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Microsoft Chided Over Exclusive Music Idea
grumpyman writes "The federal judge overseeing Microsoft Corp.'s business practices scolded the company Wednesday over a proposal to force manufacturers to tether iPod-like devices to Microsoft's own music player software. Microsoft blamed the proposal on a newly hired, "lower-level business person" who did not understand the company's obligations under the antitrust settlement."
Possible responses from the judge:
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
There's nothing Microsoft could have done. Those low level interns practically run the company.
Somewhere deep in the heart of Redmond.... "Damn those new MBA graduate students! Don't know there head from their @#$hole. Looks like we need to re-evaluate our initial MS obscure wording 101 course"
Civilization, the death of dreams.
Can't get any lower than scapegoat, right?
the proposal ever was sent to music-player manufacturers..." Wow, they let the new coffee getter conference call with Sony by himself? Huh.
How in the world can they blame the low level worker when it would have to be a management decision. Now are they saying their new management has been stuck under a rock for 5 years? How many people don't know about Microsoft and the monopoly case against them?
I miss the good old days at Microsoft. When we used to just do whatever the hell we wanted, and would write a cheque for the consequences later. :)
It was one of those lower level, chair throwing, teeth grinding employees!!
The iPod is exactly the same. It does rename its music files, though, ... but they'll still play fine.
My other car is first.
Because these devices are small with limited amount of memory? And when the memory is limited and the storage capacity is huge, then there is a question of where do you store all that id3 tags. File access would be dirt slow (when you push play, you don't want to wait 5 seconds for the system to find the file. Heck, if you browse your system, you don't want to wait for each update). Even something like amaroK index the files. Try loading all your the mp3s into xmms and see how long it takes.
Je ne parle pas francais.
lower-level business person" who did not understand the company's obligations under the antitrust settlement...and apparently been living the past 5 years without a tv.....or a newspaper.....or interpersonal contact.......in a box....wearing earmuffs......buried in a 12 foot crater on the other side of mars.
They are "testing the water" to see how far they can go expanding their grasp without anyone reacting. Next time they will go a little less far and nobody will react etc...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Completely different situation. Apple makes the iPod and has every right to limit it to run whatever software it chooses. If MS made the player nobody would have a right to say that it must run other companies' software. The problem here is MS was trying to force other manufacturers to limit their players to running only Windows Media Player software.
No, because Apple isn't twisting the arm of hardware manufacturers to use their software. You buy an Ipod from Apple and it comes with Apple Software. It the same as if you bought a Sony MD, you're be expected to use Sony software (sonicstage was perhaps the worst piece of junk ever i might add). This is clearly not the same as Microsoft (a software company, OK they do make keyboards) saying to Creative or whomever is creating the devices that they have to use WMP.
I could see the truth if I was blind.
Fantastic ... Would same judge please slap Microsoft silly for the BS it is currently pulling in regards to the OpenDocument format?
FTA: "Microsoft abandoned the idea after a competitor protested."
How many questionable actions have slipped through because the competitors have been strong-armed (due to business relations with MS) or bought off?
This happens to be an area where MS has valid competition who have a large interest in making sure MS doesn't leverage their OS dominance... what happens in areas where the competition doesn't have the legal resources to monitor MS & to file complaints?
Not to bash MS, but really now... Gates & co are making a good case for the idea that they need to be monitored past 2007, and that perhaps the previous settlement wasn't enough.
The fact of the matter is that whether it was Gates or Ballmer or some new lackey, they were acting in official capacity as an employee of MS. It is the responsibility of those in charge to make sure no one in the organization could take illegal action. And should the court take action (which the judge said she won't), the execs at MS should be held liable by their shareholders.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Well, they would say that, woudn't they?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandy_Rice-Davies
I am a service tech with Siemens on the Redmond Microsoft campus. We do all of their desktop support so I see A LOT of the normal day to day happenings that go on around this place. Ever since I've been here, all I've seen are people doing everything they can to make the most feature-filled, least buggy, most compatible software they can. I know for certain that the team working on Microsoft Operations Manager has in the last week broken several barriers that they were working on.
My point is that Microsoft is not the immense evil company that they are made out to be. The people that work here are not trying to rip you off. They are not sabotaging their software. They take pride in thier work. We have copies of different linux builds lying around and some people even use Macs here. Seeing the way things work here, when Balmer says he has not thrown a chair, I believe him. Every last employee and most vendors here have IMMENSE amounts of freedom in their jobs. Microsoft hires people that present an air of trustworthyness. They want to be able to hire people, assign them a task, and be confident that the person they hired will be able to complete the task in the most efficient and responsible way possible.
