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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.
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.
... and about the only thing that makes Linux "sexy" is the photoshoped "Linux Girls." It's an operating system for cryin out loud ...
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.
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.
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.
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...
I reckon you have never been to the red-light district of Amsterdam...
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.
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.
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.
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!
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?
(*) Yes, I know WMP is available for Mac, but how long before Microsoft stops developing it, just as they did with IE?
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.
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.
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!
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
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?
> 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.
But, since it is so prevalent...you gotta make exceptions for it, so the sheeple can view your site with it...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
That is precicly what this is about, everyone realizes that switching costs are high in software, and standardization is really nice for everyone involved. Having control of the standards is a very valuable thing, as you can collect some value from uses (as long as the value is lower than switching costs). The issue is whether MS used their Windows monopoly to extend standards they contol to other markets (in this case media players). That is illegal.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
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.
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.
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?
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.
>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.
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
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.
My recollection is that Real Player appeared years before Windows Media Player. In fact, when it was first released it was the only streaming media player in the marketplace.
Real's original strategy was to give away Player so they could sell their streaming servers. Too bad that wasn't a very good business plan, but don't blame that on Microsoft.
FWIW, I use Mozilla for browsing but WMP to play streaming media. I, too, got tired of jumping through all Real's hoops just to get a free player. I have similar feelings to those expressed by other posters here about the "upgrade to Pro?" popups in QuickTime.
Contrast this situation with that of Adobe Acrobat. They, too, give away Reader to encourage content creators to buy the Acrobat production products, and it looks to me like they've been very successful. Of course, the fact that people need to exchange documents more than they need to view streaming media, and the fact that Acrobat costs a couple hundred bucks, not thousands like the streaming servers Real sells, may have something to do with this.
First up, the existence of WMP as a free product in no way prevents other companies from selling their own media player. Don't forget, Linux 'free' and yet that doesn't stop plenty of companies from selling their own operating systems, including other versions of Linux.
If I read what you said right... free products, regardless of quality will win out against products which cost money. If this is true... why does Windows have such a larger market share than Linux on the desktop?
I'll grant you a point that you didn't make... by having WMP included with Windows, it gives Microsoft an advantage over Real, Apple and Nullsoft as an end user has to download and install another player if they don't want WMP. This is a similar argument to the Microsoft anti trust trial, IE being included with the operating system unfairly hurt Netscape (an argument which I thought was BS (however preventing OEMs from being able to install Netscape or other browsers was a legitimate gripe for Netscape and others)).
None of this though prevents in anyway other companies from selling their own music player, Nullsoft (Winamp), Real (RealPlayer/RealOne), Music Match (Music Match) and others have done quite well in selling software which does a lot of what WMP does (and more in some cases).
As I hope you recognize, your argument of saying that WMP simply being on the market prevents others from making quality products is completely with out merit. One product does not prevent another product from being sold by its simple existence, one product on the market can however lesson the sales of another if there exists sufficient differences between the two where consumers opt for one over the other.
Just remember, just because something is free does not mean it is better!
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Businesses are not like nature. Nature is not directed by self aware entities making choices.
Businesses don't think or make choices for themselves. Businesses are ethereal structures that only exist by the permission of the society/government.
Businesses are made of people that wield power and make decisions.
Those people will try to convince society/government that their business is good for the public and that they should retain control.
Those people make choices that will help customers/society/technology/progress or hurt it.
Those people are ethical or not.
Those people can delude themselves that unethical behaviour is for the good of the business to benefit their own greed at the expense of others.
Those people will hide behind the face of a business to avoid showing their ethics whenever they know they are being unethical.
Since a business is not a real entity, if a society/government chooses, it can disband a business and take away everything from it.
Business does not equate directly to money.
Money is an intended side effect.
Business can be run ethically and still be competitive and make money. Many businesses do. Because the individuals running the business make ethical choices.
Unethical business practices is like harboring a traitor. How long before their traitorous values are used against you? Employees that are not ethical outside the business cannot be trusted to be ethical inside the business.
People who are ethical fight within a business against unethical actions. When unsupported, ethical people will leave businesses that don't reinforce ethics and the degeneration spirals.
I have personally watched businesses implode because of exactly this kind of problem.
There are business ethics - it is the ethics of the individuals running the business.
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.
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
Your business is quite particular
I don't think it is -- Every small business I've worked with has at least one, and sometimes many special purpose or vertical application (and that's excluding accounting apps). Last year I worked for a firm in the legal industry, and they had at least 10 "essential" Win32 apps, excluding internal stuff. There's also an enormous amount of VB/Access/MSOffice "talent" out there grinding out new solutions on the cheap.
In larger organizations, the situation is orders of magnitude worse. I think it was Ford Motor that put out a report indicating they had more internal apps than they had employees. Now not all of those are Win32, but you can bet that a hellauva lot are.
This attitude that "Mozilla + OpenOffice = Business Desktop" is just out of touch with the real world -- Microsoft has been worming their tentacles in deep for many many years. Their monopoly is so profound that many LinAdvocates seem to fail to even understand it.
Now, I'm not saying it can't work some places, but you are talking about only the oldline mainframe-only, IBM-only shops, or very new progressive web-only shops. And that's a minority.
The longterm trends are towards webapps, Java, and NET, which is good for Linux. But unless Wine is 99.9% compatible, Linux on the desktop is just not reality for most businesses.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
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.
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.
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).