US Antitrust Judge Examining Windows 7 Documents

Anonymous writes "After more than 11 years, the US antitrust case involving Microsoft is still alive, with a federal judge overseeing enforcement of provisions under which the software giant must operate. And now, Judge Kollar-Kotelly says she'll take a close look at new technical documents involving Windows 7. This case began during the Windows 95 era."

Comments

Summary

[microbee]

Can someone summarize exactly what we have achieved in this case?

Re:Summary

[Dunbal]

Can someone summarize exactly what we have achieved in this case?

      We paid a judge and some court staff their salaries for a few years? Oh, and let's not forget the lawyers...

Re:Summary

[Swift2001]

We forestalled the compete domination of Microsoft in the computer industry. They behaved like better computer citizens than they otherwise would have. And they should have gone along with the breakup. It would have made for a much more nimble company, with independent units that made the OS, the applications and the hardware.

Re:Summary

[Repossessed]

They secured the big OEMs the right to sell more than just windows, eventually paving the way for netbooks.

Re:Summary

[Galois2]

Can someone summarize exactly what we have achieved in this case?

Briefly, in the 1990's MS was found to have a monopoly in its OS, which is not illegal in and of itself, but that it also illegally used its monopoly OS to create barriers to entry in other competitive areas. Particularly, it illegaly tied its browser to the OS, making other browsers not function as well (e.g., for help file viewing) and more difficult to install. At trial, they were shown to be either liars or, if you are very generous, incompetent.

Detailed findings of fact found illegal anti-competitive behavior in multiple areas, and their punishment was to be broken up into several companies. On appeal, MS successfully got that ruling overturned, on the basis that the judge in the case had made some negative comments about MS prior to issuing his ruling. In the meantime, 15 separate cases against MS brought by state attorneys general were merged, and MS settled with them for something so trivial no one remembers what it was. California, New York, and maybe one or two other states held out and separately obtained billion dollar settlements.

Shortly after the break-up order was rescinded, George W. Bush came into office and all efforts to obtain a reasonable remedy were dropped. MS essentially got off scott-free, in the sense that they illegally transformed their OS monopoly into a browser monopoly, with all the due profit that entailed, and weren't punished at all except for what they had to pay their lawyers and a billion to California.

To summarize and answer your question: Not Much.

Re:Summary

[jonwil]

Microsoft DID document a number of otherwise undocumented APIs. And they have internal processes to ensure that Microsoft programs like Office, FoxPro, Visual C++ etc dont call anything thats undocumented, see this:
http://blogs.msdn.com/calvin_hsia/archive/2005/01/26/361033.aspx

They did later document lots of network protocols but that was the EU and not the US that got them to do it.

Re:Summary

[MikeBabcock]

Very little, because the DoJ shut down the case before it went to the most recent punitive stage. The findings of fact was useful in that it resulted in many civil suits against Microsoft being won without having to argue the merits of those specific facts.

Instead of actually doing something about the facts of the case, the government decided to turn around and walk away, so that Microsoft ended up in a form of legal limbo where they were guilty of doing something wrong without being punished for it yet, but possibly getting it later.

Re:Summary

[argan0n]

TL;DR so translate: MS had OS mono, but that was cool as long as they don't push it moar. MS made OS+IE Mono to the booya in th sea. Sharks called em on it with teeth. MSPimp did bad, has to split yo beetches turf. But that wen't da gutter as The Man pokes out of turn. go fuck it all. 15 moar punks line up but we flow'd the bink to 'dem and gone. Crips & Bloods stood with weasels -- so to dem receive a roadside stripper club to bite.\Shit git broked and Dubya, hard marched in on mad blow and said FU and FU and FU, ur coool, and FU. MS ben into this and Tax break for mie boya and go booha to the Cali posse right? Vista is cookin... and look at that till W'7 and we'll stat again.

Re:Summary

[Profane MuthaFucka]

There is no car company which can be considered to be a monopoly. Not even close.

You can't use monopoly power to keep others out of the market. You are being deceitful when you leave out the fact that Microsoft is a monopoly.

Re:Summary

[scamper_22]

Yeah. Pretty amazing how a website for engineer and computer scientists don't like to pay their own salaries.