In reference to this article that obviously did not happen. Somebody was entrusted with a certain amount of authority and they misused it. Please realize that Microsoft as a company is not some huge evil organization out to rape your wallets. They are regular people who want to, like anyone else, do the best job they can.
IANAL, etc.
Why not:
Anti-Virus
Anti-Spyware
Firewall
The typical statements are:
1) Anti-spware; there is just no clear leader in the market
2) Firewall; its not full fledge product
3) A/V not sure what the rational is here. There are market leaders and its going to be a full fledge product.
The fundamental problem is that Microsoft really has lost the ability to compete on merits of software. I think that many of their current policies may expose them to far more dangerous antitrust litigation in the future including all those you just mentioned. IANAL though.
I think that the changes in SP2 regarding better protection against ActiveX controls could have bit into the antispyware market, but that is quite defensible in terms of improving one's product. That seems to me to be clearly on the right side of the line. However, bundling antispyware solutions with Windows (via WIndows Update) seems to be questionable at best. Personal firewalls are another area where there is good question (though Microsoft's personal firewall isn't that great of a product).
In both of these cases, however, it could be argued (unsuccessfully, I think) that because most of this software is given away as a loss leader or integrated into antivirus software, that there is no such thing as a personal firewall or antispyware market. This might be sufficient to handle such complaints (remember that the appeals court found that the DoJ had not made a case that there was such a thing as a web browser market and hence overturned part of the judgement against Microsoft on these grounds). But I don't know. If there is a dispute about whether a market exists, I would expect that to be an issue of fact and a matter for a jury. If I were Microsoft, I would not want to allow for a jury trial in such a case.
None of these arguments work in the antivirus area. And it is quite possible that this is an area that Microsoft is going to get sucked into quite to their detriment.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
You're comparing apples to oranges. From the article:
A proper comparison would be to note that Apple requires Apple to bundle iTunes with sales of the iPod and other devices Apple sells. Which, I suppose, they do.... since it's all one company. But this is hardly your point.
Your confusion is over the content offered on iTunes. Note that this has absolutely nothing to do with content. Would you care to point out where content providers are required to enter an exclusive contract with Apple to make that content only available via iTunes? Or perhapse where the Judge found objections to the Windows Media format?
I used to work at Microsoft. I started out as a temp and was eventually hired full time. I have worked in PSS, and apprenticed in other departments such as testing. I as also deeply involved in many competitive discussions regarding Linux, etc. Indeed, over two years after I quit, I am still seeing the effects of suggestions I made to high-level competitive managers while I worked there.
Pretty much every thing you say is true. To a point. It is true that Microsoft is a place where one can generally have a lot of freedom on how you do your job and you only find out once a year that the management thinks several of your most important contributions were wastes of time (a more common complaint than you might think), and that in general, it was a fairly satisfying place to work. It is true that people take a lot of pride in their work, and that most of the people there, especially those in product development, are primarily interested in making quality software, though whether they succeed or not is another question.
The problem, however, is that there is also an odd sense of mean-spiritedness which exists as a hidden undercurrent at the company. It does not come out in every employee, and I think that the GM of my department through most of the time I was there was probably the least mean-spirited guy I have enver seen in any company, but it is a part of the corporate culture. You would not believe how many Microsoft employees might ordinarily vode democrat but voted to elect Sen. Gordon simply because Cantwell was coming from a competing company (Real Networks). Never mind the fact that she might actually understand the industry. One guy even told me that he could not in good conscience vote to elect an executive from a competitor to public office. And you would not beleive the flack I got because before I was hired, I had migrated my parents to a Linux desktop and did not want to bring them back into the fold of Microsoft software (yes they still run Linux, and no they are not nerds or techies).
Similarly, the level of mean-spiritedness I watched seemed to go up as one ascended the management chain though there were plenty of exceptions. I knew several people who ended up in GM positions who really were great people to work for and with, and were entirely procompetitive. Sadly I also saw many more people who were fundamentally meanspirited (even if they did not at first appear this way) who were promoted as well.
Now, I was not ill-informed as to the nature of this aspect of Microsoft corporate culture when I was hired. I had read essentially all of the court documents both regarding Caldera v. Microsoft and USDoJ v. Microsoft. And I largely accepted the employement at first due to the fact that I did not have another job lined up when my term came to an end. In other words, it was clear to me that a large percentage of senior execs (including Gates and Ballmer) were of this category of employees, and that this was a large part of what catylized this attitude in the company.
