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PC Makers See Little Reason to Deploy XP N
suitepotato writes "In this article, Ingrid Marson reports to CNet News that in a small survey of companies such as Dell, HP, and Lenovo, there are no real plans to deploy Microsoft's Windows XP N which was the version required by the European Union. It would seem that despite the rants of anger towards Microsoft that they were unfairly bundling Windows Media Player with Windows XP, the public at large would not seem to agree and is not actually demanding any such stripped down version. Perhaps the EU's actions were unnecessary?"
More like wrong action when action should have been taken.
I don't see a problem with Microsoft bundling any software of their own with Microsoft Windows XP such as Windows Messenger, Windows Media Player, MS Internet Explorer and others. What I have a problem with is the inability to uninstall said media player and other programs without severely hindering the operating system to the point of crashing or worse, incompatibility with programs that don't themselves correctly interface to the default browser, IM client and media player.
That is the real problem I see. Not the exclusion or inclusion of programs or their efforts to play favorites (come on... within reason!) with their own software. Hell, I'd do the same thing. But making it so you can not remove a software program by choice without resorting to some advanced (for the home user) hacking or third party (possibly buggy, problematic or worse - trojaned) program or scripts to do it for you.
What we really need is Microsoft to allow removal of any and all programs that are not basic for an operating system. Yes, even Internet Explorer. By itself, if it weren't tied into the OS itself and able to be run in locked memory away from other programs (to eliminate potential points of attack) it's fine. Older versions weren't so bad because they were just that... stand alone.
I'm not even a fan of the KDE Konqueror(SP?) browser being integrated. While it's great to have a browser by default, the potential problems that can happen (taking out your shell, yes it's happened, AND your X DE) are too great for my taste. The internet hasn't been safe for a LONG time. Even the bandaid of an included firewall with SP2 won't solve much in the long run.
Correct engineering of software programs and their development, it seems, are almost lost. Where are the programming and engineering teams with good ideas with the skill and desire to pull it off?
The people who really were hurt were the competitors. If they were hurt to the point of being driven out of business, -then- the public would be hurt. The whole point of protection from monopoly abuse is to catch these situations -before- the public suffers irreparable harm....
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I figured this would happen... All the EU did is waste millions in taxpayer money tracking down the evil microsoft for something that no one even really gives a rip about. Not to mention the people who DO get XP N will likely go to the MS site and download the media player as soon as they realize it's not there...
I like this quote myself...
Microsoft said it bears no responsibility for making PC manufacturers use Windows XP N. "Microsoft has made these products available through its standard distribution channels," a company representative said. "Whether or not customers or distributors offer this product in Europe is a decision for individual computer manufacturers, enterprise customers and retailers."
Microsoft has been known to strongarm companies to carry a certian version of their Windows Operating Systems, with pricing or threats of removing licences so the statement of "...is a decision for individual computer manufacturers...", is in my opinion, a lie.
Since when has MS taken a lax approach to what version of Windows OS retailers and OEM's install on their systems?
So,it looks like this whole action by th EU adds up to about, hmmm, let's see, NOTHING.
The problem is that the prosecutors (plaintiffs?) were trying to achieve a certain result - spanking Microsoft. To accomplish this, they used the method to hand: demanding debundling.
This produces the weird result that people want the opposite of what the prosecutors claimed they wanted. The prosecutors knew this at the beginning. But they pushed for the unwanted thing anyway, to punish Microsoft. Who probably don't care.
So anyway, it's absurd, but absurd for what at least some people probably think is a good reason. Personally, I think they should just tweak the laws so that they produce the desired result - open APIs - without some kind of weird, tortured legal theory. That, or just don't prosecute this kind of case.
Because the monopoly is working. People simply do not know better.
We have to get the word out. We have to tell people why this option is better.
The EU laid the path, we have to do the footwork.
RTFA again for the best results.
Most people don't care if they're using quicktime, realplayer, windows media player etc. They probably won't even notice the difference. But if there wasn't the choice, then they would notice, because the media player available would suck if it had no competition to drive it on. People don't realise it's important to them that there's competition between MS and real (if they did, there wouldn't be any need for the EU to act, people could sort it out themselves). But that doesn't mean it isn't.
