is, I couldn't give a monkey's butt if Real Player goes away for good. It's second rate and noone likes it. What I do care about is the future of computer interfaces - and this ruling just put us nearer to the command prompt a further from minority report. So, let's say WMP is taken out for 'anti competitive' reasons. What next? Longhorn can't ship with Avalon (which was going to give me a cool 3d interface, a richer media experience, a touch of the future) becuase Macromedia get's scared that it will crush Flash and goes telling on them to the EU? How ridiculously unfair is it to tell a company that it can only add new features 'as long as they aren't very good features' (i.e. no chance of competing)? Would you want a bunch of dim-witted EU lawyers designing your next-gen product for you? AARRRGGGH.
6 * $AU169(XP home) + 6 * $AU899 (Office Pro - we do have 6 people that use presentation and databases...) Antivirus + Spyware removal... + hardware Replace every 2 years = Microsoft. It is their product, they charge what the market will bear - they are in the business of making money.
I believe WMP would do the job for me as well but I do not intend paying that much money to set up the computers at home.
Linux does the job for us, it would do it a LOT better if we had open standards, you could still use your prefered Windows 2000 as well. I believe it is in Microsoft's interests to keep things incompatible and it obviously has worked well in terms of profits - however, it is not in my interests, nor I believe, in the interest of the general public and it is SUPPOSED to be the Governments duty to look after the interests of the "people", not the lobby groups.
Incidentally, if they succeed in stopping reverse-engineering, how many people would there be that would be excluded from "innovating".
Then again, I suppose they would only be the poor... what have they got to offer? Not money, that's for sure.
Give me your hungry, your poor.... I'll make sure they're priced out of the market
BM3
Sorry to bust your bubble, but you're wrong. You're trying to fit your perspective onto a situation that has nothing to do with it. It does not work that way, you don't just wake up tomorrow into a dictatorship and wish for the good days to come back at any price. You're in it from the beginning, that's all you know and the 'solution' is something you - your country - have to discover on your own, or it's worthless.
Short prediction on what's going to happen in Iraq - the 'democratic regime' will be a joke, people don't know yet how to live without fear there. So at the top the previous rich and greedy (Saddam and his system) will be replaced by others, not rich but greedy, that will kiss US' ass. They will be as bad or worse for the general population (wrt to stuff like being starvetd to death, for example) since the top now will mull the country for what's worth (after the 'allies' take the cream for fighting the war) according to their desire to become rich as well. It's just going to be a different type of oppression and not called this way, since now it's a 'democracy'. Also, don't forget that elections are really easy to forge, too - there's a snowball's chance in hell that there will be enough 'independent observers' interested in overseeing them; heck, I'd be amazed if they don't just get one party/coallition with a huge majority. You really think people there *know* how to weight platforms in an election???
This could go on forever. The point is, moving from dictatorship into democracy requires public education as a critical part - and that's one thing US is not interested to provide (it's quite different from 'replacing an unfriendly regime'). This is what the GP poster meant. Yes, it also has to do with pride - you know, things you build (or get the chance to build) with your own hands are the ones you value most. But one has to have gone through the process recently enough to remember it (see for instance Lincoln saying that liberty must be paid with the blood of patriots or it's worthless).
'In short, without this exclusive franchise called the Windows API, we would have been dead a long time ago,' from Microsoft Sr. VP Bob Muglia.
It's not exclusive; there's wine.
The exclusive franchise without which Microsoft would be dead lies in OEM preinstall pricing.
"Skill shows through where genius wears thin." -Wittgenstein || Religion: uniting aviation and architecture.
>Let's say Apple ruled the domain. Everyone ran on Apple's hardware, ran OSX, etc. Would everyone start treating them like they treat Microsoft?
>I guess where I am going is... is the hatred /.'ers have toward Microsoft truly due to their business practices, or simply because they dominate the market?
