Missed Opportunities in U.S. v. Microsoft

cyberlaw writes "The Supreme Court's deadline for filing a final appeal in the landmark U.S. v. Microsoft antitrust case expired yesterday with little notice. But it's a day Andrew Chin has been anticipating for six years. Today Chin, a former legal extern who assisted Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson during the drafting of the November 1999 Findings of Fact in that case, makes his first public comments on the merits of that case, in keeping with the D.C. Circuit's admonition that officers of the court should not comment on impending cases. He has written an op-ed article in today's Raleigh News and Observer.

Chin is currently an associate professor teaching antitrust and intellectual property law at the University of North Carolina. According to his faculty biography, Chin also earned a doctorate in computer science in 1991 as a Rhodes scholar at the University of Oxford. After a few years of teaching math and CS, he picked up a J.D. at Yale Law School, and eventually ended up working behind the scenes on the Microsoft case.

Chin's article raises some new points about the Microsoft case that don't seem to have been considered by any of the parties, courts or commentators during the trial, such as the fact that the Windows and Internet Explorer software products actually consist of legal rights and technological capabilities, not lines of code. A longer piece by Chin is being published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology."

Comments

This way they have more time to fight other stuff!

[garcia]

The government wasted its best opportunity to avoid this result three years ago, when the incoming Bush Justice Department, in a stunning reversal, decided to drop its "tying" claim. Still, the road not taken -- pressing Microsoft to offer a neutral choice of Web browsers for use with Windows -- started to look a lot more appealing this summer, when Internet Explorer's security flaws made national headlines.

Well at least now the DOJ has a lot more pressing matters at hand... Like getting the recent ruling against the Patriot Act overturned so those evil fucking terrorists can't get away and those sneaky American citizens can't hide their financial records from them.

I always felt that if the government continued to pursue their case against MSFT they would only pay for it in higher licensing fees later. Choose your battles... Money from the terrorists and the citizens or money from MSFT?

security vs economics

[OffTheLip]

Sure a secure Microsoft product is what the consumer wants but so is profit margin and familiarity. Sometimes inferior products dominate the market for no good reason whatsoever, remember the Chrysler K car?

Re:security vs economics

[baudilus]

At the risk of being off topic, the Chrysler "K" car (Dodge Aries / Plymouth Reliant) dominated because it was cheaper than then alternatives, and easier to purchase.

In contrast, windows is significantly more expensive, and dominates the market for a good reason: people are too lazy to change. Why do you think banks still use AS400's and code in FORTRAN? It costs too much to change now, even though there are better alternatives.

This is why Microsloth still makes money. When you upgrade from one version of Windows to another, the front end is still basically the same. This is what users like - and they're willing to shell out $99-$500 bucks to keep their OS looking the same, but still be able to use DirectX 9000.0174x.

Until software developers make their stuff platform independent, (or more likely, there is a fundamental flaw in Windows that cannot be "patched" which results in script kiddies taking over the world), it will always be a Windows world.

Go fig.

Re:security vs economics

[0racle]

Laziness is not what keeps banks on AS/400, and laziness is not what keeps people coding in FORTRAN. If its not broke, don't fix it. Windows does everything people want it to and will run any software you buy, so even if you showed everyone on the planet Linux, a good deal would continue to use Windows.

Re:security vs economics

[lcsjk]

"They refuse to use new technology because it might not work properly"

You did not emphasize that enough. Sometimes you are stuck with something like Windows that has such potential for financial disaster that changing to it could be a company's downfall. I worked in a large company with a large supply of programmers. Just changing a database over from COBOL to UNIX and integrating it into the rest of the data entry system was such an effort that no manager could justify the time and effort to take the chance. I think it took about 8 years of technology change before it became painfully aware that something had to be done.

Hopefully a false assumption

[samberdoo]

"Internet Explorer will continue its chokehold on the World Wide Web. " Only if a better alternative is not adopted as the 'browser of choice' by the WWW community. Go FireFox!

Re:Hopefully a false assumption

[oDDmON oUT]

*BZZZTT!!*

< Don Pardo overvoice >
We're so sorry, but it was never the "WWW Community" that chose Internet Exploder in the first place.