I am trolling
The right or ethical thing to do not always equals what the public deems necessary. For example, most people are not aware of the patent issue, just when they bump into it. I'd hazard the guess that one of the foundations of a government or union is ideology. To give a exaggareted example, if you could jail 10 man, 9 guilty and 1 innocent, would you do it? It would certainly seem economically good, could even meet public support, but is it the right thing to do?
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Is that the worst name possible for a product? What does it mean?
If I recall correctly the EU specifically requested that MS change the name to this from "Reduced Media version".
All it does though is make it incrediably confusing for the consumer, the one they are trying to protect.
If I had created the world I wouldn't have messed about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers
... the EU should have mandated the new edition to be cheaper than the Home XP? If I'd have to pay the same (or even a higher) price to get less, then guess what I would do. Without mandating it to be cheaper MS will probably resort to this kind of tactics to push their media-player.
Most of the public doesn't care enough to go through the effort of "upgrading?" to a less OS.
Of course they don't. The thing about illegal competition is that it's illegal because it's an abuse of your position. The customer feels that he's getting a deal, but that's not the point.
Taking the common gas station example, customers get really happy when one gas station underprices another by $.50. The fact that this is hurting the consumer in the long run (less competition) escapes that customer. He just wants cheap gas.
The same is true of Microsoft. The fact that they effectively put Real and Netscape out of business is the real point, not what the consumer feels. As a result, this EU decision is weak at best.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Why am I hearing Clint Eastwood and seeing Steve Ballmer in my head?
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
I don't see gripes over Linux distros coming with Konqueror (which is a godawful P.O.S.)...
Hey...he's right! Konqueror does suck ass! I've always hated it...why should I have to put up with it???
I'm gonna demand a refund right now!
Oh, wait...
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
That is a very short-sighted view. If all you *really* care about deep down is low prices, then I feel sorry for you. When all the small businesses go away, our choices go away. Some people actually want to buy decent items, not just the cheapest items. This is why it hurts when every store goes away and all we're left with is one big Walmart.
Sometimes I look at this like this and people like you and wonder where we're going as a society. Are we really becoming smarter and more advanced? When everyone shops at Walmart, I think not.
You *should* care about competition, not just for lower prices, but because it promotes creativity and the inventive spirit that has gotten us so far. It's a shame that it's dying out in favor of "I'm just a stupid consumer - please tell me what to use!" mentality.
--- witty signature
Perhaps the EU's actions were unnecessary?
Or perhaps the actions were useless because they were poorly designed and did not address the real problem? OK bundling is bad because it allows a monopoly to extend their monopoly. Forcing MS to offer a version without the bundled application is useless because everyone who buys Windows still has to pay for it.
Here comes the inevitable analogy...
The electric company has a monopoly on electricity distribution in any given area. If you want electricity you have to buy from them or go to great lengths to create your own. Imagine if the electric company raised everyone's rates by $10 a month. Now imagine they took that $10 and bought ice cream which they gave away for free to all their customers. Not all of their customers wanted the ice cream and but some liked it. Now the ice cream manufacturers all lost all their business, complained, and sued. The government, in its infinite wisdom decreed that the electric company had to offer electricity without free ice cream, they did not, however, say it had to be cheaper than the other package. The result is nothing. The solution does not stop the bad behavior.
The media player part of the settlement was completely useless. The only parts that were not useless were the parts requiring sharing interoperability information and even those are severely watered down. Obviously if your choice is $60 for electricity or $60 for electricity and ice cream most people will choose the latter. What needs to happen is MS needs to be required to offer the media player only as a separate application. OEMs can add it or Realplayer or both or neither but MS can't give incentives or breaks to OEMs that include windows media player. That would fix the problem. That will likely never happen because MS has too much money and politicians are too corrupt.
...and no actual sudstance.
I'm sure you means substance, but I digress.
I must not be getting your point. True, many people don't care what is by default installed on their systems and will happily be using those programs. Most often, when I offer people choices and show them the differences, without a slant, and give them the opportunity (KEY WORD THERE), more often or not, they will go with something that is not made by microsoft - with the exception of the operating system.
Yes.. even if it's' free and included. However some still choose to keep the MS defaults because of either the UI is what they're used to, or simply don't want to relearn something else... even if it is better in their own opinion.
