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Time For Anti-Trust 2.0?
An anonymous reader writes, "PC manufacturer Acer is complaining that Microsoft has jacked up the price of Vista, and that the basic versions are so basic no one will ship them. Since the collapse of the Microsoft anti-trust case under the Bush administration in 2001, manufacturers have no choice but to accede, adding hundreds of dollars to the cost of each PC. With Gates now proclaiming victory over European regulators, Microsoft once again seems unstoppable. But Microsoft had drawn itself
close to the Republican Party.
With the Republicans now evicted from the House and Senate, is it time to
look at the Microsoft anti-trust suit?
Could Microsoft be compelled to lower its inflating Vista prices,
or to open their tech or even supply funding
to Linux-flavored Windows such as Wine? What do Slashdot readers think about the likelihood of another go at breaking up the Windows monopoly?"
I welcome high prices on w32. There are alternatives, said manufactures could just install one of those.
Now, if the prices dependent on not selling anything by w32, I can see the point, and that should be fined so heavily that they never, ever dream of doing it again.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
Look at what M$ is pulling with Novel and Linux. This is typical M$ arrogance and disdain for the law.
They should have been broken up before, and they should now.
No one, or company should be allowed to act this way in any modern society.
Cheers.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Mind you, I particularly don't care much for MS, however if anti-trust can break its monopoly, I do believe that it will bring about a great revolution in software quality that will be seen for many years to come. More competition = better choices for us. =)
Fighting over religion is like seeing whose imaginary friend is best.
The Democrats in the congress do not have enough political capital to waste on slaying Microsoft. In under 2 years, no less. Not when there are other priorities.
Plus, I say let them jack up prices. Let manufacturers hurt. It may convince them to introduce Ubuntu pre-loaded machines. Why not? It doesn't require a complete changeover, just a quiet new line of products. Snowball effect, at some point. Surely they see the trend of the snowball coming their way, anyhow.
Or price the same machines without an OS. It's simple enough that car ads and other products do that. Most ads offer the 2007 model Toyota whatever, starting at $9,999. Well, we all know that's base model. But that magic 9 price grabs our eyeballs and does it's job all the same.
The submission takes a bunch of half truthes, wishfull thinking and hope for revenge and throws it altogether to make a stew designed to rile up the /. reader. Don't bite.
The truth:
1. OEM Windows licenses are nowhere close to "hundreds of dollars". You'll still be able to buy $500 PCs
2. Force to open to WINE?!?!?! Are you smoking crack? The judge migh, literally, laugh.
3. Microsoft has not "won" over EU regulators yet. This is only one battle.
4. Just because we have a democratic congress is no reason to look for revenge "killings." Yes, MS is a Monopoly that totaly abuses it's position in a way that's damaging to its competition, but have you heard we're at war? The new congress should look at MS again before too long, but definately not right now. They have far more important work to do.
I'm glad people are still interested in this subject, but you definately need to start looking at this realistically. This isn't so much a start as an unrealistic rant.
TW
MS are busily pricing themselves out of the market. I don't have a problem with that.
This is not a signature.
Although it's true that many people can do without the bundled Media Centre in preference of alternatives and will probably experience *better* performance Aero-free, that's not all they've stripped out. Laptop users with basic may be feeling a little chilly without Windows Mobility Centre. Sure, you don't *need* it travel, connect wirelessly and work, but in this day and age of mobile communication those are pretty basic OS features they've decided to limit to enhanced editions. The other issue is that Aero is not purely aesthetic and does offer some functional usability features too. Just how long it will be until a developer of one of those Open Source apps you love decides to utilise a cool element of the Aero interface, forgetting momentarily that not everyone has it. After all, he doesn't code for Macs for exactly that reason...
"Yes, Virginia, there is a Great Cthulhu..."
Nobody has mentioned the fact that within a few months of release, Vista will be the ONLY Microsoft operating system you can get on an OEM PC. You won't be able to buy an XP machine anymore because Microsoft doesn't want you to. In a free market, Windows XP would become cheaper and due to the fact that it's battle-tested, will probably be more desirable for some time, than Vista.