Though I cannot speak for all of /., I think it's the former because of the latter. After all, if they didn't dominate the market, then their business practices wouldn't matter nearly as much.
If there were, say, 3 browsers splitting the market and IE was still one of them you'd... still be doing that.
:P
There's no possible way supporting multiple standards, including one difficult one properly, is easier than supporting just the difficult one. That's not to say we mightn't be all better off if, say, Mozilla was the standard with 98% market share, but there is no way in the foreseeable future you are not going to have to support IE and its quirks.
Well, unless you run a website that caters to the linux community. But as soon as you care about nontechnical people, it's IE fun hour. Which is vastly superior to the IE and Netscape fun hour(s) during all the versions of Netscape that weren't fit to wipe a cat's ass with. Just because Microsoft is evil doesn't mean all of the alternatives are good.
For the 1.0E9th time...
Giving away a browser and a media player is not the problem. It is using monopoly power to promote your product over the opposition. MS has a monopoly with Windows. I don't think anyone will argue this and none of the regulatory bodies have tried to take action against this. However, they have made it a practice to tie other products such as Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player to Windows. That is illegal all by itself, but MS goes further. They use their position to promote proprietary file formats only supported by their products. Take a look at what they did with Java, or with all the IE-specific DHTMLs and JavaScript variants. For the media player, it is even more obvious with their streaming file format.
[As a side note, one of my favorite examples of how using one MS product can force you into using another is MS Exchange. Obviously you have to use Outlook as a client for this (this is not too bad). Exchange can also be a web mail server allowing access through a browser. However, that browser has to be Internet Explorer -- at least if you want to be able to hit the "reply" button on a message. For that matter, try accessing the Windows Update web page without using IE...]
The best part of it all is that MS is quick to admit that they plan to continue these kind of actions. In a month or so they will release an "update" for Windows that includes a firewall product that is strikingly similar to Zone Alarm and anti-virus software that is very similar to Norton Anti-Virus. Does anyone think that their virus definitions will be compatible with other anti-virus software? Does anyone think that their new firewall will allow users to run Zone Alarm at the same time?
Again...
Its fine for free software companys to do it because they are sticking it to "The Man" (MS), but if "The Man" does it they freak out.
Almost exactly right... 1) "The Man" is abusing his monopoly. The rules are different for monopolies. 2) Certain other OSes are Open Source... you can't really make interoperability claims against that.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
Taking a look at MPlayer's page which you kindly linked to, I'd say there's another big reason why no one who uses Windows uses MPlayer: I didn't see any pre-compiled Windows binaries available for download, just source and a Red Hat RPM. Maybe more people would download and run MPlayer if a pre-compiled binary was available for Windows. Yes, I'm certain that there are websites around that provide pre-compiled Windows binaries for MPlayer, but when there's nothing on the official site, along with a nice big message saying that they don't endorse any of those, there isn't much encouragement to want to switch.
I'm a Windows user, and I never use WMP. The free-as-in-beer BSPlayer along with a good codec pack solves my video needs nicely (except for Real, where any substitute doesn't work well, and QuickTime, which is perfectly fine with Apple's player). After hearing all of the posts here about the fact that MPlayer's the cat's ass, I'd love to try it, but I don't feel like trying to compile it.
Make it available, and people will download it and use it given a little bit of info. It's not like WMP is beloved by Windows users. Provide an alternative, and people will use it.
If using Linux is about choice, how come people complain when I choose to use Windows?
It is real easy to see that Apple is doing most of the stuff that MS is doing, with the only difference being that Apple has an extremely small market share.
The other difference is that Microsoft is a monopolist, and has been convicted of this in a court of law in the U.S. This is a sufficient difference, because the law applies differently to monopolies than it does to other companies. That's how antitrust laws work.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
How exactly do you expect WMP's competitors to make a quality product, when WMP's existence on the market neatly prevents them from being able to charge money for their product?