I don't mind MS products to be honest with you. I prefer to use MS Office 2003 supplied by my company than OpenOffice.org. It is faster, and I have plenty of hard drive space (300+gig) to play with. I can't stand the media player or messenger for two reasons:
1) I prefer Winamp over almost anything based on a decision made years ago. It is just something I like MORE than the others in comparison.
2) Gaim will allow me to be signed on to AIM, ICQ, MSN in a single window and allow me to have tabbed conversations. Even allow me to log onto multiple accounts of the same protocol where as you would have to use a third party hack to do that with the default clients. (I like to keep family, work, gaming buddies separated and do so with a reason).
YMMV
Acually you can still be convicted for abuse of a monopoly, even if there is a small amount of competition. 90% is a sufficient market share to be able to abuse it. Usually you do not want things to get too bad before taking action against the offenders.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
That countries like France who currently hold the head position in EU have no faith in the EU as indicated by there NO vote (same vote they told the UK they couldn't have few years back, bless them).
So what can we conclude, europeans (me included) who care about our media player are intelligent enough to sort it ourselfs and those that are not intelligent enough to take the windows XP CD out of the sealed envelope would rather have something that
just works out of the box.
Now if the EU had given us an install that gave the user a choice of X,Y,Z media players then it might hvae had an impact, but no. They went take it all out. Of course PC manufacturers probably did a few consumer tests and found out that by saving a few euro's on an install (and were talking a few euros's given OEM costs) compared to long list of users who phone up saying how they cant play microsoft video's and mp3's out fo the box. They probably went hmmmm extra support calls or bung couple extra bucks at the end product directly.
Moral is if there is a problem and its an issue you can garantee that any form of goverment will take a long time to find a solution and end up given us a solution that might have been viable day one of the issue but years down the line is a total waste of time and beyond keeping a few lawyers employed does nothing of value for the public at large. Especialy given that the part of the public that does care have already addressed the issue themselves from day one though the power of consumer spending and choice and just install Linux or whatever in the first place. Bottom line those of the public that care already dealt with it and those that dont care, well, they dont give a monkies either way as there oblivious to the problem if indeed it is a problem, which you have to ask... is it a problem or yet more beuroratic phallis waving after the party ahs finished.
Why do nearly all online content providers provie Quicktime and WMV streams, but not DivX/ XVid/ Theora? I suppose at least one of the former can have DRM embedded in it, which is a plus for the providers, but apart from that, what are the advantages of the former over the latter? Do they give significantly better quality for the same filesize? Or is that .WMV will play, out of the box, on about 90% of PCs (Windows PCs, that is)?
This is the problem - Microsoft have used their effective monopoly to create yet another defacto (closed; patented) standard that everyone uses, irrespective of it's actual merit. In other words, they have leveraged their monopoly in one area (OS's) to gain a near monopoly (with bonus lock-in!) in another (media), which as I understand it is flat-out illegal. For recognising this and actually (shock! horror!) attempting to lay down the law, I can only applaud the EU. However, as others have stated, the proposed sanctions were utterly misguided, and impacted only the consumer, if anyone at all.
I'm not entirely sure what the perfect solution to this would have been - the only ones I can think of are banning not WMP but the .wmv codec itself from inclusion in the default install, or specifying that Microsoft must include DivX, XVid etc playing abilities (if they don't already) out of the box. But both of these are just as lame, and I think this particular transgression simply can't be punished in any sane way, alas. Maybe the other case - with the EU asking MS to open up the Samba spec so that OSS groups can use it - will be more successful, but an article the other day suggests that it won't. Oh well.
I don't get what the deal is. If anything Microsoft is the one being treated unfairly in ALL of these "monopoly" related trials. Heck to imply that MS is a monopoly is to disregard Linux, BSD, Mac or any other Misc operating systems as Non-existent. Not that MS has ever actually been accused of that, simply "monopolistic practices". Glad to know you can have those without being a monopoly... it makes me feel like I have a chance too! Like maybe one day I will acquire monopolistic powers so I can like force my boss to give me a raise because I am the only one good at doing my job.
If you apply the logic people use against MS to competitors, such as Apple or even Linux distributions the arguments fall apart as ridiculous:
Apple should be forced to remove QuickTime and Safari.
No Linux distribution should be allowed to place a media player and a web browser in the same installation package.
KDE needs Konqueror removed! It deters people form using Lynx and firefox!