But there is not a free market, is there? You can't buy an OEM PC without paying some sort of windows tax, with few exceptions. And the latest windows tax is Vista.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
The justice dept is run by the white house and there is no way in hell this white house is going to go after any corporation let alone MS.
evil is as evil does
5 Stories ago the war was won and over. Now MS are back to evil monopoly status and government intervention is required apparently to defeat them. Again.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
This story is overflowing with FUD and misrepresentation. A routine fact-check will demonstrate this. Let's pull this apart:
According to Jim Wong, senior corporate vice president of the Taiwan-based company, the issue is simply that the basic home edition of Vista, Home Basic, which is available for preorder on Amazon.co.uk for 154.99 pounds ($293), is so basic that users will be forced to move to Vista Home Premium, at 189.99 pounds ($359).
First of all, they got the prices of Vista wrong: Vista Home Basic (non-upgrade) is 185 GBP; Vista Home Premium is 224 GBP.
Second, price-conversion. Everybody knows that you don't take the street price of a product in British pounds, run it through xe.com, and come out with the street price in USD. Microsoft's MSRP on Vista Home Basic (non-upgrade) is $199 USD, -not- $293 as given in the article. Vista Home Premium (non-upgrade) is $239 USD. Note that the MSRP on XP Home Edition is $199 USD, the same as Vista Home Basic.
Third, Microsoft has never sold an edition of Windows with the Media Center included on the retail market, so in a way there isn't really any good point of comparison.... of -course- it's going to be more expensive than XP Home.
"The new (Vista) experience you hear of, if you get Basic, you won't feel it at all," Wong told PC Pro magazine. "There's no (Aero) graphics, no Media Center, no remote control."
Yeah well, guess what? some people just don't want or need that stuff. Actually, I'd hazard a guess and say that the vast majority of users don't want or need Media Center functionality or a remote control. That's not what's worth harping on about. Home Premium does have a lot of neat things in it, especially for mobile users, media centers, tablet PC owners, etc., but it's useless for a lot of people who just use their computer to get stuff done.
Wong also said that the manufacturer's license for Vista Home Premium is 10 percent more expensive than for XP Home.
It's also got far more functionality (Media Center, new mobility features, XBox 360 connectivity, Tablet PC features) than XP Home Edition or Vista Home Basic Edition, the latter of which Acer is refusing to sell to its customers.
"We have to pay more but users are not going to pay more," Wong said. This would mean an increase in the cost to PC manufacturers of 1 percent to 2 percent, according to Wong, in a business where the profit margin is around 5 percent or less.
Quit your bitching, Mr. Wong. If the price of Windows is going up by 10% because you are choosing to force a higher edition on your customers, you pass that price increase on to users... it's not your job as a company to absorb price increases from Microsoft.
At the top of the Vista lineup is the Ultimate Edition, which can be preordered for 325 pounds ($614) and, again, is significantly more expensive than the XP operating system it replaces.
Ultimate Edition is covers a lot more ground than XP Professional. The thing comes with Media Center, twice as many games (good ones, too, like Chess and Majongg), backup software that doesn't suck, a bunch of extra software and add-ons analogous to the XP Plus! Pack, and even a friggin' UNIX stack to boot -- and that's not even going into
Get it? Microsoft has nothing like a monopoly on the server side, and never had it. They do have a de-facto monopoly on the client side.
The only thing that prevents them from extending their client-side monopoly to the server is the threat of government regulation. Otherwise, it is simple a question of letting the clients refuse to talk to "unauthorized" servers.
Microsoft doesn't give them a choice. OEM contract agreements clearly state that they must sell computers with Microsoft Windows installed. To get away with selling systems with Linux installed you pay what is commonly known as the "Microsoft Tax". In other words you are paying for Windows even though you're not really getting it. This "tax" is a reality. Microsoft has been at this for a long time.
As for the Dems not having enough money to go after Microsoft or not having the authority I beg to differ. For one the Democrats control Congress now, so if they do go after Microsoft it will be paid for by tax payer money, and second they have the authority to investigate Microsoft in Congresional commity which would be a bad thing for Bill Gates and company. So, no they don't need George W. Bush's cooperation to go after Microsoft but I'm certain they could persuade him to assist them since they control government spending (ie; the power of the purse) and they have oversight authority over different branches of government. If a certain agency isn't doing its job like the FTC for instance they can go after them which would be very bad for Microsoft. The FTC investigates violations of and enforces Anti-Trust Laws and they answer to the US Senate.
