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Buy PC Without an OS... Get a Visit From MSFT?
sebFlyte writes "'Don't sell PCs without operating systems or we'll send the boys round.' That seems to be the general message coming out of microsoft's antipiracy unit, according to ZDNet. While MS seems to accept that people might want to get hold of PCs without Windows so they can put Linux on them, they don't think that's a good enough excuse. "We want to urge all system builders -- indeed, all Partners -- not to supply naked PCs. It is a risk to your customers and a risk to your business," says Microsoft. The FSF has given this policy short shrift, saying: "It looks like a private sniffing service which is supposed to spy on these who do not want to pay the Microsoft tax anymore. It is an incredible piece of impudence.""
So again, how is this not a Monopoly?
fak3r.com
Does a move like this do anything to effect all the current antitrust cases?
TFA:
This sounds a lot like a veiled threat to me.
GeekServ Unix Consulting Services (http://www.geekserv.com)
Or get a non-partner reseller to build one for you. Cut the partners out of the loop. MS control is through the partners, if they fear MS will cut off their air supply, they will comply. Instead, hurt them by boycotting their products.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Nice computer you got there....it'd be a shame if something....'appened to it..
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
If they are only targetting PC makers that have agreed to only sell PCs with their OS on them, then they have a legal, though morally questionable, right to do this. However, it seems they are targetting all PC makers.
Right now, this is basically just marketing, but if they actually take action against computer makers who sell "naked" PCs, such as refusing to license the Windows OS to them because of it, they run the risk of once again being brought up on charges of monpolistic practices.
To say that a PC sold without an OS will undoubtedly be used to pirate Windows is an absurd stance, and so forcing PC makers to sell PCs with Windows pre-installed in order to avoid such piracy is not valid. If Microsoft presses the issue too hard, they're going to end up making their lawyers very happy once again.
1. Sell PCs without Windows
2. Get visited by Microsoft
3. Get sent to federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison
4. ???
5. PROFIT
This signature was left intentionally blank.
The headline talks about buying, yet TFA is about selling. Way to go...
I can't imagine a larger brag that microsoft is a monopoly. It really is straight from the horses mouth with implicit proof of monopoly abuse.
There are places that sell PCs and don't force you to pay for windows. I found this website from someone else who posted a link to it on slashdot. They also have other nice things music like that doesn't have DRM.
You can get stuff here
"We want to urge all system builders -- indeed, all Partners -- not to supply naked PCs. It is a risk to your customers and a risk to your business -- with specifically 5 percent fewer opportunities to market software and services," wrote Alexander.
So, since they don't want "naked PCs"...they want you to install a "clothed-source OS" ?
hahahahah
T.Dzubin (submitting as Anon 'cause I've forgotten my login password)
MS will be able to track purchases, and if it looks like you're building your own systems, they come to mess you up. Afterall, pirates are just like terrorists, except for the eyepatch, the big hat, and the dead parot.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Now for some serious FUD debunking:
This quote seems popular: "We want to urge all system builders -- indeed, all Partners -- not to supply naked PCs. It is a risk to your customers and a risk to your business"
Now here's the rest of it: "with specifically 5 percent fewer opportunities to market software and services,"
As for the idea that MS might pay you a visit for not buying Windows...it's pure speculation and is not indicated by MS at all.
This describes the situation best:
Microsoft is trying to convince OEMs to sell more of their product? Those fiends!
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
They've been saying exactly this since http://www.microsoft.com/OEM/nakedPC.htm">at least 2000 (Courtesy of the wayback machine).
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I'm more concerned about still paying the Windows tax. If it comes with a copy of Windows because it's more effecient for the OEM to produce it that way, I'm not going to sell it on the black market, I'm just going to erase it.
Sheesh.
I'm a bit confused, not that Microsoft wants their software distributed (duh) but that they're calling it a risk to traffic in OS-less PCs. What possible risk is there?
I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel
is a risk to your customers and a risk to your business," says Microsoft.
Well as soon as you install Windows, there is a risk of being attacked and infected. So the risk is about the same.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Yes, it's wrong of Microsoft as it's wrong of you. If you were in Mainland Europe, the "agreements" your customers had signed would not be worth the paper they were printed upon: anti-competitive practices are well and truly illegal, and damn right too.