Heck lets get down to the real point. Nothing should ever be bundled with anything. Your OS should be a kernel and you need to buy a separate piece of software to actually do anything!
None of this makes sense. The people that are complaining, the "3rd parties" like real (has anyone ever mentioned another media play in the game) and Netscape suck. They made bad products a better product overtook them. End of line.
Look how quickly firefox took off! Its amazing how many people will switch when something equal or better comes around... but wait I thought we were all brain washed by bill gates' zombie ray?! Too many people just seem to thing big business is bad and immoral. That's fine! Frankly I hate corporate America, but... at least hate everybody fairly and equally. Redhat MS and Apple oh and IBM and Sony should all die horrible deaths because they are the oppressors. Technology should be made by hand... in my garage... with duct tape and crazy glue!
I shudder to think of a present where real player had become the de-facto standard.
I can also only imagine the flame wars that would have run rampant if this mentality had existed when evil MS integrated EDIT into MSDOS. Destroying the vital text editor market for competitors!!!
The only lesson I have learned from all of this is that governments are slower and dumber and more susceptible to bandwagon mentalities than I expected.
Flame away...
The suppliers of other media players are hurt because Microsoft, by bundling Windows Media Player (a product in a competitive market) with Windows (a product where Microsoft has a monopoly) forces customers to pay for Windows Media Player whether they want it or not. Microsoft can roll the cost of WMP in with Windows, and make the customers pay for both when they only wanted Windows.
Suppliers of other media players cannot force customers to buy their product. So they are at a disadvantage. Anti-monopoly laws that have been on the books for a century or more state that such cross-subsidies are illegal.
If there was a competitive Operating Systems market, then Microsoft couldn't force money out of customers' wallets, either, because customers could choose an OS supplier that did not inflate the price of their OS with a Media Player.
I believe that the playing field should be kept level, and that other companies should be treated just as Microsoft was by the EU.
I agree as soon as Apple is declared by the courts to have a monopoly on desktop operating systems I think they should be forced to comply with all the anti-trust regulations that would then apply to them. Oh wait, the same laws do apply it's just that Apple is not a monopoly and MS is.
Yes you can uninstall all of those applications from OS X very easily with the exception of Dashboard which is actually a part of the OS and is built into the UI. It can be removed with a little know how though. All of that, however, is immaterial.
The problem is not with companies bundling things together in general. If someone wants to sell fish and cheese together, great, good luck. The problem is that if one company has a monopoly on something and only sells that that something bundled with something else it drives everyone else out of business. That is why their are special rules for monopolies, because they can upset free trade by coercing their customers. MS has and is doing just that. They can sell all the cheese they want and all the fish they want, but they can't sell only fish and cheese bundles once they have established a monopoly on fish.
Microsoft has said that people *choose* their OS because it is "better" - this would have been a chance to prove it.
Funny how when people talk about "competition", they only mean supporting their choices, not anyone elses.
I grew up in an area where there was no competion, and I mean NONE. there was one gas station, there was one grocery store, there was one movie theater (one screen). Wal Mart opened a store in town and THEY were the competition to the local monopolies. Suddenly people HAD choices where there were none before.
Just because a business is smaller than another one doesn't imbibe them with any noble qualities. So don't confuse personal hatred of WalMart or Microsoft with an unselfish support of free and open markets.
This whole media player argument holds zero water with me. How many times over the PC timeline have we seen some small start up company come out with a product that blew the doors off of the "big boys". Anyone with a PC and a C++ compiler can take on the biggest software companies in the world, and do so on a pretty even playing field.
The problem with forcing Microsoft to unbundle WMP or IE is that it comes too late, the product has already been accepted by the market. The legal tools for handling this kind of behaviour are unsufficient. Since the products are distributed at no cost, customers see no reason to switch. The only way to prevent this would have been to force Microsoft to distribute WMP or IE in a similar way to their competitors, i.e. charge for it or at least make it a separate download. That way the market may have decided by choice instead by default setting.
To stop Microsoft from doing it again (Desktop Search? Music downloads via XBox2) they would have to be forced to compete in the market BEFORE they achieve a dominant position. I don't think this is legally possible.
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Microsoft has also been known to make things buggy for anyone who's dumb enough to use their software in a way Microsoft does not want. They have promissed this will happen, and we can imagine they will follow up.