It was Joe Sixpack, Ma Kent and Arthur Schmidlap, all of whom had it bundled into the nice, shiny, new computer that was sold to them as an information appliance/labor saving device by the pimply shlep at (take your pick):

• a. CompUSA
• b. Fry's
• c. Best Buy

which enabled IE to gain market share and win hearts worldwide.

That answer will cost you five points and the lead in today's game.
</Don Pardo overvoice>

Who would buy it?

[zymurgy_cat]

From TFA:
If it did, you would own the Windows code on your computer and could sell copies of that code with impunity.

Yeah, but who would want to buy it?......

Re:Who would buy it?

[YetAnotherDave]

I think comp sci schools would clamour for such a good example of 'how old code can get horrible and messy' for new students.

Re:Yet...

[NanoGator]

"..another reason to remove the Bush administration from office:"

Yet another reason for me to ignore people who start a sentence with 'yet another reason'.

I wonder....

[The Bungi]

I often wonder what would have been the reaction if some judgement had been passed against, say, the FSF or a contestation of the GPL or something like that, which had been negative, and then we'd seen the presiding judge (the fucking judge) giving interviews to Barb Walters and doing the DC clubscene (well that's a bit too much).

I'm not about to contest the verdict - that a monopoly existed and so on. That's done. But I think the whole thing smacked of a hurried witch hunt decided from the beginning. Back then Microsoft was pretty much apolitical and their legal team was about a fifth of what it is today. Since that case they've wised up to lobbying and campaign contributions as a way to "play" the system, just like any other big corporation in this country.

Ah well.

Re:I wonder....

[danheskett]

You've got it pretty close to right. MS was the prototypical non-player. They had no lobbying force. They had absolutely positively no involvement - ever - in any national political campaign or movement.

Both Clinton and Gore personally soliticed donations from Microsoft for their campaigns. MS refused. The RNC soliticed for donations. MS refused.

When the DOJ began talking to Netscape, IBM, AOL, Sun, and Apple - who of course had large lobbying arms (especially Netscape, Sun and IBM), MS had absolutely no-political covering-fire.

Regardless of the merits of the case, it is nearly 100% certain that MS would not have been brought to court if they had have not refused advances for donations.

Today, MS has the pre-eminent legal and lobbying team for just about any corporation in the country. They shower money and praise on legislators of all stripes. They routinely make donations to even sure-fire losers in elections just in case someone drops dead.

MS may be big, but they aren't stupid. In less than 10 years they went from a political non-entity to a political-powerhouse.

Re:I wonder....

[Waffle Iron]

IMO, the reason for their newfound attention to government is more like this:

Personal computing was originally like a vast new uninhabited continent that was discovered some time in the 70s. Microsoft was one of a few pioneers exploring the land and building new settlements. Up until the 90s, there was still enough exploring to do that the "lawless frontier" way of life worked out fine for them. They didn't need the government.

Now, the boundaries of personal computing are pretty well defined, and most of the areas have been surveyed and settled. It's time for Microsoft to build fences around the territories that they've claimed. Now they need the government to help them enforce their claims, kick out trespassers, and keep out new immigrants that might threaten the way they make a living off their land.

They need to make sure that the government is paying attention to their new needs, so they're taking the appropriate actions. This is a pretty natural process as new areas mature, and similar progressions of events have taken place many times in history.

It did it's job, now let's move on

[ShatteredDream]

It slowed down Microsoft's monopoly engine long enough for Linux to rise, Apple to recover and release a very successful new OS and for groups like Mozilla to start fighting against Microsoft. Does anyone really want the court to hand a "victory" to those of us not fond of Microsoft? Does anyone think that Netscape or Sun or any of the other plaintiffs were really good, noble, altruistic companies that didn't salivate at the thought of filling in the vacuum left by a devastated Microsoft?

The way I see it, the case was good for another reason as well. It forced debate on both sides of the political spectrum, especially the right. Many conservatives were floored when Robert Bork, a well-respected conservative legal authority, agreed with Ralph Nader on Microsoft's trial. It helped bring new ideas and attitudes into respectability on the right, and it allowed left-leaning libertarians to point to a good example of how unfettered corporate power is still a real danger.