Microsoft are abusing their dominant position, which they only reached in the first place by abusing a dominant position.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
That Parrot's not dead, he's just resting.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
This is typical anti-everything journalism.
As some people have already pointed-out, this "information" don't relate the facts. This is just an interpretation of possible results from those facts.
The interpretation is NOT the fact. It just makes for more "entertaining" news to say that an evil company will own you in the future. Usually "evil company" is equal to "biggest company" in a given field. In this case Microsoft.
Microsoft's request isn't all that difficult to follow; just put FreeDOS on every machine. Everybody wins!
If you were in Mainland Europe, the "agreements" your customers had signed would not be worth the paper they were printed upon: anti-competitive practices are well and truly illegal, and damn right too.
How is it anti-competitive if I offer the customer a savings on a product that they want? I don't ask others not to compete with me, I just worked out a long term agreement with someone to get the product they want at a price they want.
If an employee works for me, I also make them sign a non-compete in exchange for a much higher income. If they don't want to sign with me, they can go make 50% of the money with some company that doesn't care.
Anti-competition comes only out of licensing by the state and excessive regulations causing high-barriers to entry. Anti-competition does not come from companies forcing themselves into the consumers' homes. Microsoft has definitely taken advantage of government regulations (copyrights, patents, DCMA etc) so they're not clean in my mind, but I see nothing anti-competitive about getting people to agree to certain terms so you can plan your budget and growth.
Is signing a cell phone contract for 2 years to get a free phone anti-competitive? Is signing a satellite TV contract for 2 years to get $1500 in free hardware anti-competitive? You made the decision.
God knows I hate Microsoft more than most people...but this might be a teensy bit of an overreaction.
a n.jpg says that the top four reasons people buy bare PC's is:
The actual source of this information says that:
1) This is a UK-only thing.
2) There are only TWO new MS employees doing this.
3) They discuss this during routine customer meetings.
4) There is no hint of coersion implied here.
So what this actually means is that there are a couple of extra marketeers out there trying to pursuade stores not to sell bare PC's.
Furthermore, the MS article http://www.zdnet.co.uk/i/z/nw/sp/storygraphics/sc
* To install their own software.
* To transfer software from an old machine.
* To install Linux
* To take advantage of volume licensing.
The didn't mention "To use a pirated version of windows".
What they ARE saying is that selling a bare system is a missed opportunity for the store. They suggest that if you sell someone a bare machine, you're missing a chance to sell them additional software such as photo processing, music players, etc.
So - yeah Microsoft are most definitely *evil* - but this isn't anything to panic about.
I doubt this will change the minds of many sellers - two guys in one country appealing to store owners who probably made a careful decision to let their customers avoid the MS tax.
You DON'T need to keep re-buying windows over and over again. You DON'T need to buy a copy of Windows only to have it be overwritten with a site-licensed version at work. You DON'T need to buy a copy only to scribble all over it with Linux. You SHOULD be able to save $50 off the cost of your PC if you are in one of those catagories.
www.sjbaker.org
Abuse of a monopoly is illegal.
What's the point of getting a monopoly if you don't abuse it? The shareholders would sue you if you didn't even try to abuse it.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
I wouldn't put it past them, but this looks like a straw man that we have predictably knocked over. Congratulations, Slashdot, for another brilliant victory.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
I was thinking of purchasing a machine from Dell a little while ago -- tired of the hassle involved in building my own. They absolutely refused to sell me a machine without windows, even though I already own a legitimate copy of the exact same OS.
As an annual subscriber to a Universal MSDN package I don't think I should have to pay for it twice. That is called racketeering - a federal offense.
Check it out. . .
I know the guy who posted this Slashdot comment on how prominent Forbes writer, Daniel Lyons, a suspected SCO puppet, was asking leading questions of Balmer at Microsoft's request in a recent interview slamming Linux.
Through fluke, my friend managed to get first post. He was also posting with some respectable Slashdot Karma. What happened next was fascinating. . .