Why would any vendor install the version of M$ OS that M$ has promissed won't work? Their customers won't be happy and that makes the EU all the more correct in it's thought and action.
The EU finding of fact was correct. Their fines were simply a way to make Microsoft pay without violating trade agreements. Hopefully, they will use the money to transition themselves out of Microsoft's clutches.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Of course no one wants the stripped down version because it costs the same as the full-blown version .
This isn't vindication for MS - it is just proof of the stupidity of the EU bureaucrats who did a half-assed job of imposing the punishment on MS. If they weren't so incompetent, they would have mandated that not only must MS make a stripped down version, they also gotta sell it for proportionally less too where "lots" is equal to some value of proportional...
reference: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22283
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Media Player's not critical
So when my application needs to play an embedded video, it's not a critical function? The fact that I can rely on certain components being available allows me to avoid reinventing the "video playing" wheel. This is worth a lot to me as an ISV.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Wasn't 100% sure, were you saying developers being forced to install 3rd party apps wasn't a bad thing?
I thought that was a bloody TERRIBLE thing!!!!! I remember back when this was the case and soon I'd have 2-3 apps for every purpose on my machine. And MUCH worse was when different applications needed the same 3rd party app, but both needed different versions!
AHHHHHHHH!!!!! I still have nightmares. I for one am very happy for developers to develop for IE and Media Player!!!!!
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
we see any Micrsoft ad campaign promoting "XP N" ?
A couple of media stories and some hype by sychophant 'analysts' and 'journalists'.
No wonder it died.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
The suppliers of other media players are hurt because Microsoft...
Who cares? It's not Microsoft's fault that a companys business model is on commoditized software that people don't care enough to switch to let alone pay for. There's no market for a media player because there shouldn't be. I understand that Microsoft is a monopoly so things are different, but you can't expect Microsoft to stop adding value into its products so that consumers have to continue paying for hundreds of dollars of addons just to do something as "1990s" as playing a video on their computer. I agree that because MS is a monopoly that they should be forced to allow third party alternatives, but not remove value from their product.
If there was a competitive Operating Systems market, then Microsoft couldn't force money out of customers' wallets, either, because customers could choose an OS supplier that did not inflate the price of their OS with a Media Player.
When Windows came out it was very competitively priced. Actually, if I remember correctly it was cheaper than any product offering from any other company (IBM, Apple, etc.). When taking inflation into account Windows is actually cheaper now than it was before it was a monopoly. The price never went up even when IE, Windows Media Player, and a slew of other features were added to the product. Software has never followed hardware pricing (droping like a rock after a year) nor should it, it doesn't lose value over time (unless a new version is released) and it's the reason you have the hardware in the first place.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
That is entirely a matter of opinion (ie: in some people's opinion's, a CLI shell isn't important - would you argue it's less of a "critical feature" than a media player ? How about a TCP/IP stack ? How about packet filtering ?)
IE's a little better of an analogy about needing a given component, but why would you embed into the OS heart such a component as MS has done.
Why don't you ask the KDE, GNOME and OS X developers why they've all done exactly the same thing ? At least you might be more inclined to listen to what they have to say...
But you need IE for this stuff, the way MS has done it. Therein lies the rub.
You "need" khtml in KDE and WebCore/WebKit in OS X as well - how is that any different ?
When MS was entered into the anti-trust suit, this was not the case. We're all talking about that legacy.
However, I might note that if you remove IE, many legacy apps do break, because they try and launch IE explicitly (and erroneously, but that's not the point).
Obviously, they can do it now. XP N is proof that it is no longer that way. But the impression is still there. Honestly, I have no idea why the EU ordered things they way they did. To me the ruling didn't seem to help much of anything, and seems very dated.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
Probably a vast majority of the people driving cars (at least in the USA) probably don't smoke. So why does every car equipped still ship with several cigarette lighters?
The answer is that third-party products (e.g. cellphones, laptops, and other power adaptors) use the cigarette lighter interface for their powersource. So we need cigarette lighters in our cars for the 3rd-party products, even if we don't use them directly for their immediate purpose, i.e. smoking.
Any alternative power or cigarette-lighting interface will face a significant mountain to its business, due to the installbase of the classic Cigarette Lighting and Power Interface (CLPI).