I would go so far as to say that the case did its job just fine, and coupled with Microsoft's recent security problems, a door is opening for free market enterprise once more. I will go so far as to say that there are a lot more Firefox users out there than we'd have previously guessed. I read comments all the time on sites like FreeRepublic which aren't known for their technical insight saying how Firefox kicks ass. In fact, of the dozens or so on threads about Firefox, most are overwhelmingly "I can't believe I ever used IE now that I have Firefox."

Microsoft, like Rome, didn't build their Empire in a day, and thus we won't dismantle it in a day. It'll take several more years of whittling away at them on multiple fronts. We just have to learn from history and be more civilized and cooperative if we win, than the barbarians were when they took down the Roman Empire.

Re:It did it's job, now let's move on

[Kurt Gray]

You make a good point that Microsoft's competitors are no more or less noble than Microsoft. But to me the most troubling outcome is Microsoft was able to prove that any company with a large enough legal budget can effectively DoS attack the legal system with appeals and paperwork while simultaneously releasing newer versions of the product in question. While the courts were arguing about Windows 95 Microsoft was already selling NT Server 4, Office 97, Windows 98, and so on. If the court even decided that bundling the web browser into Windows 95 was in violation than it was too late by then anyway.

Microsoft also punished via stock price, in fact all of Nasdaq got punished on that fateful day of April 2000 when the judge released his initial findings not in favor of Microsoft and the Nasdaq went into freefall.

Re:It did it's job, now let's move on

[Anonymous Coward]

I totally agree.

I support the free market and believe that in the long run, it fixes all problems, but I have been consistently flabbergasted at why people *choose* Windows.

As a free marketer and based on my own experience I can only conclude that for people who don't like windows but still use it: 1) the cost of switching is too high and/or 2) people don't have enough information.

#1 is coming down now that web apps and open standards are being used more and more.

#2 is finally happening too. the court case probably emboldened enough companies to say "hey, maybe we should stand up to Microsoft and offer some other choices too".

I see the changes around me. More and more people I know are switching to Mac (I just helped a guy choose a Mac today .. he had never even *used* a Mac and didn't realize that it could do all the things windows does, like run a freakin' web browser).

It's just a matter of letting people know there are choices, and since so many people just use the web and email, it's not so hard for individuals to switch. Businesses will follow soon after.

Besides can you imagine what kind of awful remedy the government would come up with? It would either be stifling or ineffective. The solution is to let the market decide (and please weaken copyright law a little bit so it doesn't favor entrenched power so much.. but that's another fight).

So I would say, find, the court case helped, but please don't waste any more of my tax dollars on it.

Re:Yet...

[Lumpy]

Sorry but your Beloved Democrats are no different or better in any way, shape or form.

the DMCA was signed by one of the most loved Democrat Presidents in history, Bill Clinton.

Most Innovation Stifiling laws are proposed by Democrat Senators.

Anyone thinking that the Republicans or Democrats are any different are really blind. The only difference they have is the way they do things, they have the same goals and agendas.

Personally I hope for sanity in the madness that is our current government... I just wonder how many decades it will take and how far behind the United States will have to fall behind the rest of the world before those in power take notice.

An appeal for self-restraint

[$RANDOMLUSER]

If Judge Jackson had kept his mouth shut just a little longer, we'd be living in a considerably different world today.

Re:No axe to grind in this article at all

[AndroidCat]

This guy mentioned Explorer security flaws 5 times on that page alone.

That's because Internet Explorer has a lot of security flaws.

The Users of Windows Are Still Paying...

[mslinux]

Any company that purposefully builds a Web browser (IE) into an OS (Windows) as deeply as possible and as quickly as possible in an attempt to win a court case is asking for trouble. Any software engineer with an IQ above 70 knows that this is a bad idea. The sad part about this is that people who use Windows/IE/Outlook pay the price. How many IE vulnerabilities are in the wild? Hundreds.

In short, MS tossed sound engineeing principles out the window and placed legal and marketing concerns ahead of everything else. They deserver the shitty security reputation they have. They built it themselves... purposefully to win a court case (period).

Re:The Users of Windows Are Still Paying...

[fitten]

Unfortunately, that's not what it really is. IE was used as the FileManager replacement and to do many things... like do the help system, and such, and also handle http and ftp and all those other things. Basically, the idea was "why have 82 tools, each one displays a similar, but seperate thing and duplicates code, when one tool can easily do it all". With that, it needs to be a core part of the GUI.