Do you remember the 'good ole' days of software. Do you remember how much of it was funded? It was funded by the old telephone monopolies which used their guaranteed monopoly over phone lines to fund such ventures as the invention of C++ at ATT/Bell labs. Wait a minute... do you remember what happened to these great labs once they were forced to breakup from their monopoly? Oh yeah... they sucked and they have no money to fund anything useful.

I mean seriously, there is a reason Microsoft employs 100 000 people and treats its employees better than 99% of other companies... they have some money.

Microsoft is not a natural monopoly (like cable, electricity, water) where there is only going to be one infrastructure going to your house. Microsoft should not be regulated with these 'anti-competitive' behaviors. It's amazing to see all these engineers and computer scientists act like we need to always reduce cost and we need maximum competition.

Let me know when the rest of society operates like that. When anyone can practice medicine. When lawyers don't make needless laws so complex you need them to navigate the system. When teachers give you a voucher and you can choose the best deal in town to send your kid for an education. When bankers don't get massive bailouts when they screw up. Tell me when we get that world...

Until that time, let us people who produce goods that we need to sell in the brutally competitive free market have a few tools to have a steady income. If that means proprietary file formats, exclusive deals with distributors, making funny protocols... so be it. The free market will determine when that is too annoying to bother dealing it and get with the competition.

The market provides plenty of ways to kill the 'monopoly'. MS, in trying to defend the desktop OS market, let the web float away... and the market produced Google. MS missed the mark on the smart phone, along comes RIM and Apple.

Would the world be better if everything was free as in freedom? YES...and I won't argue with that. But we don't live in that world... and I don't feel like making my industry a martyr.

Please... no broken window philosophy. I know about it. I agree with it. But as I said... get the rest of society to agree with it. I'm not living in a world where my neighbor who makes windows break my window every morning, so I have to pay him to fix the window. Meanwhile, he won't even let me bundle a browser with the operating system I sell him :P //I don't work for Microsoft. I Actually work for their smart-phone competitor.

Re:Summary

[Runaway1956]

Do much fanboying? To make the whole monopoly thing look ridiculous indicates that either you are a fanboy, or you have no grasp of the concepts involved. Microsoft has used unfair business practices to destroy one company after another. They got so blatant about their mission to destroy all potential competition, that the governmet got involved. By that time, it was to late for some businesses, but browsers manage to catch the limelight because there are so many, and people notice them. Tell us - why do you suppose that Microsoft has simply refused to make IE standards compliant? You don't think it could POSSIBLY be that it helps to break the interweb, and make the non-tech reliant on what Microsoft says is best? Why does Microsoft push ActiveX, but won't turn over the source code, or even standards, so that other browser might use it? Why did Microsoft PAY Sun all those millions in damages? With or without a browser, Microsoft is going to make billions this year, eclipsing ANY OTHER software company. I say, take away one of Microsoft's toys, if they can't play nicely with the other kids. Maybe next year, we'll consider taking away Windows media player, if they can't learn to be nice.

Re:Summary

[nmb3000]

Oh good grief. Yeah, the grandparent was a little exuberant, but your post is so overblown in the opposite direction that the net result is zero.

Microsoft has used unfair business practices to destroy one company after another. They got so blatant about their mission to destroy all potential competition, that the government got involved.

There is ample evidence that Microsoft was trying (sometimes successfully) to use their market penetration and sway over OEMs to their benefit. Examples include not allowing OEMs to bundle certain software. It should go without saying that they wanted to best the competition, that's any corporation's goal. The problem was with some of their anti-competitive techniques crossed the line.

browsers manage to catch the limelight because there are so many, and people notice them.

Except there weren't (this started in 1995 remember) and people don't. The browsers were almost exclusively either IE or Netscape/Mozilla. Maybe the biggest nail in the coffin for Netscape was twofold: Microsoft started bundling IE for free with Windows, and at a certain point IE started to eclipse Netscape in features and stability (shock, I know). Considering there was no real money for MS to make with their browser it made sense to include it with the OS because it meant they could leverage it for other OS-related purposes such as rich help files and things like Windows Update. It also helped them market Windows as an all-inclusive ready out-of-the-box product, pretty much exactly like Apple does now with OS X.