Remember, "we'll pour lots of money into making a product that will dominate this market, and not expect any of it back!" is something that in most markets only MS can do; this is, in fact, one of the biggest complaints of those who claim MS's monopoly unfair.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Well, actually, there is. If you're developing software and you don't want to have to develop your own player, you can use the WMP components to do that stuff for you.
Now, I'm going to now double back and say that I agree with you. ;)
Instead of writing to WMP components, one should (and in an unencumbered (i.e. monopoly-free) ecosystem/market, one could) rather write an open, standard set of APIs for interfacing with media components . This would then be an open standard shared by all media playing vendors and it'd not matter a whit to the programmers (and thus the end users) whether WMP or iTunes or QuickTime or Real or Xine was installed, so long as they met the API.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
Except you are still part of the problem than the solution. You are not supporting other formats/players by using it. You are also still a part of the MS desktop lockin by using windows. If you are going to use windows, at least support third-party formats/players.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
By unbundling Media Player, users are *forced* to "care", because they'll have to manually install software to play media files with. If they "don't care", they'll never get to play anything.
It's true that markets aren't fair. But they *are* supposed to be "free markets". A market in which any new entrant has no chance of getting a foothold, and the factors causing that are 100% predictable/static, is not free. And non-free markets are very bad, because they screw up the core ideas of capitalism. Maybe not everyone can have a share of the money/market, but everyone should have a *chance* of doing so, not be frozen out by 100% predictable/static factors. Capitalism depends on some chaos and instability in the system.
MS is singled out for two reasons. First, because Windows is a monopoly. And second, because Windows maintains its monopoly, not by being good, by just being a monopoly. Windows has a monopoly because it supports a wide range of hardware, right? Nope, it's the other way round, Windows is a monopoly because hardware devices support *it*.
What are you smoking I wonder? Can I have some?
> Quicktime opens up faster, plays movies
> smoother, and PLAYS VIDEO IN THE BROWSER!
> Windows Media Player simply doesn't do
> this, it's a standalone application that
> is too big and clunky.
it's like I'm alone, but on Windows it is quite definitely WMP that opens up faster, plays more movie formats, and plays video in the browser without a separate setup (since... well... WMP was installed with Windows setup). And WMP is surely not a standalone app it is integrated into Windows deeply. While Quicktime is a very nice app, that's not a reason to fool yourself.
> We *have* to keep using them though, because all the financials and invetory systems are on these beasts, and no one knows how to get it off.
:-)
I am terrified to read this, considering your company makes explosives, and giant lasers (not to mention everything else LM does). I mean, come one man... somebody get a clue down there and figure out the problem, assess the costs and fix it.
If you can figure out how to zap missiles out of the air from airplanes, you can figure out how to replace modems, and perform upgrades.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
wrote Gates. 'It is this switching cost that has given customers the patience to stick with Windows through all our mistakes, our buggy drivers, our high TCO
Hmmm... High TCO? Pardon but I'm a little annoyed at this. For years they have been touting their "low TCO" as a selling point. Now they admit they have a higher TCO than the other solutions available.
I'm sure Microsoft has some redeeming value but it's apparent companies should reconder when looking at upgrading/continuing with Microsoft products. Even rich companies want to save money. Here is how. Get rid of Microsoft products and go with something better (subjective statement I know).
It's already happened once in my lifetime. People used to say "Nobody ever got fired buying IBM". It could happen again.
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
The so feared Republican Guards just disappeared.
Some wish they would...
What if Iraqi people were able to sort out Saddam Hussein themselves?
They weren't able to do so for decades.
Because, for the 15 billionth time, they ARE a monopoly. To continue the repitition, it's not bad to be a monopoly, it's bad to abuse it. This isn't under debate, it's a matter of law. Old news, move along, nothing to see here.
For good and sufficient reasons, not the least of which M$'s own internal communications, a lot of people who spent a great deal of time and effort showed M$ was gleefully aware of abusing their situation. And were looking for ways to accelerate the process. The quality of M$'s products, which is very much debatable, is irrelevant.