Now, that doesn't sound bad to me. Implementation-wise, maybe it shouldn't have been as much in the kernel and the implementation had problems (security and otherwise), but I can see the logic in having a "universal viewer" and not having to load/use 20 other programs to do the same thing, just with different data streams.

They built it themselves... purposefully to win a court case (period).

Funny... since the court case was *about* this particular thing, it's funny that they would have built it into the system in order to cause a court case to happen in order to win a court case with it. I think you have the order in which things happened mixed up.

Analysis

[danheskett]

From the article:

Internet Explorer will continue its chokehold on the World Wide Web.
That's a joke. IE is losing marketshare at an amazing rate. Link. All kinds of technical and non-technical sources are recomending a shift-away from Internet Explorer.

But switching can be difficult. Windows users who want to access a document on the Web are sometimes required to use Internet Explorer, flaws and all, even if they have chosen a different product for that purpose.
That's right. A web-publisher can put any conditions he/she wants on viewing the content in the question. You can be asked to pay money, watch an advert, or use certain software.

By tilting Windows users toward Internet Explorer in this and other ways over the past nine years, Microsoft has ensured that many consumers are using a less secure browser than they would if offered a neutral choice, and prevented other software companies from competing for these customers on the merits.
That's untrue. MS pre-selecting IE does not preclude others from competing. That's a blatantly untrue statement. It makes it more difficult. That's a big difference.

The Clinton Justice Department proved all of these facts at trial. Yet the lower courts did not move to restore freedom of competition in the market for Web browsers, because they found Microsoft's appeal for freedom more compelling.
MS's argument all along was that it's market share was at risk, and that any moment, a competitor could grap the reigns and win back the web. They argued that the barriers to entry - regardless of what they did - were very low. Low and behold, the best browser on the market is free, open source, and multi-platform. On top of that, other browsers like Opera are low-cost and multi-platform (and also superior).

One such innovation was in writing the shared blocks of code that support both operating system and Web browsing functions in Windows. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, describing Windows and Internet Explorer as "physically and technologically integrated" through this sharing of code.
Microsoft was right. Using this method of integration is very common place now. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. What if MS loses market share and Konqueror becomes the dominant browser. Will makers of file-manager utilities sue the developers and because their product cannot compete with products that tie into the rendering engine?

By a software product does not consist of code. If it did, you would own the Windows code on your computer and could sell copies of that code with impunity.
You license the code, as you goes on to point out. But regardless of the license, the heart of software is code, not IP.

The courts have missed a golden opportunity to affirm the freedom to compete in the information age.
The courts did nothing to MS. So ask yourself. Is there more or less competition than there was in the 90's? How is that possible if MS was able to do what the government allege? If MS had an illegal monopoly on operating systems for x86 computers, how come there are more now than at anytime in history? How come users have dozens more choices than ever? And if MS leveraged the operating system lock up browsers, how come we have more choice now than ever for browsers? How come on x86 alone there are at least 4 major choices for quality web-browsing?

The government was wrong. MS had a large marketshare, but short of patenting everything in sight, it is impossible to have a monopoly on intellectual property like software.

You cannot corner the supply side of software!

Re:Analysis

[argent]

Microsoft was right. Using this method of integration is very common place now.

I would appreciate it if you could document this claim. So far as I know nobody else has integrated the browser and the desktop in anything like the way Microsoft has done. Providing an embeddable browser or HTML rendering engine is not the same as using the same component to access, interpret, and render both trusted and untrusted documents.

If anyone else is doing this, rather than merely providing an HTML renderer or an embeddable (but still sandboxed) browser, then they need to be encouraged to find another path. One example: from what I've seen so far of Apple's Webkit, it's not taken that step. But... I haven't seen Tiger and Dashboard, so I don't know if they've stepped over the line there.

Every time this is brought up some Microsoft apologist writes something like "MS's argument all along was that it's market share was at risk, and that any moment, a competitor could grap the reigns and win back the web. [...] Low and behold, the best browser on the market is free, open source, and multi-platform. On top of that, other browsers like Opera are low-cost and multi-platform (and also superior)." and then, after a few months and years and IE has kept its market share, they never come back and apologise for their naivete... they just make the same claims again the next time it comes up.