His post became the focus of a moderation tug-o-war. No big deal. Happens all the time on Slashdot. --I've posted hundreds of items which piss people off, and I've watched my posts fly up and down on the venerable, "Troll" to "Insightful" Slashdot scale. Except, I cannot ever claim to have invoked more than, at most, say 8 or 9 mod points from the Slashdot moderators.
carsonc's post however. . . Wow.
We were chatting a few days later and he described the scenario to me. It seems that, lickety-split, after his post had gone up, a group of somebodies had gone into his posting history and spent a lot of mod points hammering several of his recent posts from 2's down into -1's. They spent, we estimate, at least 25 mod points worth of specific attention on him. Despite the fact that regular Slashdot moderators eventually won the tug-o-war, leaving his comment in the rarefied air of +5, his Karma had nonetheless dropped so quickly from history moderation, that he was left prevented from posting more than two comments per day, (effectively stopping him from engaging in open forum debate on the very topic he'd launched), and assigning an automatic -1 to everything he might say thereafter.
Yeah, yeah. Big deal. Slashdot Karma wars do exist on the level of schoolyard nonsense, but in this case. . .
A group of somebodies with 25 mod points to blow on a moment's notice? Well that raises interesting questions! Judging by the otherwise bland nature of carsonc's post, which I can't think could possibly have inspired anybody to have such intense emotional reaction and thus mod negatively, --unless they were directly affected by his comments, I can only surmise that it was either. . ,
A) Unwholesome Slashdot editors. --Which, considering Slashdot's fairly clean history of moral conduct over the years, I think is unlikely in the extreme.
or. . .
B) A band of Microsoft employees who had been directed to acquire mod points on Slashdot to be used at the whim of Microsoft's PR department precisely when negative views circulating around delicate points in the news might harm them. And as mod points are not given every day, how many users exactly, does it take to have 25 mod points available at a moment's notice? Enough to require some paid coordiation, I'd say.
Some might cry, "Conspiracy!" and wag their heads like dolts. But with several 1000 employees plugged into the Microsoft cube. . .
Anybody who has seen the film, "The Corporation" knows that such a scenario is not just possible, but -extremely- likely.
In other words. . . Fuck Microsoft. Switch to Linux. Tell everybody to do so now. Ubuntu will mail you 5 disks for free, and they'll support them, for free, for 3 years.
-FL
If I had a nickel for every time someone pointed out that MS was not a monopoly, I'd be as rich as... well, Bill Gates. Just because they don't mean the literal dictionary definition doesn't mean it's not useful to classify them as a monopoly. The legal definition of monopoly is broader, and it is broader for a reason. When a company is in a high position of power like MS, they can do things that are detrimental to consumers, such as strongarming PC manufacturers into not selling naked PCs. When I bought a Dell notebook, I had to pay MS tax, even though I totally wiped off XP and installed Fedora. These are strongarm tactcs, and they work only because MS has such a high degree of market conrol. The fact that you put "encouraging" in quotes tells me something. Maybe it's like how the local mafia bosses "encourage" store owners to pay protection fees. Oh no, MS doesn't have any real power.. The real reason PC manufacturers listen to what they say is that Ballmer is so charasmatic.
-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley
The dictionary definition of "monopoly" is NOT the legal definition of the word. This happens all the time, in every discipline: To a mathematician, a "ring" isn't a piece of jewelry. To a physicist, a "string" isn't a long piece of twisted interlocked fibers. To a programmer, a "float" isn't a thing you attach to a fishing line. To a lawyer, a "monopoly" isn't "a persistent market situation where there is only one provider..." Assuming that the legal and dictionary definitions of "monopoly" coincide is like assuming that a float denotes a variable that does not sink in water. A market situation can definitely be a monopoly without meeting the dictionary/wikipedia/economics/whatever meaning of the word. I mean, it's not a board game either, but I don't see you commenting on that.