I agree with you that the people of Iraq may not be ready. However, there are many cases this century where goverments have been installed. Some have succeeded - some have failed. Today, a mere 50 years after after causing 2 world wars, Germany is a productive member of the international community. What would you have the world done there? Leave the people to fend for themselves after the total destruction of their government?
I'd rather try and fail, then not try and fail (ala Rwanda).
This is not true! Media Player Classic supports every format in existence: quicktime, real, divx, xvid, microsoft, etc... I am a Linux zealot in the sense that I only use Linux for my servers and desktops, but there once was a time when I ran Windows 98 and Windows 2000... back during those days I used Media Player Classic. Why? Because Media Player Classic is by far the best media player available on Windows. One player, every format. Fast, small, efficient, simple, easy to use, and free.
What else could you want? Well, it would be nice if Media Player Classic ran on Linux, but Linux has something almost as good as Media Player Classic... mplayer. However, even on a 400mhz Pentium II, Media Player Classic would start playing a movie immediately after double-clicking the file. Super fast! Mplayer isn't quite so fast.
Maybe there are two teams in Microsoft, each pulling in opposite direction? Internal battle? The lure of the Dark Side is still strong...
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Bloody hell, they say that like it's a bad thing.
Intellectual property rights are out of control. Without going into whether they're good or bad in themselves, they're definitely out of control and enforced for all of the wrong reasons at the moment.
And as for dominant firms unnovating, well this if often not a good thing. It either comes at the expense of the non-dominant competition or of the customer. (And occasionally be buying up the competition, but ruining the innovation by MS-corporate-decision-making)
TiggsIf the law didn't allow them to get away with running roughshod, they'd actually have to try hard to be truly innovative. And I can't see how that'd be a bad thing.
Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
OK. We'll get rid of Bush for you presently.
I hope you don't mind the cluster bomb on your house, or the two dead "civilian casualties" that used to be your children. Or the fact that we'll stay around until we want to, and place our puppet government which will give away your natural resources to us.
Oh, and don't forget we'll rebuild everything we destroyed, inflate the prices and then bill you. You don't have any money? No problem, you'll owe us. A modest 2 percent interest, and you'll owe us forever and ever.
Just let me gather some troops and we'll be on our way.
That's the general problem with Windows. It's not just WMP, but the IE/NS-duel and MSO/OO.o are just yet other examples. Since MS controls the base OS all by themselves (ie. there's no specification for Windows such as eg. POSIX is for UNIX/Linux), of course their applications are better integrated with the rest of the system, since MS can actually integrate the system with the applications instead of the other way around, as all other vendors have to do. Thus, of course people use their programs.
As for your "choice" to use Windows, I'd like to re-run the old quotation (I don't know it natively in English, though...) "I'd kill you for your choice, but I'd die for your right to choose it". Go ahead and use Windows - that doesn't mean that anyone shouldn't be free to try and convince you otherwise.
From the Microsoft rebuttal: It is also notable that the specifications Microsoft must now license do not yet exist. Microsoft will have to create them. These specifications, which will comprise thousands of pages of valuable information, will qualify as copyrighted works in their own right and as copyrightable preparatory design material for a computer program under the EC s 1991 Software Copyright Directive.
This just confirms what we've been thinking for a long time -- MS software is not planned. The protocols aren't mapped out or specified. The implementation *is* the specification. Software just happens; there is no such thing as Software Engineering in the Microsoft world. To get a written specification, it has to be reverse-engineered from the product.
Ouch.
The time required for the user to learn all of these new packages would cost them huge amounts of time!
It becomes essential that the "make things different" crowd understand why it's NOT a good idea to "make things different" on the Linux platform, just because it's Linux. The more alike the apps and the OS are to Windows (only having much more sound and freel-available code), the easier this migration will be. The prospect of adoption demands that Linux apps be very similar to what users already know.