And in any case, as I have pointed out, the BIG problem with IE has nothing to do with competition, it's the security problems. They've been glaring and obvious for seven years now, and it's only in the past few months that Firefox has begun to make some tentative inroads into its market, and not because it's better but because people are losing confidence in Microsoft's security. If Microsoft can reestablish that trust (whether they address the underlying problems or not), they'll get all that lost share back again.

You cannot corner the supply side of software!

If that was the case Microsoft wouldn't have a desktop monopoly to leverage into a browser monopoly in the first place.

Re:Analysis

[danheskett]

So far as I know nobody else has integrated the browser and the desktop in anything like the way Microsoft has done. Providing an embeddable browser or HTML rendering engine is not the same as using the same component to access, interpret, and render both trusted and untrusted documents.
The security implications aside, you can look at KDE as an example. They use the same rendering component/framework for file-browsing as web-browsing. Look at the description on their site: "Konqueror is the file manager for the K Desktop Environment. It supports basic file management on local UNIX filesystems, from simple cut/copy and paste operations to advanced remote and local network file browsing. Konqueror is the canvas for all the latest KDE technology, from KIO slaves (which provide mechanisms for file access) to component embedding via the KParts object interface, and it is one of the most customizable applications available. Konqueror is an Open Source web browser with HTML4.0 compliance, supporting Java applets, JavaScript, CSS1 and (partially) CSS2, as well as Netscape plugins (for example, Flash or RealVideo plugins). Konqueror is a universal viewing application, capable of embedding read-only viewing components in itself to view documents without ever launching another application. "

With a few modifications that would describe IE/ActiveX/Explorer just about to the letter (remove open source, of course).

If that was the case Microsoft wouldn't have a desktop monopoly to leverage into a browser monopoly in the first place.
I beleive they dont have a monopoly, to be honest. There is so much choice in terms of x86 operating systems that it's bizarre that anyone could claim they have a monopoly. Add into the mix Apple which competes with MS on every front as well as other bit players (for example, if someone makes a device that eliminates the need for an OS, does that make them a competitor? I believe so. That means in terms of share MS competes with makers of things like set-tops boxes and consoles).

Re:No axe to grind in this article at all

[Atzanteol]

Who'd have thought an editorial would be biased?

http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/story/1686331p -7930186c.html

I always wondered: why no security experts?

[argent]

According to Microsoft, antitrust law should never require changes to the design of software products, because this will chill the freedom of programmers to innovate. One such innovation was in writing the shared blocks of code that support both operating system and Web browsing functions in Windows. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, describing Windows and Internet Explorer as "physically and technologically integrated" through this sharing of code.

I wondered throughout the original trial, and later, why there were no security experts called by the DoJ to testify to the security problems inherent in this integration?

The integration was clearly done at a very late stage in the design and in such a way that they had to use "guess and hope" to figure out whether a document was originally a local document called up by a component like Windows Explorer, or a remote document called up by Internet Explorer or Outlook. If they had left the web access as part of the web applications, and just used the HTML control to render HTML, then a huge percentage... probably a majority... of the worms and viruses and spyware spread by remote attacks on Windows via web or email would not have been possible.

But they already had IE, and they needed to come up with a reason to bundle IE with the desktop despite their agreement with the DoJ from the previous case, so they made pretty much the whole thing into an embedded component and set us up the bomb.

Re:This was written some time ago.

[marsu_k]

I don't know what kind of a cave you are living in. I'm all for Firefox, it's the only browser I use, but it's still a marginal player compared to IE. Hopefully this will change with time.

Re:It quietly expired...

[QuantumLinux]

Actually U.S. Consitution is pubic domain but RIAA has plans to copyright it and sue Congress for not providing royalities for it's use.

Sharing of Code

[kf6auf]

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, describing Windows and Internet Explorer as "physically and technologically integrated" through this sharing of code.

Just a side note: Safari is integrated into Mac OS X (share some GUI code with the rest of the OS and probably some HTMl rendering with Mail.app) and if a user decides that he doesn't want it installed all he has to do is delete it - why can't Microsoft make this work?

However the real question is not why can't one remove IE, but why can't there be a level playing field? Why does M$ get to use its OS monopoly to prevent OEMs from also installing Netscape, Mozilla, or any other browser? Anyway, is any of this a surprise? No; not at all.

-Scott

Re:No axe to grind in this article at all

[secolactico]

Apparently no other browser ever has had a security flaw. Ever. Mozilla and Opera bugtraqs are empty files

This isn't just about some browser's security problem. It's about software monoculturism (is that a word?).

IE is not without merits and people will continue to use it. But it's market dominance create a chicken and egg problem: people will build web sites tailored to it, and people will use IE because the web sites are built so.

Then if a flaw appears in the browser, *everybody* will be affected. (ok, not everybody, but the non-IE users will be so few as to be negligible).

Of course other browsers have flaws. And those IE users that don't bother patching/updating will most likely don't bother patching/updating Firefox/Mozilla/Opera. But at least it won't affect the better part of the internet users.

Its All Political

[slashpot]

Here's what I got out of the article:

The Clinton DOJ trailed to(rightfully) nail Microsoft in an antitrust case.

The Bush DOJ was not interested in nailing Mircrosoft in an antitrust case.

My opinionated speculative unfound but probably correct conclusion - Microsoft bought its way out through campaign donations supporting Bush.

No choice

[1000101]

I'm about sick and tired of the argument that Microsoft locks in customers by including IE with Windows installations. The fact is that there is choice in today's market. If you want to point the finger, point it at the end user who is to damn lazy to install a new browser. Also, point the finger at web developers who create web sites that will only work properly with IE. If Microsoft put code in their OS that prevented the user from installing or using a browser other than IE, I could see where that would cause concern. The fact is that they don't. I realize that many people on here will not like my views, and that's fine. I know there are plenty of things that Microsoft does/has done that aren't exactly ethical business practices. But the browser argument is old. In fact, just about every single extra application (notepad, media player, etc.) that Microsoft includes with their OS can be found from other software vendors or for free. The only people Microsoft is locking in are the computer manufacturers and other hardware companies. John Doe has more choice these days then ever before.

This is getting silly. Stop abusing moderation.

[phyruxus]

I can't even point out that his post isn't flamebait? Abusing the moderation system makes this forum less enjoyable for everyone.

I hate to play devil's advocate but..

[gphinch]

I hate MS as much at the next guy, excluding work where I have no choice I've moved to solely Apple and Linux, and even gotten all my friends/family to get Firefox. Implying that web pages not working in any browser but IE, however, is not entirely true. The fault lies in the hands of web developers who were too lazy/short sighted to see beyond IE compatibilities. While MS did only enflame this problem by making pages that shouldn't work actually work in IE, if these sites had been properly coded to begin with, they would have still worked in IE and also in every other browser.

Re:No axe to grind in this article at all

[DarKnyht]

It was not an article, it was an OP-ED peice. Which means it is this one guy's opinion. What makes his opinion so interesting (as opposed to yours or mine) is the fact that he was involved in the Anti-Trust trial and until today he was unable to voice his opinion on this subject.

As for his mentioning security flaws 5 times to your single mention of Firefox/Opera problems, it appears the balance between here and reality is maintained. Generally speaking, flaws in IE tend to appear 5 times (if not more) frequently than Firefox or Opera ones.

rights and restrictive licensing

[Astro Dr Dave]

From the article:

Actually, what you own is a license consisting of certain legal rights derived from Microsoft's copyright in the Windows code, together with the technological ability to use the code with your computer in the exercise of those rights. (Similarly, when you buy a movie on a Region 1 DVD, you acquire a license to view it at your home in the United States or Canada, and the technological ability to play the DVD in those countries but not others.)

Does anyone else find this disturbing? Since when do companies have the right to tell us what we can do with our software, or in which countries we can view movies? Of course the DMCA has clauses for access control, and the impetus for that was corporate lobbying. But I don't understand the legal basis for this; why do the courts allow copyright owners to control how their products may be used?

Re:Yet...

[Slime-dogg]

Until a president has the balls to say that doctors, hospitals and parms are EXTORTING the American public and make laws to stop them it will not change.

That's incorrect. The biggest expense that a doctor has is malpractice insurance. This expense is so large, that their prices are necessarily high. Most doctors end up taking home a small percentage of the revenue.