Tell us - why do you suppose that Microsoft has simply refused to make IE standards compliant?

Because Microsoft is a corporation and there was no profit in doing so. Likely a simple cost/benefit analysis. Windows and Office are their bread and butter, why blow development money on a browser?

You don't think it could POSSIBLY be that it helps to break the interweb

Break it? Originally the "interweb" was defined largely by what IE and Netscape implemented.

Why does Microsoft push ActiveX

How do they "push" it?

but won't turn over the source code, or even standards, so that other browser might use it?

Obviously they don't turn over source code because they are a closed-source commercial company. Besides, pretty much all browsers have a plugin/app architecture that serves the same purpose as ActiveX does on IE. While starting to be largely eclipsed by other technology like Flash/Silverlight/AJAX, ActiveX and friends still serve a useful role in providing web applications additional access to the users's computer through a browser when needed.

With or without a browser, Microsoft is going to make billions this year, eclipsing ANY OTHER software company. I say, take away one of Microsoft's toys, if they can't play nicely with the other kids.

We should punish a company just because it makes more money than anyone else? Punish their misdeeds, not their success. Statements like this just come across as envious spite with a weak facade of desiring justice.

Maybe next year, we'll consider taking away Windows media player, if they can't learn to be nice.

Uh, yeah, the brilliant minds at the EU already took a shot at that with forcing Windows XP N Edition. Nobody wanted it.

I think a lot of this "look what they did 15 years ago" stuff is pretty meaningless now. Enough time has passed that we'd be better off remembering the past, but punishing and investigating them for current infractions, and the best place to try and fix potential problems is going to be at the OEM level. Make sure Microsoft can't dictate to Dell what they can or cannot bundle in terms of competitiveness and make sure and keep hardware standards open and documented, but don't restrict what can be included in a retail Windows box. When I buy Windows off the shelf I expect it to come ready-to-use with Microsoft apps like IE, WMP, Wordpad, and Paint. If I want an alternative to one or all of these, I'll go find one.

Re:Summary

[WaZiX]

So on slashdot someone advocating monopolies to drive technological innovation gets modded +4 Insightful?

(Pssst: Competition is the main driver of innovation in a market system, you should be thankful we have _any_ innovation coming from Microsoft instead of cheering for them)

Re:Summary

[jabithew]

I think GP's point is that the time to worry about skeletons in the closet is *after* the murders have stopped, not before. To drag a metaphor too far.

Re:Summary

[V!NCENT]

Documentation my ass. I read the Wine mailing list a lot and the first thing newbie programmers hear on that list is to take the MSDN documentation with a grain of salt since it is A) not written at the time of programming and B) not written by the programmers itself.

Furthermore; the small, leaked part of the source code for Windows contains comments such as "Changing X seems to fuck up the goddamn C compiler" and "Removing this seems to break Office 98" which implies that not a lot of people at Microsoft still know what is realy going on in the subsystems.

Re:Summary

[Tweenk]

Microsoft is not a natural monopoly (like cable, electricity, water) where there is only going to be one infrastructure going to your house.

Electricity is not a natural monopoly when it is regulated to separate distribution from generation.

Re:Summary

[AVryhof]

Oh, and let's not forget the lawyers...

But what about the children? Why can't anybody think of the Children?

The children lose the most from monopolies.

Re:Summary

[littlewink]

You're papering over so many of Microsoft's crimes: I'll just select one, but a big one, to shoot down. Note that as a result of the original court case, Microsoft _is_, legally and otherwise, a monopoly and continues to behave as such to this day.

Break it? Originally the "interweb" was defined largely by what IE and Netscape implemented.

No. The Internet had clear standards and Microsoft intentionally set out to break those standards. Microsoft sought to "Embrace, extend and extinguish" the Internet and to exclude rivals. From Steven McGeady's testimony during the court case:

...they wanted to add incompatible or proprietary extensions to HTML. In particular, the context here is they were going to add RTF extensions to HTML. Those extensions weren't widely accepted as standards. They were unlikely to be adopted by Netscape or other promoters -- or other peope that dealt with HTML. And if they managed to fragment or balkanize the HTML community into what -- into who could read what version of HTML, then they would significantly blunt the power and ability of other computer software companies to implement it and produce compatible products.