Once a system ha sbeen set up, I'm not sure the average user would have that much trouble finding their way around a Linux desktop. I think it would a fascinating exercise to watch this process in action - sit someone down in front of a Linux box, and ask them to accomplish a common task- see how long it takes them to figure it out. This information can then be used to refine the various aspects of the Linux desktop experience that users find troublesome.
...but that IS the point. When you've reached a point in market dominance that you make it not worth people's time to code for open standards but instead your own proprietary standards, then you are a monopoly and have more responsibilities to customers under the law. When you've got such a stranglehold on the market that you have no one else willing to develop for technically superior products because your mediocre product has 90+% market dominance, then you prevent innovation from small businesses from happening. These are why the anti-trust/anti-monopoly laws are in the books...to prevent abuse upon customers and competitors.
si vis pacem, para bellum..."if you wish peace, prepare for war"
Yes, it's nice to rely on 'standard' client software being installed on all desktops.
But who cares what that standard is? If Microsoft hadn't bullied Netscape off of the desktop, they would have been the standard everybody coded to, and the situation would be essentially the same. You might not like the Netscape standard, but NS didn't start getting nastily proprietary until Microsoft started a 'features war' with them.
Same applies to Real. If Real were the standard, and all PC manufacturers included it (and were not *prevented* from including it during the years of illegal MS tricks), developers would have had the standard they needed. Once again, Real didn't start playing nasty until their means of making a living was illegally pulled out from under them.
I suppose you can use todays distorted marketplace to make a case for the status quo, but that doesn't address the laws that were broken to get us here. And we still have Apple and Linux users excluded by Windows Media developers. A truly cross-platform standard is always going to be better for developers and consumers both than a 90+% 'standard' that locks out the healthy competition that is the goal of all antitrust enforcement.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
The more alike the apps and the OS are to Windows (only having much more sound and freel-available code), the easier this migration will be.
This is assuming that those of us who code and use Linux give a damn about whether or not Windows users 'migrate' to Linux.
Most of us don't. Most of us aren't crusaders against the Evil Empire(TM). We really don't give a shit about Microsoft, nor 'winning' any imaginary battles. The crusaders need to piss off and find some other cause to rant about, and leave us coders the hell alone. At least until they decide to start cutting us paychecks for what we do FOR FREE on our own time.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Obligatory Futurama quote:
What makes a man turn from good to neutrality? - Zap Brannigan
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
The Shia of southern Iraq already tried to revolt...and failed miserably at the cost of tens of thousands of their own lives. They were SLAUGHTERED, dipshit. Yeah, they OBVIOUSLY could handle an insurrection themselves against a ruthless and uncompromising dictator! People like you are a cancer to human society and need to be removed before you kill the whole body off by spreading your disease everywhere. I recommend the "radiation treatment" to remove you from society...i.e., shoving a nuke up your lame ass.
si vis pacem, para bellum..."if you wish peace, prepare for war"
Disregarding MS's copyrights is a bad, bad idea. It makes them look like the victim, and it helps spread lock-in. For example, when the Vietnamese gov't recently announced that they were switching millions of systems from using pirated copies of Windows to using Linux, that was a major blow to MS. And yet, if you believe the standard propoganda, it should have been considered a victory. That's hundreds of millions of dollars in "losses" that they're no longer "suffering". Shouldn't they pay taxes on that? :)
Helpful hint: You would get more responses if you tried moving the US-court-system-is-never-wrong troll to one of the daily threads about music and software piracy. Telling everyone that piracy being wrong "isn't under debate, it's a matter of law" would help put their arguments in perspective. Actually, even better would be informing everyone who wants to discuss how the DMCA might be wrong that it "isn't under debate" because US laws are always right. You could really save them a lot of time. Things work a lot more efficiently when we give up our ability to debate the laws and just trust what the government says is best.