Malpractice insurance is a result of the greedy Americans who file for damages. There are those who have legitimate cases, and they ought to be rewarded, but there are a ton of frivolous malpractice suits as well. Health costs come down to the greedy American looking for a big payoff with minimum work.

The other reason why expenses are so high is the barrier to entry into the market. Many patents on pharmaceuticals run out by the time the company has met federal requirements. This seriously reduces the amount of profit that the company can gain off of their work before knock-off pharm companies start producing the same medicine.

If the FDA eased off on the drug regulations, and maybe let the patent law for medicines change, then medical costs would be reduced. Things always get more expensive when the 800 pound gorilla of American government decides to get involved.

Re:I know one thing

[jedidiah]

Not quite.

It is logical and reasonable for Dell or HP to bundle a browser (or whatever) since they actually sell to end users. It makes no sense for Microsoft to do this since they are completely unwilling to support this decision. Instead, they force the likes of Dell to buy something they don't want while forcing the same OEM to clean up the mess afterwards.

The "customer" being screwed by Microsoft is not the "end user" but OEMs.

End users just get caught in the crossfire.

capability, not code

[Rufus88]

Windows and Internet Explorer software products actually consist of legal rights and technological capabilities, not lines of code

Uh huh. And an RIAA product contains not waveform data, but rather the capability to produce pleasing auditory sensations in a subset of the population.

Re:Yet...

[Clockwork Apple]

I think this was a jab at touchscreen voting. Meaning you may vote for whoever, but it will count for Bush.

C.

Re:Yet...

[Epi-man]

Until a president has the balls to say that doctors, hospitals and parms are EXTORTING the American public and make laws to stop them it will not change.

Disclaimer: My wife is a doctor

Okay, let's just take a quick look at some numbers:
From the UAW a UAW represented assembler makes $25.63/hour straight time. This translates to over $53k/year assuming no OT. To my knowledge (quite possible wrong) to obtain this job, you need only a high school diploma. They report post inflation annual raises (from '92-'02) of 1.28%. Average college costs ~$20k (average of public and private, exclude out of state) and is rising by 7% each year. In 1999 med school cost ~$18k (again taking a conservative average), I couldn't find numbers for the annual increase, but given the costs we incurred, 7% is a reasonable number again. Books add even more, to the tune of ~$4k across the first two years. Let's look at a doctor's income stream vs. a UAW assembler assuming they are the high school class of 2003:

First year out of high school, -20k vs. $53k
second, -21.4k vs. $53.7k
third, -22.9k vs. $54.4k
forth, -24.5k vs. $55.1k
Onto medical school we go!
1st year, -25.6k (no inflation for books) vs. 55.8k
2nd year, -27.2k vs. 56.5k
3rd year, -27k (assume no more books) vs. 57.2k
4th year, -28.9k vs. 58.7k
Time for residency, pay based on my wife's:
1st year, 31k vs. 59.5k
2nd year, 31.5k vs. 60.2k
3rd year, 32k vs. 61k

OK, now our doctor is ready to go out and start making real money....where do they stand finacially?

-$83k vs. $567.9k

Most of my wife's medical school friends enter residency with school loan payments to the tune of $1,200/month, basically a second mortgage. So now our doctor gets to go to work. Care to guess how much this doctor is going to get paid for seeing a child on medicaid? $7. Yes, that is right, they will get the princely sum of $7 to see that child for a 15 minute visit. That will probably not cover the cost of the people they must hire to file the paperwork to get paid. That works out to $28/hour while our assembler is now earning $29.48/hour (this is an inflation adjusted number, that means the real number will be much higher since 1% inflation is pretty darn low!). Who was it that was extorting whom? Does that auto worker go to work every day knowing that they could get sued and have everything except their house taken from them (my wife was threatened with lawsuits 3 times as a medical student for Pete's sake! Care to guess how much her malpractice insurance premiums are estimated to be? Over $20k/year.)? Yes, doctors can get paid well, but I would say in many respects they have earned it a lot more than others.

I'm sorry for this rant, but people who just spout off like doctors in general are super greedy really irk me (for obvious reasons). The people you need to be more concerned with are the insurance companies (basically profit generating machines from my perspective) and the lawyers (who make my wife live in constant fear that we will have everything taken away from us someday...oh wait, we get to keep the house and its mortgage).