So why don't I complain about the classic CLPI's monopoly? For one, it's a completely open standard. If you want to create a new power attachment to use it, you can with zero strings attached. Likewise, if you want to create a competing cigarette lighter implementing the classic CLPI, you're good to go, and nobody will whine or complain because of incompatibilities. Consequently (and also another reason for my lack of complaining), nobody really has a monopoly on a single cigarette lighter and nobody is leveraging it to gain access to new fields, which is patently untrue for its computer-world monopoly counterparts.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
That MS's competitors seem to think that they should be able to make an inferior, or at best equal product that costs money and sell it, and if they don't it's MS's anti-competitivness that's stopping them.
Personally I think it's fine, I think the goal should be to make a BETTER product, so you want to buy it. I've purchased a number of products to which MS has free included version, because the 3rd party solutions are better, and I use others that are free alternatives. For exmaple:
1) Diskeeper. It's a disk defragmentation program. Actually the included Windows version is based on it, but is very strippend down and much slower. The more optimized, faster algorithms combined with background operation made it worth the money to me.
2) UltraEdit. Notepad does edit text documents, but it pretty basic. I found it worth the money to get UNIX break support, syntax highlighting, regex searching, macros, etc, etc.
3) Mozilla. IE has problems with support of features I want, such as transparant PNGs, so I use Mozilla instead, despite it's slightly inferior rendering engine.
4) Winamp. WMP is fine for video, but I dislike it for audio. Winamp is just what I want. It even has an adapter to use my professional DirectX plugins.
5) Kerio Personal Firewall. Windows Firewall is nice and all, but too simplistic for my tastes. I need to make more complex rules for apps, and I like how it monitors if an app is changed. The campus wher eI work actually shelled out for a site license of this.
6) Nero. Windows can burn CDs allegedly, but I wonldn't know. I love Nero's interface so that's all I ever use.
I'm sure there's more, but that's all I can think of right now. The point is, all of these are better than the MS alternatives. However I find both Real and QuickTime to be highly inferior to Media Player. So bad, in fact, I dislike installing them, and get QuickTime Alternative and Real Alternative instead.
It seems to me, rather than whining about MS including an acceptable solution, they should be working to make a great solution so that you'll ignore what MS has and get their's anyhow. I understand for many people, iTunes is such a solution. MS has some included online media purchasing system, but I've heard nothing of it. Seems if people purchase their music that way, iTunes is how they do it, despite it not being bundled.
Microsoft started bundling a media player with windows(windows 3.0) before Real even existed. Now microsoft is expected to unbundle their media player after 14 years of it being bundled? You slashbotter simply amaze me.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
All well and good, but the Websters definition does not encompass what the antitrust laws actually say:
monopoly
n. a business or inter-related group of businesses which controls so much of the production or sale of a product or kind of product as to control the market, including prices and distribution. Business practices, combinations and/or acquisitions which tend to create a monopoly may violate various federal statutes which regulate or prohibit business trusts and monopolies or prohibit restraint of trade. However, limited monopolies granted by a manufacturer to a wholesaler in a particular area are usually legal, since they are like "licenses." Public utilities such as electric, gas and water companies may also hold a monopoly in a particular geographic area since it is the only practical way to provide the public service, and they are regulated by state public utility commissions.
This is from the law.com online dictionary.
As you can see, no requirement that the monopolists extert "exclusive" control. The market percentages I gave above come from U.S. antitrust caselaw.
Also, here's the definition from Garner's "A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage:"
"Monopoly is generally understood to mean 'control by one supplier or producer over the commercial market within a given region.' Nonlawyers often believe that this control must be complete, but the law in various jurisdictions now sets the level of control at a fraction of the overall market. In England, for example, under the Monopolies and Mergers Acts of 1948 and 1965, a monopoly existed when the level of control reached one-third of a local or national market. That propertion was lessened by the Fair Trading Act of 1973, under which companies can be prevented from controliing more than one-fourth of the supply of a product or service."
So, it appears that in England, a 25% market share is sufficient for a monopoly -- hardly an "exclusive" situation. The dictionary definitions are all well and good, but since this is more-or-less a legal discussion, the LEGAL definitions of monopoly are the ones we should bepaying attention to.
"That's not even wrong..." -- Wolfgang Pauli
As far as I'm concerned, OS == kernel. If you were to take a CS course in operating systems, or read a textbook on OS design, you sure as hell wouldn't find any mention of media players or HTML rendering engines.
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