"The FSF Europe is alarmed by the prospect that customers who request a base systems would risk a visit from Microsoft's investigators." I am still waiting on the day that I can buy a computer, and instead of them saying "They support Microsoft Windows only" for their computer customers, they instead ask me "What Operating system would you like on your new computer? I don't think they can come knocking on a regular consumers front door demanding to see their new computer just because they got the computer without a Operating System. If they can do this... Regardless of my choosing of Opeating System I plan to tell them to get a warrant. I advise businesses to do the same. I believe its time also for Vendors to drop the "Microsoft only" policy too. This is still forcing users to use Microsoft. Microsoft knows it too. Too bad the Courts don't see it for what it is.
Okay, why does it say that Linux is not good enough of an excuse to get a "naked" PC???
I don't need an excuse. If I was going to buy a computer, I want to buy the hardware, and not be forced to shell out money for software they want to give me if I don't want it. I can't believe they think that OS-less computers are all potential machines to have pirated Windows on it. Honestly the point of getting no OS is just that, to have nothing there; why waste the money on the OS if you're going to erase it anyway? Also, maybe I would buy a computer without an OS because I don't want Windows, period. This has antitrust written all over it, may they burn and die a painful death for all I care. And all I wanted was a laptop with an nVidia card, an AMD CPU, and no OS. I can't find any one laptop with even two of those criteria! (Not blaming MS for this though.)
Gentoo Linux - Wouldn't have it any other way. And fuck beta.
PC resellers could just offer to bundle with Linux or *BSD -- which would make Microsoft's argument completely untenable.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
And he makes some pretty inane or even stupid posts. I think the attention he got probably didn't do him any good.
As to MS employees being a reason he was boned, I have to say that's not too far-fetched to me. But really, I'd have more sympathy if slashdot weren't so consistently off the handle in relation to MS. I mean, it's pretty easy to get a smack even for reasonable opinions about MS and SCO. And his slight wingnuttiness doesn't help much.
It's still seems unfair. Maybe meta-moderating can fix this eventually?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
...so you wont end up swiming with the fishs
You think that's bad try to buy a Mac without an OS on it!
Personally i hope the EU slap crippling fines and place severe restrictions on the Redmond based outfit and either Google, Red Hat, or Yahoo release an feasible alternative to the standard desktop OS. Google have the potential with the desktop bar, Yahoo similar (although undeclared) and Red Hat... well i'd just like to see it. Without sounding too melodramatic i want governments to wake up and realise that MSFT is stopping the development of both the Internet and personal computing. It releases software that is at best deeply flawed, acquires software and holds on to it, breaks it, or simply removes it from the marketplace. The situation within the tech industry is nearly as bad as that in the oil industry.
Webmaster www.infogrok.com
...where is my flying car??!?
They didn't say "don't ship without Windows installed" (although I'm sure that's what they meant), they said "Dont' ship without an OS installed."
There's a simple solution for vendors wishing to sell PCs without an OS installed:
"Our default operating system is Linux. Customers who wish to have Windows pre-installed may choose to do so for an additional fee. Since we realize that many of our customers will choose Windows, we always maintain a sufficient stock of Windows pre-installed machines to enable a customer to pick one up with no waiting."
Or, make your default OS FreeDOS and give customers the option of Linux at no extra charge or Windows for a fee.
Or, if the traffic will bear it, sell them all for the same price, which will boost the profit margin tremendously on Linux machines (note: this might piss off Microsoft).
As a documentar, but it wasn't correct. The GM said at the time they were being killed by the labor market in Michigan. And they were right, the contracts they signed with the UAW then to keep their plants open are the ones that are killing them right now. The Jobs Bank came into being in that timeframe.
The awards for movies are given by artists and mostly for art. Don't confuse recognition of artistic principles with statements underscoring factual correctness.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
A unloaded hard drive in not as much an invitation to pirate as it is to EXPEREMENT! Maybe that is what microsoft fears
I have a coworker who after watching us order componants and build our own PC's, go excited an ordered his own. With his former Dell, that he always felt uneasy about messing with the partition, but that new empty drive was just BEGGING to be played with, so he installed Ubuntu today.
I don't know if he will stick with it, but the chances are good as he is not a gamer. But even if he does not, Linux has mindshare between his ears, and he is not afraid of it anymore.
You Ubuntu people will be interested to know that it is your free cd's with shipping that made him pick your distro. (I am a KDE guy, so it was not me, lol)
The aspect of this that's always annoyed me is enterprise purchasing. Buy a 100 or a 1000 or 10,000 PCs and you get 100 or a 1000 or 10,000 Windows Licenses. Installed. But as an enterprise customer you don't want that individual key'd license. You want a bulk license that you can load onto the machines with Ghost or any other of the many tools for building uniform desktops. You therefore need to buy a Microsoft volume license of some sort. You've paid twice for Windows. Most companies either accept this or ignore it as a cost of business. But it does add about $150 to $180 per machine to the acquisition price. With a business PC costing well under a $1000 today, that's a big hit. Just a gripe.
MSDS stands for "Material Safety Data Sheet". Its something you have to have around when you have hazardous materials in a workplace. It tells stuff like LD50 values, fire control, etc.
Excellent typo for MSDN!
More expensive??? Huh??? Linux is well-known as running better than Windows on lower-end hardware, something that will become even more true when Vista finally makes it out the door. Most of the PCs out there today, including most of the ones on store shelves, don't have the guts to run Vista well. That's astonishing. Some of the computers I have running Linux are over four years old and have never been upgraded. They're still doing fine, and will still be doing fine when Vista comes out and Windows users have to start buying new PCs just to run it.
:-) The hardest thing right now isn't hardware support, ease of use, application availability, or anything like that. The hardest thing right now is getting the word out to people that Linux is ready, it's easy to use, it's fun, it's reliable, and for most of you, it will meet all of your needs right out of the box. This is especially true for people getting their first computer. If you don't have a computer and need to get one, buy a Mac or a Linux box. You'll be glad you did.
Unless your definition of cheap starts at the bottom of the professional scanner range, you're really off track here. My scanner, for example, is an Epson, and it's supported out of the box by SANE and was when I bought it. I paid about 50 bucks for it. So are most other scanners, especially consumer-grade scanners. SANE supports hundreds of scanners. SANE support is so broad that before I bought my scanner, I didn't even bother specifically checking to see it it was supported or not. All I had to do was bring it home and plug it in. None of this BS like having to install a driver from CD first, like with certain legacy operating systems. In fact, the level at which hardware "just works" on many distros these days is getting more and more Mac-like all the time.
Scanner software, on the other hand, is something else again. Kooka is not bad but doesn't have a Copy function (astonishing; if you're a Kooka developer, please add that), and X-Sane is pretty clunky but at least it has a copy function. Scanning into GIMP is fairly well-supported, but a Windows user (and even more so, a Mac user) will find scanning on Linux to be tedious.
Anyway, scanners aren't even a good choice of example IMO. Most people don't want a scanner bundled with a computer system because they either don't want/need a scanner, or if they want one, they usually already have one. Scanners aren't something people upgrade very often. Heck, I don't even want a printer bundled with a system. My HP Photosmart 7350 serves my needs just as well now as it did two years ago when I bought it. I see no point in replacing it.
Of course, if I did want a bundled one, no problem. You'd have to look a long time to find a printer that wasn't supported on Linux these days.
Where is Linux hardware support not generally up to the level of Windows? 3-D accelerated graphics, something you didn't touch on. For most people that's not a huge problem, because there aren't many games for Linux that really take advantage of it, either. If you're a gamer, you need a console and/or a Windows box, that's just a fact on the ground. But for most people, who just need a computer for Internet access, light word processing, managing digital photos, etc., Linux is ready. Right now. Today. Desktop-oriented distros are as easy to use as Windows, they're more reliable, there's more software available than anyone fitting the above profile could ever need, and that software is easier to install than it is on Windows (honest; if you haven't used Synaptic or Adept (on Ubuntu), you need to try it. Puts Windows Update to shame).
Linux has been my desktop OS since the late nineties. Back then, there were real challenges in doing a lot of stuff. Now, things are so easy it's almost not fun anymore
This is pretty irritating - where I used to work, we had 120 machines in student labs set up running Knoppix from their hard drives (no Ubuntu at that time). No for-money software on them at all. I don't think the BSA's methodology adequately accounts for machines that legitimately generate $0 in software sales.
-Snorbert, somewhere in the antipodes