Re:Summary

[scamper_22]

Psssst. We don't have a free market system in the US or the rest of the world and haven't had one in a very long time.
Pretty sure that was the point of the entire post. Why do you want to expose our industry to complete brutal free market capitalism, when no one else is playing by those rules. Regulating bundling is questionable in a complete free market system anyways... The market can and does regulate itself in these cases, but I'll ignore that for now.

I don't know if you're young or old. I don't know if you have job or not. I don't know if you're just a naive young person in school. I don't know if you're even an engineer/scientist.
One day when you might wake up and realize it would be nice to be able to make a steady living in this world... because having a decent income is a little more important than FULLY optimizing the free market for innovation. If having a little a steady income in our industry reduces the speed of innovation by 10% ... that's a nice tradeoff if you ask me.

Microsoft doesn't force you to buy their products. Can't say the same for public schools.
Microsoft doesn't restrict who can program. Can't say the same for doctors and lawyers.
Microsoft doesn't have taxation powers. Can't say the same for government workers.
Heck, Microsoft generally doesn't even abuse the patent system by suing competitors. They tend to only file patents to protect themselves. ...

I think it's time you looked at the real world and how it operates. It is certainly not a free market system.

Re:Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

MEANINGLESS?!?!?!

What they did 15 years ago is *WHY* they are sitting high and mighty today. What people don't seem to understand here is that Microsoft illegally manipulated the market using the power they gained in other areas to leverage new areas. What people today seem to be saying is "Well, 15 years is so long ago, they paid their fine, let's move on." The problem is that paying a fine is not punishment enough. The fine is for breaking the law. It's extra punishment and suppose to be a reason not to do it again. The real fact is that now the law needs to take away their ill-gotten gains. So Microsoft uses tactics to drive others out of business, or push their way to the top, they pay a fine and get to keep what they took through illegal methods? That's BS pure and simple.

What the US and EU need to do is take away that ill-gotten power and level the playing field for others in the market. I'm not going to go into detail on what Microsoft did that was illegal (and what they still do that should be illegal), because I don't have that kind of time. The real crux of the matter is that Microsoft is guilty of violating anti-trust laws. Laws put into place to prevent companies from actively preventing competition. They are GUILTY, and this stuff goes back more than 15 years ago. They didn't do something illegal 15 years ago and stop, there are years of this illegal activity that helped push Microsoft to the top of several Markets. From browsers, to office suites etc. Even more to the point, the case isn't even closed, so it applies still, even today.

As for IE beating Netscape in features and stability, I totally disagree, but even saying that, one of the things that Microsoft did to Netscape was continually change the underlying system to break Netscape (Those that doubt this might look up information on Win98lite, a project that people started to remove IE that was bundled with Win98. Oddly enough, the current Netscape at the time would install and run normally if you followed these steps). Netscape spent a lot of time fixing their browser between "patches" from Microsoft. IE had a leg up at the very least having direct access to changes in "patches" if not being affected by the changes at all. IE has the benefit of knowing what's around the corner while 3rd parties are left to guess, and even when it's changed, now they have to figure out what the changes are because there was no documentation to go with it. WordPerfect faced a similar problem when it was supplanted by Word.

The information is out there, but there is a ton of it and takes a long time to sort through. I've been working in the IT industry for many years, and computers are my passion. I was a Windows admin for over 10 years, and now work as a Linux admin out of the pure frustration of working with Windows.

BTW, if you're looking for more evidence of Microsoft trying to illegally maintain their marketshare. Simply look for information on protocol hijacking. Where Microsoft takes a protocol that is in use, modifies it, and then doesn't share the modifications. These are the communication lines between systems. These are the methods 3rd party software needs to use to communicate. If you don't properly share them, then you effectively reduce competition, or at the very least competition has to work that much harder to try and work with you. The EU's approach of forcing Microsoft to create and share documentation with 3rd parties on the APIs and other protocols that are required to communicate with their software is a fantastic step in the direction of leveling the playing field. More action is still required to fix the years of behavior from Microsoft.