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
thezorch@gmail.com
http://thezorch.googlepages.com/home
Isn't it enough that something works right out of the box? Sure, I could buy an Apple/Mac and it would work, but I'd have to live without right-click.
/. timeout corner. I'm not down with all the Microsoft bashing on this thread - the topic should be modded -1 Flamebait, but you are woefully ignorant.
I don't have much against Linux. Maybe I'm not sufficiently informed, maybe my entire life could be made simpler by a switch to Linux. But for now, Windows works.
You sir, should sit in the
** Windows almost never works 'right out of the box'. If you're using it that way, then your system is already compromised.
** You can use a mouse with right button in OS X. Or you just hold your click for 2 seconds to get the contextual menu.
** You're not sufficiently informed vis-a-vis Linux. Try a friendly distro like MEPIS or Ubuntu.
I was having problems with my video camera on my Windows machine. Worked like a charm on my Mac mini. Worked like a charm with my MEPIS box.
Never could get my wife's iPod to even be seen by the Windows box. Obviously the Mac saw it. MEPIS does too.
But boy, could I play games on the Windows box.
$30 Off All Plans: Use code TRIPLESAWBUCK
There is still no viable, functionally equivalent alternative to Visio. Someone call me when there is.
In my eyes, this functional equivalence would need to include the ability to use Visio stencils, or a replacement for all the existing stencils already in use. This isn't likely to happen anytime soon, I'm afraid.
"Linux-flavored Windows such as Wine"
W T F
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Your assesment of Apple's potential for monopoly abuse is conjecture. Microsoft's monopoly abuse is fact. Your suggestion that a known abusive monopolistic company should be favored over a company that has no such record is indicative of a personal bias in the matter. Recuse yourself.
Do not mistake understanding for realization, and do not mistake realization for liberation
There's lots you can do on a US$699 laptop that you can't do on OLPC.
You discount games. I call bullsh*t on that one, and here's why. While Second Life, World of Warcraft, or any of the large number of that style of game might not seem to be "important", it is.
The whole idea of making sure that poor people can afford a computer is so you don't create a two-tier society of "techno-haves" and "techno-have-nots". You say, "well, get gaming kit" but in reality, a $100 "it runs no games" computer and a $200 "games computer" and a $100 media player starts putting you in the range of a low-end laptop. How is that a benefit?
You can buy a laptop at any Best Buy or CompUSA store in North America for $699 that is capable of playing a good chunk of the games on the market. I have one (a Gateway model) and WoW (as an example) runs acceptably well, Second Life is tolerable, and other 2-3 year old games (like Microsoft Train Simulator and the last Myst game) run very well. Similarly, $300 desktop PCs also have enough horsepower to run all but the most hardcore games.
The realities of things are simple. It costs a certain amount of money to make a computer, and a lot of those costs are fixed. While I commend the OLPC inititive (and it has exciting implications for dirt-poor nations), the sad reality of the situation is it would still cost $200 today to buy a Commodore 64 with a usable disk system (assuming parts are still available) because the cost of the raw materials, assembly, and distribution are fixed.
Well, sadly I can't provide a citation for this (although hey, this is Slashdot-- citations are for wimps, right?), but I was under the impression that the deal worked something like this:
In the post-Dell world of low-margin commodity PC's, the difference is likely to be at least $100, possibly more. Hell, there are even things like 'co-marketing' grants from the likes of MS and Intel, where the OEM gets money in return for putting MS or Intel prominently in their advertising, and I'm sure that the MS one offsets most of the remaining cost of the Windows licenses. However, when you're competing for a slice of the $500 PC market, you don't want your $25 copy of Windows to start costing $150 now. Or, in the case of Vista, $200 or more (because no-one wants the basic versions, as Acer suggests). Now, if you don't get favourable pricing, your offering either costs $700 compared to the competition's $500, or else you're going to lose money on every unit sold.