During my time at Microsoft, I worked tirelessly to improve Microsoft software and business practices. My contributions were nearly all procompetitive. Among ideas first floated by me:
1) One has to stop thinking of Exchange and Sendmail as competitors (as a result of this email, a POP3 server was added to Windows Server 2003).
2) If you are going to Linuxworld, at least take the one product (SFU) that Linux guys might find interesting.
3) SFU should ship with the operating system.
4) If you can't provide SSH, at least provide a telnet server which uses Kerberos to encrypt the session (don't know the status on this one, but I believe it may be forthcoming)
I don't know where my other suggestions so I will not mention them here. However, I will say that I had suggested a very aggressive competitive approach aimed at materially reducing the number of safe markets for Linux and FreeBSD. I would not be surprised if Microsoft continues to impliment other suggestions I made.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The judge said Microsoft's music-player proposal -- even though it was abandoned 10 days later -- "maybe indicates a chink in the compliance process."
Well, now we know the ethnicity of the low-level intern.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
I still haven't seen anyone with an iPod, but I've had a Neuros and I know someone with an Archos. Unless you're being paid to publicize that one company's antiquated product (fuckin' A, it can't even play modern codecs like Vorbis), then there's no reason to shill for it.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
"You are smoking crack."
No crack.... you're just confused.
"The iPod and iTunes are as anti-competitive as it gets."
Not at all... watch as I destroy your whole argument.
"The hardware is completely closed and no third party software can run on it."
That's not anticompetitive... Apple creates the whole product. You might as well go after radio manufacturers (for example) for not allowing other companies to automatically be suppliers for their knobs and buttons. If you create the entire product (hardware and software) you can include as much or as little as you want with it. If Windows could be used to the exclusion of PC hardware... then they would be allowed to bundle as much as they want without concern of leveraging their illegal monopoly.
"There are also a limited number of codec's that work with the iPod."
Actually, the iPod is pretty much on par with all other music players with regard to the number of codecs it can play.
"The only thing that you can do is play AAC, MP3 and DRM'd apple music on it."
Wrong. The iPod can play songs encoded with these CODECS:
MP3 (from 32 Kbps to 320 Kbps)
MP3 Variable Bit Rate (VBR)
AIFF *
WAV (with no compression)
The following require iPod software 1.3 or later:
M4A AAC *
M4P AAC (Protected) *
M4B AAC (iTunes Music Store Spoken Word files) *
The following require iPod software 2.2 or later or iPod mini 1.1 or later:
Apple Lossless Encoder
* Requires iTunes 4 or iTunes 4 for Windows. AAC files also require the most recent update to the iPod software.
"It is a black box. It even enforces DRM practices on non-DRM music."
Its a Black box... and of course also a white one... and no it does not enforce DRMpractices on non-DRM music.
"Apple chooses to enforce their monopoly on the market by forcing consumers to use only apple products to access the iTunes music store - No iPod, no iTunes."
Motorola chooses to enforce their monopoly on the market by forcing consumers to use only motorola LCD displays in their phones. No Motorola LCD display, no motorola phone.
Whirlpool chooses to enforce their monopoly on the market by forcing consumers to use only Whirlpool dish soap dispensers in their dish washers. No Whirlpool dishsoap dispenser, no Whirlpool dish washer.
Sony chooses to enforce their monopoly on the market by forcing consumers to use only sony buttons on their stereos. No Sony buttons, no Sony radio.
See how ridiculous your argument is? Apple creates the entire product the same way that these other companies do. Because Apple also happens to compete in a market that is largely comprised of multiple vendors each contributing a small part in a piecemeal approach to any given technological solution does not mean they are required to do so under any law as you're implying... be it legal or ethical.
"It is a monopoly now - because Apple currently has a majority of the mp3 player market share, and a 100% monopoly on music encoded in an Apple DRM format."
Keep in mind... its not illegal to be a monopoly. Its illegal to use your monopoly illegally. Apple is not doing anything that excludes competitors to enter into the market. Microsoft's spotty history is rife with this sort of behavior throughout its history. They didn't achieve their monopoly legally... and they certainly haven't maintained it legally. Apple on the other hand achieved their monopoly in the market through hard work and innovation. They are maintaining it by doing the same repeatedly.... over and over again.
"They are also actively discouraging 3rd parties from interfacing with their hardware and software (real player)."
And there's nothing illegal or unethical about that.
"Thus, they are using their monopoly advantage to exclude competition in the market of players that can play AAC/DRM formatted music."
No, any company can use the AAC codec and can attach DRM to the fo