Re:Summary

[hairyfeet]

Which is where I think antitrust REALLY ought to be looking at, as I smell something fishy. I mean, look at how fast OEMs dropped Linux onto the back page when they were "given" XP for Netbooks. You'd think that as cutthroat as the margins are in that sector they would be pushing the one that gives them better profits, especially considering most folks treat Netbooks as a "browser in a box" and don't expect everything to work like a full size. Yet the Linux options are suddenly buried away from the front page of the websites and from what we have heard from overseas slashdotters they don't even get a chance to buy ANY Linux based Netbooks at all.

So while I love XP and can't blame anyone for wanting it, especially over Vista, the way Linux just kind of dropped off the earth in a market that was practically built for it makes me pretty damned suspicious. I would love to see what kind of contracts and sweetheart deals MSFT did to get the OEMs to drop Linux like a bad habit. I bet if the antitrust judge was to look into that it would be a lot more revealing than Win7, which is just Vista SE anyway.

Re:Summary

[drinkypoo]

There is no car company which can be considered to be a monopoly. Not even close.

It doesn't work that way. Instead, the collective major carmakers of the world collectively wield their might to attempt to prevent new players from entering the market. For example, they manipulated the US government into forcing California to drop our planned emissions standards schedule so that they should sell the cars they wanted to sell here, not the cars that the voters wanted to buy. (The legislation did not prevent the out-of-state purchase and subsequent in-state purchase of automobiles, either; this is not any form of protectionism, at least since the CA DMV was forced to stop raping people over out-of-state registration fees.) Whether this sort of thing is done at the request of the oil industry is of course the big question; I have no evidence either way. I do know that this years' cars don't have much better mileage than last years' and that everyone but the Germans (whose government is currently dominated by their green party) is pushing the boondoggles known as parallel gas hybrids; the German turbodiesels have a lower energy cost in production, get better mileage in almost all real-world driving situations, and have a lower recycling cost. The new ones (e.g. VW CleanTDI) have super-low emissions without urea injection, too. Meanwhile I'm prepping a 1982 MBZ 300SD and a 1992 Ford F250 for B100...

Re:Summary

[daveime]

Try taking all the webkit libraries out of Mac OSX, and see how much that breaks ?

Try removing libsncurses or whatever it's called from a Linux distro, ditto above ?

In a culture where we it is engrained to "reuse" code, and avoid redundancy, your criticize Microsoft for doing exactly that, while both the other "major" O/S do exactly the same thing to a degree. Every piece of code is going to have SOME dependencies, otherwise everything would be so bloated and no one could use anyone elses code.

Yes, that functionality *COULD* be replicated by a third party library ... but you'd better be sure it's a 100% functional replacement, otherwise we end up with more pitiful OSS excuses and half-done software such as the monstrosity that is OpenOffice "opens nearly all your documents TM".

People don't want stuff that works "most of the time", especially when it's being touted that it's such-a-good-thing to be able to use a slot in replacement. It's only good if it does exactly the same thing and is transparent to the end-user. If it has better security and closes some holes, then great, I'm all for it ... but it had better be 100% compatible or no chance.

Having said that, a third party library could possibly even "break" the non standard stuff like ActiveX ... what better way to force the webdesigners to STOP relying on non standard extensions, than to not support them at all.

Then the choice would be, use the MS library that has more holes than a tramp's hammock ... or use the Mozilla slot-in replacement library that is more secure, but sorry doesn't support ActiveX. I'm not sure what the takeup rate would be in the general populace, but at least the geeks amongst us would have a viable alternative.

Now if MS were to document all the function calls to mshtml.dll, and together with the DOM documents, *COULD* a third party make such a slot in replacement, based on perhaps the Mozilla engine ?

Yes, they could, but it wouldn't be a great move in terms of their market share. Instead of offering a free browser (complete with Google backhanders^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hsponsorship), all they could offer would be a free browser rendering library. Great for users, but killer for the Firefox browser. So there's no incentive for any of the competing browser makers to do it anyway.

Back to square one no ?