I'd rather be lucky than good.
Every single one of those issues listed on that website refer to options that can be turned off on the privacy page that appears ON FIRST STARTUP.
Christ.
Americans of the late 19th century would have understood. Having been beaten into economic submission by the railroad and oil trusts, they howled for reform. That's how we got the laws that occasionally have been used to protect us: citizen action. Unfortunately, the sorry history of US antitrust law since is one of big money obstructing progress and undoing results at nearly every step.
If we're ever to get out from under the yoke of our Microsofts and Wal-Marts, which depress innovation, cripple competition, batter markets and saddle society with a host of costs and social ills, we'll need to resurrect that lost spirit of the engaged American--the citizen who knows his interests and how to fight for them.
"This Word for Windows" *type* *type* *type* " is quite possibly" *type* *type* *type* "the worst software" *type* *type* *type* "that I have ever used." *type* *type* *type* "Take that, Microsoft" *type* *type* *type* "signed EU"
"oops, better disguise this...Windowd XP Start Menu --> Adobe --> Distiller"
HeeHee!
Have you Meta Moderated t
And I expect one of MSFT's next moves will be to help make sure that newbie purchasers of "home" Linux boxes (such as the ones targeted to appear here) have bad experiences. Probably not too hard when such newbies are buying budget boxes from Walmart and won't be hooked into security-patch central, etc...
If MS can influence such "entry level" Linux experiences to go awry, that could be far better FUD and anti-Linux PR than anything coming out of the SCO/IBM/Baystar/RBC stunts...
Don't be surprised if you start seeing some REALLY SHODDY Linux configurations showing up at budget retail outlets...
Its called FreeBSD.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
But you geared the entire discussion around the question of why people running Windows don't use MPlayer, a question which I answered (namely because the makers of MPlayer don't provide Windows binaries). As I said, I don't use WMP. I can't stand it. It's a resource hog, and there's nothing that can play on it that BSPlayer or ZoomPlayer can't handle. I pimped BSPlayer because it's free as in beer and works like a charm.
That's the general problem with Windows. It's not just WMP, but the IE/NS-duel and MSO/OO.o are just yet other examples. Since MS controls the base OS all by themselves (ie. there's no specification for Windows such as eg. POSIX is for UNIX/Linux), of course their applications are better integrated with the rest of the system, since MS can actually integrate the system with the applications instead of the other way around, as all other vendors have to do. Thus, of course people use their programs.
Agreed. However, for a lot of people, it's a situation of using the right tool for the right job. For a lot of people, the right tool is Word or IE or even WMP, since they are feature-rich programs that provide a good deal of power in an easy-to-use package (and in the case of IE and WMP, don't require any additional work on the part of the user...if it's patched and updated, of course). But the word is getting out there that there are alternatives. I know that I've been turning people away from WMP for a while now.
As for your "choice" to use Windows, I'd like to re-run the old quotation (I don't know it natively in English, though...) "I'd kill you for your choice, but I'd die for your right to choose it". Go ahead and use Windows - that doesn't mean that anyone shouldn't be free to try and convince you otherwise.
Don't worry, that's just my sig line. The reason I came up with it is that I'm sick of being evangelized to over here. Yes, I know the benefits of FOSS, but I choose to use Windows because I'm satisfied with it and it does what I want and need (*coughGamescough*). We're not all sheep, brainwashed, or stupid because we run Windows.
Oh, and the quote I think you're trying to paraphrase is "I may not agree with what you say, but I defend to the death your right to say it." And it wasn't by a native English speaker, unless you know something about Voltaire that I don't.
If using Linux is about choice, how come people complain when I choose to use Windows?
This has been done in various companies and studies.
Bottom line: Linux is not harder to learn than Windows IF YOU DON'T KNOW WINDOWS! The problem is people WANT Linux to BE Windows!
This is a people problem, not a Linux problem.