The DoJ pushed the wrong solution.

[MtViewGuy]

In my humble opinion, I think the Feds pushed the wrong solution in the US v. Microsoft case.

Why didn't the Feds push for separating sales of the operating system from the hardware? By pricing the operating system as a separate cost item it would have actually enhanced competition for the operating system market on x86-compatible PC's, and it would have encouraged the FreeBSD and Linux crowd to develop their operating systems much faster because there would be a truly healthy competition of what operating system you want install on your computer.

Re:This way they have more time to fight other stu

[CmdrGravy]

"You don't give your enemy a place to hide and regroup. That's why we went into Afganistan."

Yes, that was obviously a visionary and practically effective policy wasn't it. I do think however that it was undermined somewhat by the subsequent invasion of Iraq.

Cynical types may think that after this excellent corrective measure Afghanistan is now a no go area governed by local warlords fighting for control of the burgeoning heroin trade whilst the on-going situation in Iraq is drawing much larger numbers of impressionable young men into the world of terrorism and intimidation and that the world in general is now much more likely to suffer from terrorist activities.

Even more cynical types might surmise that as the US Government came to terms with 9/11 and realised there was little they could practically do in public to "right the wrong" decided instead to put on a display which everyone could understand with an invasion of Afghanistan involving lot's of precision weaponry, terrorists lurking in caves and illegal combatants during the course of which they realised there was a good chance they'd get away with more the same in Iraq.

Luckily I am not a cynical person. Go USA, Kick That Terrorism To The Kerb !

easy solution:

[Kaenneth]

If websites stopped serving pages to Internet Explorer, users would be forced to install another browser. Or, for example, if IE is detected add an extra large banner promoting a Mozilla based browser. Instead of 'Best Viewed with Internet Explorer', it would be 'Worst Viewed'

that reminds me of something else I was thinking of...

Websites and other internet services should start denying services to 'bad' net citizens, a sort of global blacklist.

Say everytime a monitor machine recieves a spam email, a ddos attack, worm propageation attept, etc; it sends a note to one of the blacklist servers. The blacklist server won't instantly list for one bad action, but would require multiple monitors to report a problem with an IP address.

every once in a while ISPs, Servers, Service Providers (think perhaps Battle.net, Steam, web-comics, free e-mail providers, along with free/cheap hosting providers) would download the current list, and start providing blank/warning pages to any requests from those addresses. Corporate internet connections could just outright block any packets at the firewall.

8 bad IP adresses in a C block, blocks the whole c block.

The Monitor servers would have to be authenticated and somewhat secret, otherwise false reports could be used to deny service to a target or the IP addresses excluded from future worm versions and the Blacklist distribution security would still be an issue (if served normally, it would be a DDOS target, if 'push' delivered, it could be spoofed without good authentication.) I'm thinking of a USENET style list distribution method. a listing would also expire fairly quickly.

The distiction with this being, that it's cross service. You send bad e-mails, your web browsing is blocked. You run an open proxy, you can't send e-mail. You have a worm?, you can't play Counterstrike. You run a Starcraft cheat? you can't instant message.

The exclusions would have to be customizable, you wouldn't want to block someone with a worm from downloading a virus remover, or otherwise seeking assistance, but they don't need to play an online game before fixing it.

Re:Yet...

[mrbcs]

I wondered about that stuff..

I find it insulting in Canada, with our Doctor shortage and all, that they still dictate how much a doctor can make. Imagine if they tried that crap on any other industry? Oh, your a computer geek, you can only make 52k a year. HA! No wonder we can't get doctors.. If they're gonna tell you how much you can make, then they should pay to train you IMNSHO! This issue is so screwed up here..

We have lazy hospital staff that sit around bs'n while many people wait 4 to 8 hours in an emergency room, only to be diagnosed and released in 10 minutes. It kills me because the people get pissed about the wait, complain to the gov't, and the gov't throws MORE money at the problem instead of making the doctors and nurses acountable for their time. We've seen doctors spending most of their time filling out papers.. bloody ridiculous. Only in canada eh? we sure don't have it solved up here so don't believe any of the propaganda of our "superior system". /rant