Re:Summary

[maxume]

Microsoft is the beneficiary of enormous network effects. To the extent that they can charge $200 for software and have people more interested in buying it than they are in using software that costs $0.

This is one of the reasons that open standards are so nice, they let the user keep the $200 (unless they are interested in other compelling features of the software).

Re:Summary

[marcosdumay]

Distribution is still a natural monopoly.

Re:Summary

[Intron]

Can someone summarize exactly what we have achieved in this case?

The outcome was a complete success. Windows 95 no longer dominates the desktop.

Re:Summary

[redxxx]

Diesel also requires less energy to produce than gas(though extra taxes increase at pump costs, and refineries are geared to produce as little diesel, and as much gasoline, as possible suppressing supply).

Honestly, I think a lot of our energy problems could be helped by a nation wide effort to encourage diesel production and use. In the short term, with less taxes and more production, it will help with energy costs. In the long term, bio diesel would be more attractive because of a large fleet of vehicles that can use it with little modification.

Demand for diesel is pretty inelastic and already meets supply. It would take effort from manufactures, refiners and the federal government. I don't expect it to happen, but can't help but think it would save a lot of money and energy.

Re:Summary

[foobsr]

but the Germans (whose government is currently dominated by their green party)

Where have you been? An election is ahead (here::Germany) and the 'Greens' are not participating in the (federal) government since the last one (4 years ago).

CC.

Re:Summary

[ArhcAngel]

Maybe the biggest nail in the coffin for Netscape was twofold: Microsoft started bundling IE for free with Windows, and at a certain point IE started to eclipse Netscape in features and stability (shock, I know).

Those who fail to remember the past are doomed to repeat history class. That "certain point" was when AOL announced they would be partnering with Microsoft and their new AOL client would basically be a re-branded version of IE. At the time AOL was wildly popular and it instantly added approximately 1 million new IE users overnight. AOL went with IE to get real estate on the new Windows 95 desktop. AOL had been negotiating with both Microsoft and Netscape.

Re:Summary

[Profane MuthaFucka]

You're still missing part of the equation, although I don't grant any determination of monopoly. Collusion between more than one company is called "collusion" not monopoly.

The other part of the equation which must be shown is the INTENT and USE of the monopoly in an anti-competitive way. Merely including seats in your car isn't restricting others from producing seats for your car. I'm not sure what your diesel example is doing here, because the thread topic is how car companies are NOT preventing competition by merely including seats in their car.

If you look at what monopolistic companies have done in the past, you can see what happens. When AT&T was broken up they had been using their highly profitable long distance monopoly to keep local service providers out of the market. AT&T could afford to provide local service at a loss, which was anti-competitive.

And Microsoft was using its dominance of the operating system market to keep other browsers from gaining a foothold. If you recall, Microsoft was telling companies that if they wanted to be able to buy Windows, they couldn't install Netscape on their computers. Microsoft wasn't just making IE, they were using their OS monopoly to prevent Netscape from gaining share on IE.

Re:Summary

[WaZiX]

Who said anything about a "free" market?

Even in regulated markets, monopolies kill innovation and drive prices up. This has absolutely nothing to do with the free market ideology.

Microsoft has a monopoly in the OS market, used that monopoly to gain monopoly position in the browser market (although they have lost that position over the last couple of years) and a dominant position in the office software market.
Let's see what happened in these three markets.

First of all, the OS. It took MS over 6 years to bring out a new OS. 6 years! Until Windows 95/98, the OS sector was one of the fastest moving sectors around, with plenty of innovation coming out every year, but when MS got to their monopoly position, they have been basically stagnating. Now that Mac OS X and Linux start eating some market share, the development cycle fell from 6 to 3 years!

So, they used that market to get a monopoly in the browsers' market. What happened once they got it? Nothing for 6 years! It was only until Mozilla got a decent market share that Microsoft restarted the development of IE again. And look what happens now, MS will release IE 8 soon, only 3 years after IE 7. Not only this, but since the absolute dominance of IE has declined, we get innovation after innovation in the browsers. Safari, Chrome, Opera and Firefox are all good alternatives that almost monthly release a new faster than ever version racing each other to be the most standards compliant and the fastest.

