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The Future of Innovation At Stake?
Neuropol writes "Next week, Microsoft will launch a challenge against the European Union's highest court. The European Commission will need to decide if they are to overturn the EU Court's 2004 Anti-Trust case ruling. Amid arguments over the usual suspects like Windows Media Player, one of the key points of the CNN article that caught my attention was this quote from a EU Commission lawyer stating that Microsoft aims 'to eliminate the openness of the Internet, to proprietize the Internet, the lawyer said, adding the groundwork will be laid in Microsoft's forthcoming new operating system, Vista.'"
Microsoft aims 'to eliminate the openness of the Internet, to proprietize the Internet, the lawyer said, adding the groundwork will be laid in Microsoft's forthcoming new operating system, Vista.'
That has been their goal since the inception of Microsoft Network. They saw how lucrative Prodigy and Compuserver and AOL were and wanted to get in on the action. The problem was that they were too late and those services were already on the decline in favor of more open Internet access. "You mean I can send a message to by friend who has Compuserve even though I am on AOL?"
Basically, they have been trying to bring the world back to the "bad old days".
until you have to get a job, that is.
:)
yeah there's some non-windows computer jobs out there, but they are very few and far inbetween.
good luck
Yes, bundling Media Player with Windows gives MS an unfair advantage givent their market penetration. However, Windows does not prevent you from downloading any media software you want and using it. This is the same intellectualization people use when they talk about offensive books or TV programs. Yes, these things are readily available, but if you don't like their content, you can always refuse to read those books or watch those programs. And so it goes with Windows: use Media Player or don't -- you have a choice.
In the end, it isn't about Media Player, per se, but Microsoft's domination of the software market. However, all the EU is doing is poking Gulliver with their Lilliputian sticks. Unless the EU plans on banning Microsoft entriely (and how could they!), they will never be able to put enough of a chokehold on Ballmer and Company to seriously dent their market share.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
first Last year, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer told Germany's Manager Magazin: "We needed the first years to conquer the PC and those following to be ahead in the server business. In the upcoming years we'll conquer the Internet." Yeah? And? Hey look, they're a company, and they win. They find a market, they go to it, and they win. Look, fining MS isn't going to do anything. If you're concerned about a monopoly, split up the company, AT&T style. A fine is useless. An MS is not - I repeat - NOT - stifiling innovation. Please. MS never broke up a company Homer Simpson style. Every company they bought sold to them. Every company that went under lost to them. I dislike MS a lot. I am a moderate Apple fan boy. But I don't discredit MS's position. Break them up, or stop crying. (*Holds hands over head, prepares for flaming and seriously painful modding...*)
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
Except that Windows is not addictive, and withdrawal symptoms are mild.
Can we blame Microsoft for having the spot it does? No. I don't think so. Millions have been paying for Windows to be their system of choice. PC took off, Windows/DOS was easy and known and was able to keep up with changing software and demands (Though, perhaps as unstable as it could be sometimes).
I guess what starts to come about is when do we draw the line? MS is a force to be reckon'd with. Having a huge budget and a huge market that not many others can compete with. So they expand into other software and then, because people use it--they bundle it and really make it a part of the starting package so you don't need to go anywhere until you're unhappy.
I'm a Apple user now. But I stil use MS Office because mostly a great word processor, second because it is supported. I've used OpenOffice on GNU/Linux system that I had, and I enjoy it too, but it isn't ready to replace it for me.
I liked what I read from other users too. There are great projects out there with are under GNU or open source. To make a difference though, software companies need to be portable--this is why these projects stand a chance.
Things that scare me are not just one company to rule them all and, one company to guide them--it's constant pirating that puts other software vendors who make good products sales down.
Meh, i lost my train of though. Soon we'll just deck-in and cause havoc on marjor corporations and goverments if need be when things get tigt. yukmyuk
[J]
You didn't even take any notice that this point was answered in the post you were replying to.
Abuse of monopoly power to conquer a new market is illegal, and MS have been convicted of it in the US and the EU. Free market capitalism needs a level playing field.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Not even that. Since when is it innovative to simply bundle an application that works in the same way as multiple competing applications? Just become it comes with the OS instead of having to be installed separately, it doesn't mean it's innovative.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
..."Microsoft aims 'to eliminate the openness of the Internet, to proprietize the Internet, the lawyer said, adding the groundwork will be laid in Microsoft's forthcoming new operating system, Vista.'"...
Yeah, good luck on that one. Considering most DNS/web servers run *nix/Cisco and Apache (respectively) I do not see how a desktop OS could 'proprietize' the Internet...there are too many server admins out there that are *nix junkies. If M$ somehow does stop networks from talking to each other, it will defy the essential definition of the Internet. Then the world will go back to the 1970's before Arpanet joined everyone together.
Victory shall be mine!
The problem with this argument is that your trying to artifically say what a product should be. If a company chooses to expend effort (cost/time/etc) then that's their choice.
...
I mean if you take the 'anti' bundling argument to the logical nth degree you could hear someone say:
1) No OS should come with threads - processes are enough, and bundling in 'threads' is an attempt to stop good hard working folks from selling their thread implementation.
2) TCP/IP stack? What! With the OS? That's anti competitive! Your stopping all those other good hard-working folks from selling their own protocol stack! Your putting them out of business! You big nasty evil corporation!