How many of these Windows trolls ever ask how long it took THEM to LEARN WINDOWS WHEN THEY DID NOT KNOW WINDOWS?
I was in Federal prison from 1993 to June 2001. The last computer I worked on was a 66MHz 486 and the last computer I owned was a 33MHz 386 with 2MB of RAM running DOS with PC-Tools and some other stuff. Windows 3.1 was on it but never run because the machine didn't have 4MB of RAM.
I had to learn Windows 98 in 2001. I just installed Windows 2000 a couple months ago. I've been running Red Hat Linux 7.0 on my old machine and 7.3 on my newer machine.
So I have direct experience about learning Linux and Windows ALL AT ONCE - and at age 55 to boot.
People who say older people cannot learn Linux because it is not as "intuitive" as Windows ARE FULL OF SHIT! Period.
I have CONSTANTLY run into situations on Windows AND Linux where the software was unintuitive or downright fucking STUPID! But the main point is that once you know the basics of ANY GUI system, you can learn another one very quickly with minimal disruption.
The key point is: IF YOU WANT TO! Corporate managers do not want to regardless of any Linux advantages because they are idiots , most corporate drones do not want to (since they don't want ANY extra work regardless of what it is and what the benefits might be) and most Windows trolls don't want to because they want to run their mouths. Only when the pain of making Bill Gates the richest asshole in the world (after the guy from Ikea, right, okay) gets greater will they maybe wake up and smell the shit from Redmond.
I figure Longhorn's need for massive hardware and software upgrades maybe will do it - but I'm sure there will be a lot of morons who continue to suck it up and fork over the bucks to Bill.
There are no shortage of morons in the business world. There are morons probably running Autocoder these days.
All that matters is the EVENTUAL economics. Linux is evolving faster than Windows and costs less. Ergo, it is a near certainty that it WILL replace Windows in X amount of time - the only uncertainty is X.
The only way this can NOT happen is if somehow Bill Gates chokes on some foi gras, the Microsoft culture undergoes a massive change equivalent to IBM's embracing open source, and they actually start to spend some of their billions of R&D on REAL R&D instead of creative new DRM and licensing ideas.
Fat chance, trolls.
Have a nice day.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Now I know what Tarantino dreams about and and why.
But if the only pair of shoes you could buy that worked with the only fashionable socks came with a lifetime supply of shoelaces you had to take, you'd most likely then put replacement shoelace companies out of business. Then, later on, the fashionable socks would no longer work with those shoes and you'd have to buy new ones. You'd also then find out that the lifetime supply of shoelaces don't work with them either.
The other shoelace companies have gone out of business and now the shoe seller owns a monopoly on that business as well, forcing you to buy them now if they want, but they had the magical ability to create a more or less infinite amount of a physical product at no additional per shoe cost, they may or may not do it again.
And uhh, lets also say that the shoelaces eventually integrate direct music sales, putting other music sales businesses at a big disadvantage since they have the barrier of installation and exposure that an integrated solution does not have to overcome. Can you even think up a shoe analogy for direct music sales?
>It's nice to rely on the fact that most people
>have this installed.
You mean it's nice to be able to rely on a standard. However, there is a huge difference between an official Standard and a de-facto standard. One allows for competition and innovation, the other protects an entrenched monopoly.
Do you think the internet would be as vibrant if MS owned the http 'format'?
> If your externally available site doesn't work on IE 5, then it is correct to say that you wasted a lot of money on a site that doesn't work properly in all browsers.
Yeah it worked. But IE 5.0 doesn't support CSS, so the site looked very plain. We just plain-texed it for browsers that choke on CSS. It was actually in the dev dox to do it that way, and that just added insult to injury.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
> Try sending a open office document to a customer and when they can't read it in Word, see how much switching is really costing you, and how soon you'll be fired for your decision to switch.
Whatever you say, Bill.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I can tell you without a doubt that my statement is 100% fact.
I wish I could document it properly without causing harm to people close to me.
It is more telling that you are disturbed by it and resort to name calling.
All you brave ACs need to face reality, Some of the bad things you hear about your beloved M$ are sad but true.
Put tits on Clippy?
The truth is that Bill Gates doesn't trust the society that he lives in to make the best choices and will push society to his own benefit.
Or maybe BIll Gates does trust society to make the best choices, and that's why he pushes it. As far as I can tell, what Bill Gates wants is not what is best for society.
Qxe4
No, they didn't.
They fined Microsoft $590 million dollars. Last quarter, Microsoft made $10 billion dollars in profit.
Microsoft has $40 billion in the bank. They recorded record revenues and earnings in the last quarter.
Instead of forcing Microsoft to do something that would change their actions, they gave them a slap on the wrist. A version of XP without WMP. Microsoft's really moping about that one. Oh, and a $600 million fine. Just another cost of doing business.
The US DOJ did a much better job. They forced Microsoft to stop bullying their OEMs. No longer can Microsoft force OEMs to ship Windows on every computer. That's why you see companies like Dell and HP shipping systems with Linux.
No, the DOJ did not go far enough. But neither did the EU. The EU did *nothing*. Microsoft doesn't care about a fine. They are like a rich businessperson who continually speeds and is continually ticketed. You can fine them all you want, but it won't have an effect.
Bottom Line (TM):
- The EU gave MS a slap on the wrist
- The DOJ ruling was too weak, but it did stop MS from bullying OEMs
Unfortunately I am not able to find a link, but during the US trial against Microsoft, an engineer from Apple did state that Microsoft deliberately had some of the APIs crash (randomly?) when it detected that the calling application was the Quicktime player.
Similarly the file explorer would not show search results when the file type was Real Audio -- although Microsoft was quick to say that this was just a bug which they had fixed.
I would be happy if someone could add links to articles mentioning the two incidents (searching for microsoft, trial, real, quicktime etc. doesn't tighten the net).
This whole judgment should raise alarm bells on both the pro- and anti- Microsoft sides of the fence -- but everyone is so busy bickering about trivialities about whether MS, their company or products are 'good' or 'bad' or whatever that everyone is missing the big picture. This is -- what the hell is the point in building ANY product or service -- if you're going to have to GIVE IT TO YOUR COMPETITORS FOR FREE. What good are copyrights -- what good are patents? Microsoft -- good or bad -- have invested thousands of person-years developing THEIR PRODUCTS -- and now some foreign government seems to have the right to render them completely worthless. This is NOT a case of a MONOPOLY for god's sake -- Microsoft doesn't own and restrict access to your telephone lines, power lines or control the water flowing to your home. They build SOFTWARE. PERIOD. If you want to run Mac OS, or UNIX or whatever the hell you want -- you HAVE THE CHOICE. No bone breakers are coming to your place of work and breaking your arms and legs if you don't buy their stuff. If Microsoft wants to IMPROVE their product -- do they not have every right in the world to do so? If they want to include new features or improve existing ones -- why shouldn't they be able to do that too? Does Ford have to give their designs to GM? Does Plaxo need to share their drug recipes with Bayer? NOT BLOODY LIKELY -- BECAUSE RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT AND INNOVATION are exactly what separate one business from another. Winners and losers -- survival of the fittest. The most certain way to KILL INNOVATION is to strip people of the BENEFITS of DOING IT. (In most cases -- that means providing PROTECTION of intellectual property so that companies CAN EXPLOIT -- and YES -- heaven forbid -- PROFIT FROM IT.) This isn't a question of money -- it's a question of the protection of a company's right to develop their own products as they see fit. Take away that -- and you may as well revert to communism. (And we saw how well THAT worked.)
One Word: Velcro
(as in shoes with no shoelaces)
The game of Go (Igo, Weiqi, Baduk) has the simplest concept and the deepest play.