It's not the potential markup on a $1400 PC that hurts -- it's the markup on a $400 or $500 PC that hurts, because the retail price of Windows will increase that by a fairly noticeable percentage.
-Q
Question:
Is it people's overuse of the claim "FUD" or the overuse of FUD in slashdot articles that causes me to see the word FUD at least 20 times in three out of four articles?
In either case, FOR GODS SAKE CALM DOWN!
Linux would already be on a lot of desktops except for one important detail: it doesn't run Windows apps and drivers very well or at all. The inability to get round that obstacle is what has defeated every single would-be competitor over the last 11 years.
Ten years ago I was being told that Microsoft was a juggernaut that would squash anything in it's way. I was given all the usual tripe. That Sun would be out of business, that Linus Torvalds would be in jail for treason, that Gates would be knocking on my door to collect my firstborn. None of it happened.
There is no monopoly. There is only a large marketshare. For the past ten years, during the very period of time everyone was telling me I had no choice, I have been using non-Microsoft systems. Currently I am using FreeBSD on my desktop and Mac OSX on my laptop. The only Windows I have is on my work-supplied laptop, and that's on a *secondary* partition. I can tell Bill Gates to "bite me" with no fear of repercussion.
Sun is still going strong (and still stuck in their perpetual layoff/hire cycle). Solaris is still the workstation of choice, whose chief competition comes from Santa Clara instead of Redmond.
Apple, the perpetually dying platform, is doing gangbusters. Sure, Microsoft gave them some money. But the very first thing they did with it was to come out with Safari and dump Internet Explorer. The OSX desktop is just starting to explode on the scene. I work with a lot of software companies, and most of them are moving into the Mac market for the very first time.
During the very height of the Microsoft monopoly, Linux went from an obscure kernel project to a major player in the server and embedded markets with lots of inroads to the desktop. And it's not just because Open Source is the equivalent of "price dumping", because the service side of things isn't inexpensive.
OpenOffice and Firefox have shown that high quality productivity tools don't need to come from Redmond.
So where's the monopoly? What is stopping me, or anyone else, from not using Microsoft products? It may be still be hard to find pre-bundled Linux systems, but pre-bundled Mac OSX systems are just one aisle over. That's just on the desktop side. On the server side only the true-blue Microsoft fan still uses Windows on the server.
In short, there is no monopoly.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
There is nothing stopping people from choosing what software they would like to use on their computer. The market is working just fine. Nobody is being coerced. However, you seem to be in favor of the government coercing a private business by force. Sounds like DoubleSpeak to me.
Right now, Microsoft has way more regulatory power than the government in the computer industry. Microsoft *does* coerce. Microsoft *does* force. Microsoft has the power to do those things, and they do them. That's why the were convicted of abusing their monopoly power.
The market is *not* working fine. The "market" does not work in the idealistic fashion they teach in Economics 101. It's a fair estimation of a balanced economy, and so is worthwhile learning, but in the real world, big companies have *way* more power than smaller companies. And if you only have one big company calling the shots, they are able to warp the economics of the industry around themselves. IBM did this thirty years ago, and their asses got busted in the 80s, and the world is a better place because of it.
Do I think Microsoft needs busted up? No, I don't. Do they need regulated? Yes, just like individuals need regulated. (For instance, it's illegal to punch strangers on the street. That's a damned good regulation, even though I want to do it myself sometimes. Are you going to complain that the government regulates individuals?) Just like all corporations need regulated.
I believe that Microsoft is losing its monopoly, but that's happening because of works like Linux, in which thousands of individuals cooperate and release their code for free. There is little chance of another company taking on Microsoft. IBM was the last one that could've, and they got too greedy. The hardware manufacturers didn't want IBM calling the shots on hardware, so they weren't quick to pick up OS/2, and IBM wasn't real bright about OS/2, anyway.
In the long run, Microsoft is doomed. But Microsoft has already fucked up the computing industry, and it's going to take years to recover. They are doing their best to sabotage their only real competitor, Linux. (OSX could be a competitor if Apple would allow others to preload it on PC clones, but that ain't happening.) They are using their *market power* to fuck up the industry even more, just to ensure their market superiority.
The market is being regulated by Microsoft itself. Market regulation happens. And I'd rather have it done by somebody with no vested interest in the market than by a company that has proven it is willing to "knife the baby" simply to hurt a competitor.
Too bad there's nobody without a vested interest. Because, like you, I don't trust the government to do an unbiased and rational regulatory job.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Thank you sir. Well said.
In general, the proponents "free enterprise" can't define it. In special cases, they can, but choose not to, and play games instead (i.e. talking about "free trade" rather than the end of labor regulation, which is what that really means).
Strictly speaking there is no such thing as a "Free Market" - only anarchy, where markets do not exist, and the strong rule the weak. All markets run on rules. "Free Enterprise" is lately becoming a code for Laissez Faire capitalism, a ruinous permutation of the rules that was a notorious economic and social disaster.
The more socialist policies that America has (until recently) employed for the last 50 years, by comparison, are what actually "made this country so great." You had laissez faire in South America - where did it get them? Meanwhile our bitter lessons learned from the Great Depression led us to socialist-lite economic policies that created the wealthiest nation on earth.
Capitalism is not some magic religious trinket you can wave over a society and create a utopia. It's a class of machine. It needs to be well-designed, tuned, and maintained.
For it to work, you have to foster competition through (for instance) vigorous use of antitrust law. There's no market if one participant can prevent any other potential players from entering the market. Elementary. Or are they re-writing those history books these days?
Wealth begets wealth, so the Christians say - but it's obvious that money does make money. You also need systems that redistribute the wealth (for instance, our once-great public educational system). Stratification of capital leaves you with a few people who have orders more money they can ever spend, while everyone else lacks education, leisure, and even basic buying power. And why do you care, Mr. Libertarian? Our economy is 2/3's consumer spending. Doh. It's also powered by a millions-strong, well educated middle class.
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If George W. Bush wasn't there to stop their evil plans we'd be looking at stagflation, runaway tax increases, enormous increases in the size of our federal government, and massive amounts of new regulations on our businesses that will make it impossible for them to compete with foreign competitors.
Really funny. Not! Bush has increased the size of government and took the US from the biggest budget surplus to the biggest budget deficit ever. Republicans are supposedly fiscally conservative but while they've cut taxes they've also balloned federal spending and created entire new agencies and departments. Reason magazine, Free Mind and Free Markets has an article in the current issue, "The Budget-cutters Who couldn't Stop Spending" which isn't online yet, that details just how Republican have gone on spending sprees. There's the expansion in medicare spending estimateds to cost as much as $1.2 trillion in the first 10 years. Then they stuff billions more in so called supplimental approriations bills such as $150 million to the NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminitration, added to a bill to pay for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq along with another $2.3 billion for avian flu preparedness, which already get $3.8 billion, added to the same bill. This year's supplimental bill is $94.5 billion which makes it the largest supplimental bill ever. In 2005 supplimental appropriations represented 16.7% of new discretionary spending which was $143 billion compared to $7 billion in 1998 when discretionary spending was only .9%.
FalconShould there be a Law?
No way. For many distros, you get HUNDREDS of applications (often even THOUSANDS) right out of the box.
There are two major issues:
- Hardware support
Want to run that $30 inkjet? Good luck.
Want to run that $50 scanner? Good luck. You will have to hunt down firmware and load it up (firmware which SHOULD be flashed onto the device itself in the first place but isn't)
Want to sync your PocketPC/Cellphone/etc.? Good luck. Using your cellphone as a modem is a cinch - plug and play (easier than it is in Windows) but syncing your address book or retrieving photos is a different story
Want to use that WiFi card? Good luck. You will have to hunt down firmware and load it up (firmware which SHOULD be flashed onto the device itself in the first place but isn't)
Want to register your cable modem? Sorry, Adelphia requires that you run their software to register. I had to practically insult a phone rep to get them to give me the URL to register the cable modem. They don't 'get' the fact that there are operating systems besides Windows.
- Microsoft's FUD
PHBs believe glossy cut sheets and shiny advertisements, even if the TCO and uptime stats are outright lies.
Actually there is one third hindrance:
- Attitudes: almost invariably the response to "why doesn't program $foo do X?" is "it's open source, code it yourself." Yeah, way to win converts there buddy!
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50