I don't want governments deciding what someone can put in a product. That's a slippery pathway to doom.
If you applied the bundling argument to car manfuacturers: What! Your including a stereo with the car? That's anti-competitive and your putting all those good hard working folks who make and install
Ultimately the market will decide - that's a market economy. If a company invests too much effort putting what I as a consumer consider useless/unimportant features into a product and thus have to charge more for it to cover the costs associated I can go use/buy the product which is just the lean metal.
Now if a company is purposely making other software not work with theirs, and lying about why then that's a bit rough for the small company, but ultimately they may pay the price of not selling more units of their product which used to work...
It's a tough tradeoff.
This is idiotic... let's say the EU gets their way and MS has to rip out media player, IE, etc. Now what are people going to do? Buy something else?? If they don't put IE in the OS, people will either download IE or Firefox. If they take away media player, people will download media player, quicktime, and MAYBE the free version of real audio. Now what the hell has been accomplished?? I realize everyone loves to hate MS, and I have my share of issues with them, but honestly, hasn't packaging all the stuff WITH windows made running a PC cheaper? I remember when Netscape was like $40. IE is the reason we don't have to pay that anymore, so go ahead and "put your hate on", but I'm all for getting free stuff.
In the immortal words of Socrates, "I drank what?"
why weren't they dealt the same blow as AT&T and the railways?
Because they paid big bucks to aid with the Bush Campaign.GETPKG - Package Management for Slackware
more importantly, to the best of my knowledge, neither xine or mplayer are affiliated with suse or red hat. xine and mplayer are both open source companies, and they are also the best available products. they also support a number of different file types while not introducing new, proprietary file types. if either xine or mplayer did design a new file type, it would be trivial for other players to support this. they do not have any 'inside information' as to how gnu/linux works.
also there is, to the best of my knowledge, not a single company which sells a proprietary media player for the gnu/linux operating system (though maybe i'm wrong here). consequently, nobody is loosing sales because of the bundling.
howie
Gates : Hey steve, looks like we're going to be taking a 500 million euro fine in sector 3.
Balmer shifts a single bead on an abacus labeled `War Chest'
Balmer : So?
They're there affecting their effect.
ActiveX
Propriatory extension on the internet (web) that requires the propriatory OS and browser to work.
bollocks... millions have never had a choice... they're victims of Microsoft's monopolistic abuses in the OEM market... OEMS forced to pay for windows even though they were shipping OS2 on machines... cliff-tiered pricing for OEM copies that made it completely uneconomical to put anything else on the machines... kickbacks in the form of market development funds for OEMs promoting only windows on machines... why else do all the PC makers have that XXX reccomends Microsoft Windows XP on their machines??? they get paid for it and if they promote any other OS actively they lose the market development funds... why else do you find the Dell Linux machines well buried in the website with no direct links to them... you have to actively search for them.
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Having microsoft's patented, DRM encumbered, proprietry media formats preinstalled (or dl'd on demand) by default on the majority of home PC's is unfair. It's creates an artificial imbalance in the market, more content will be produced for MS formats by default. Antitrust law says that Microsoft are not allowed to leverage their monopoly position in order to expand into a new market. It's important to me (and you - even if you don't realize it) that content is availiable in formats that Microsoft does not control.
All Microsoft have to do is abide by the rule of law, thousands of normal companies manage it every day; basically Microsoft need to stop whining.
What if none of these other viewers will allow you to view the content produced/consumed by WMP? How much of a choice do you have then? I don't think that anyone cares if MS adds a piece of software, but what they always do is add a piece of software that uses a secret, propritary, copyrighted, and/or DRM'ed data format to ensure that no one else can compete by simply building a better media player.
NFS/SMB: If nobody can connect to your server who will use your filer?
MSIE: If you can't view the "best viewed with MSIE" web pages who will use the browser?
MS Office: If you can't read the file who will use your word processor?
WMV: If you can't view DRM'ed data who will use your player?
This is how MS "competes". They block everyone else by first leveraging their OS monopoly to gain market share for the new product, then they ensure that the new product has a secret format so that competitors spend all of their time reverse engineering the protocol. Or better yet the data is cryptoed and a law gets passed that makes it illegal to even try.
This strategy has worked well for MS, their products don't need to be innovative, they just have to be OK. As long as they don't completely suck, enough people will use them that they can kill off competition with their MS only "enhancements" (read cryptoed data format, unpublised behavior). Look at MSIE, upon achieving market dominance, they completely stopped development. No popup blockers, no tabbed browsing, no gestures, bad CSS support, etc., etc. Did everyone start using Firefox? Nope, MSIE still worked ok and coupled with the occasional site that proclaims "You are using an unsupported browser, please go away", people are unlikely to move to a different browser.
Please. MS never broke up a company Homer Simpson style. Every company they bought sold to them. Every company that went under lost to them.
Stacker. Caldera/Novell. IBM's OS/2 division.
Those are three examples that I can think of off the top of my head. In each of those situations MS "allied" with a company, than stabbed them behind the back. Stacker went under because of it, even though they won in court years later (after the company was gutted).
MS's strategy of "commit crime now, pay fine later after opponent is dead" works out rather well for them.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell