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Microsoft Cracking Down On Indian Retailers
slashthedot writes "Microsoft caught some Indian retailers selling pirated copies of Windows by sending in a dummy customer to ask for a copy of Windows to be installed on their PC. The dealers claim that they are promoting MS software in this way. One retailer said: 'Since we are are not charging anything extra for installing the software, it means that we are actually not trading in pirated software. For us this is just a sewa (selfless act) that we are offering to our customers. Besides, the pricing of their operating systems is way too high for the Indian markets.'"
That's either a typo or translation mistake - I am sure they wanted to say they are not against *stopping* piracy..
>>but it is the same as stealing one off the shelf
No, it isn't. If your shop has 20 boxed copies of WinXP, and one of your techs installs an unlicensed copy, you still have 20 boxes on the shelf.
I'm not arguing that violating a license agreement isn't wrong, but it is definitely not stealing.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
I'd say that even in 1998, Microsoft was arguably not a monopoly. A monopoly means they have the only product on the market, in this case x86 operating systems.
You are making up your own definition of what is/is not a monopoly. Please educate yourself.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
"They did not profit from it.... nor did they make anything more than something a college student does for his pals."
1) Thats not true. I am from India. Most of these shops charge 1000 - 5000 Rs to assemble a computer. If an Indian buying his first computer pays 10,000 - 20,000 Rs then close to 10-25% of that is given to these guys. They make deals with hardware sellers and get things cheap and then charge their customers almost twice of everything.
2) A majority of these guys don't even know how to install Linux. Forget counseling the customer. They want easy, cheap and huge margins.
These people make a profit, run a business and don't want to pay up. They are not people who want to get an OS to use but don't have money to install one. And no, they are not running this business to help the individual who cannot afford to buy M$ Windows. They run it for profit and don't care about anything but the Rupees.
My support is not for M$ but it is directed against these vendors who cheat ignorant people by over charging for assembling computers.
If I search online, every game for Linux I see out there is dated. Games, like many other things are designed to grab and keep your attention for a short period of time. If they made games timeless (which I will argue is an impossibility) you'd never sell any games after that. It would be like creating an automobile that never breaks, and never stops running.
The truth of the matter is that 99% of all games produced today are produced around DirectX and Windows. Once you grab the attention of the masses through entertainment, you have their undivided attention for however long you want to hold it. It's a sad but true truth. Microsoft is tuned in to that truth. Heavily hedging to grab every corner and back alley of the entertainment business as they can before people stop grappling to the Microsoft "Bread and Butter".
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
It is? Because games run on it so well?
Yes, Linux runs just about every game written for it extremely well and has emulators that will run some popular titles written for foreign systems decently.
Because it's so easy to install drivers for ATI and Nvidia video cards?
Actually this one really surprised me. I've been using Linux since '99 so am accustomed to configuring things by the command line but a friend of mine installed Kubuntu last month and was astonished how simple it was to switch to the nVidia drivers...all point and click. I will admit I was a bit disappointed when I was told a reboot was "required" though.
Because it's easy to play HD-DVD?
I may have heard wrong but I could have sworn I saw somewhere that at least one of the HD-DVD players used Linux as its OS. I'd search for it but I don't think playing HD-DVDs will be much of an issue for at least a couple more years.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
I betcha that this has everything to do with it... and you can't really move to Linux because not every Windows app is compatible with Linux. :\
On the flip side, not every Linux app is compatible with Windows. I have 3 Linux machines and one Windows machine. Incompatibility with Windows malware is the driving force here along with price. The Windows machine is for Windows programs. The Linux machines are for web, media, and learning. Nero incompatibility with Linux is not an issue since making, burning, editing ISO's is built in the OS. For media, it is the best DVD player. Putting in a movie, plays the movie, not bombard you with adverts, warnings, and menu's some of which break basic functions such as exiting to the movie or menu. If I want special features or the menu or warnings, I can go to them after the movie thank you.
The more I use Linux, the more I find what is missing Windows.
The truth shall set you free!
Who's talking about support costs here? We're talking about the price the vendor can offer the product for. The cost of support will be (as it is for Windows vendors) borne by the vendor, and so it will be included in the cost of product. The price to the vendor of the product itself is an additional cost. Windows isn't free after you remove the support costs, while Linux is. It's as simple as that.
And because we're talking about vendors here, who determine what hardware they sell, the problem of drivers isn't an issue: the vendor can select hardware that is compatible with the Linux distribution they choose. The successful ones would do so anyway in order to minimize their support costs (and thus make them more competitive).
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
http://www.answers.com/monopoly&r=67
There's the definition of monopoly. Figure it out yourself.
What happens in most of these OS/system debates sadly devolves into an argument about application availability. This is obviously quite a logical thing to look at, but in the computer market (unlike say, the video game console market), there is a pseudo-monopoly of sorts, and very little competition in the OS sector.
With companies like Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft, the differences in platform are a lot more interesting, as the software that comes out for those platforms use the various technologies offered by the platforms in different ways. For example, look at the Wii and how it eschews mega-cool graphics for motion sensitive gameplay, or the PS3's ability to play Blu-Ray discs and 1080p graphics.
What ends up happening is that we don't actually argue the merits of the OSes (like features like zeroconf or AppleTalk vs. Windows File Sharing, or AppleScript vs. Visual Basic Scripting), but on "can I get application (or game) X for Y platform". The deck is stacked in Microsoft's favor; as the platform gets bigger, the "pseudo monopoly" grows even stronger (note the prevalence of the DOC file format), making platform comparisons a lot less about comparing the relative merits of the OS, but more about "do i want to risk not having the OS that everyone else has".
Which sucks for anyone who is really interested in choosing the best, rather than having to stick with "what's good enough" because all the apps are on it.
Oh us "poor" Indians could afford a very nice graphics card back in the day. We just didn't pay for software. Couldn't tell you about the Q4 era but IIRC around quake 2/unreal we had S3, Matrox, Riva and 3dfx cards selling pretty well. We had to buy the video card - you couldn't exactly share that. We were all running exactly the same copy of quake 2, unreal and windows 98 though. Those games even made it onto the LAN in our computer lab and we'd play after school and before the extra "tuition" classes began.
The copy protections schemes didn't stop us then and I doubt they stop anyone now (if anything its gotten easier to pirate software). We could pay for Windows but why bother when we could get away with pirating it. As for the just try linux crowd, a lot of us did. I first tried RH7 of a cd that came with a computer magazine (PC quest IIRC), and at the time there was no contest between windows 98 and linux. I couldn't get my SB16 working and it was end of story until college. Today its a different story and I think a lot of people in India can switch to linux without too much difficulty. If windows still exists its because of games/other windows only software and inertia, and MS is only helping the latter by trying to curb piracy.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
I seem to recall that last time ATI released "open source" drivers, it was just an open source wrapper around a binary driver.
And All the emulators you've named will generally require piracy to be of any use. Linux needs more developers selling Linux compatible games.
SRSLY.
Want to use Flash on a 64bit browser?
Move Sig. For great justice.