Office? Again, it was only when Google or Open Office started threatening their market dominance that MS again felt the need to innovate (ribbons, xml file format, Office Live, etc...).

But back to economic theory (I am after all, an economist), innovation creates value, more value means more people can enjoy a decent salary like you said. More people would enjoy a decent salary had Microsoft not taken over those markets because it slowed down the process of value creation! It is exactly BECAUSE an absolutely free market doesn't work efficiently that it should be regulated. Regulation is necessary because left alone, free markets are NOT innovation-optimal. This lack of innovation is what makes communism impossible and why the free market cannot be fully efficient at the same time.

And yes Microsoft force their product onto me (well maybe not me, but the immense majority of PC buyers). Yes you can say public schools are forced onto us, but that is because a private school system is a very bad way to educate the next generation of innovators.

Microsoft doesn't restrict who can program for good reasons (they'd be bankrupt in no time), just like there are good reasons to not allow anyone to be a lawyer or a doctor.

And the taxation bit, well, I have no idea why it is even brought up.

Anyways, innovation is doing more with the same, it is how a society solves the eternal problem of limited resources. Innovation is what should make our kids' world a better world than ours. Having a society that is optimal for innovation is what economics is all about! How our society is able to evolve the best is very complex and filled with needed regulation, but the goal of innovation is crystal clear.

I believe it's time for you to open an economics books before you draw microeconomic conclusions.

Re:Summary

[scamper_22]

You keep looking at this from a consumer point of view.

I'm not looking at it that way. I'm looking at it from the view of a worker bee in the industry.

Yes, forcing competition on industry is great for consumers. It is great for consumers that the a day after we release a great product, 20 other competitors have copied us and turn our work into a commodity. Wonderful for you.

It is not so great for those of us who work in the industry.

Yes, us little cogs in the machine that produce all this value.

Every point you make about economics, I agree fully.
But anyways, we tire of working ours asses off in this industry producing and innovating, meanwhile those in protected industries get to relax and take comfort in their government sanctions protections. As an economist Microsoft should be at the BOTTOM of your list of concerns.

The monopolies of teachers, doctors, lawyers, public service... should be much higher than that on your list of concerns for innovation. Quite frankly, with health care and education being the number one issues in the nation, methinks you should be pressing hard for those industries to innovate to lower costs, instead of languishing in their protected job status.

What little protection 'lockin' provides is easily defeated in the long term.
Microsoft is not short of competition from Google, RIM, Apple...

If you view innovation as the prime motivation of society, perhaps you might also want to look at the people entering the field of innovation. Without some reward for us talented people, we won't enter the field, and you won't get that innovation you so prize. Might want to think about that... if every intelligent person leaps into protected jobs, the innovation sector will be filled with incompetent people and is that optimal for innovation? heck, I've had engineers leave to become bus drivers because it is a government protected job with good pay. Is that an optimal use of their skills to better society?

Sadly, any real innovation requires a significant investment in education. I'm not talking web 2.0 make a webpage innovation here. Ever wonder why most universities have foreign grad students? It's not because western kids are retarded. It's because there is no reward to work that hard for a 1 in a million shot at making it.

But anyways, most of us have learned a lesson. We'll be advising our kids to enter protected fields.
Keep up the good work doc. If they have an interest in math and science, they can do it as a hobby and make shallow web 2.0 webpages.

Re:Summary

[starfishsystems]

It takes awhile for society to build momentum in responses of this kind. If nothing else, this trial is significant because it created a huge change of public perception: from being helpless and divided against abuses my Microsoft to being able to act collectively against it.

As you say, a lot was revealed at trial. And that carries forward into other proceedings. It influences the attitude of prosecutors as they develop their own cases, and interested parties who watch these events unfold. It means, as a small example, that the whole ISO OOXML fiasco didn't go unremarked. I know that doesn't sound like a great achievement in terms of protecting the integrity of the standards process, but in a broader context it adds to the perception that Microsoft is chronically untrustworthy and unrepentant.

Here's an analogy at a smaller scale. We have a neighbor who has a pattern of behaving badly and then feigning ignorance. The first few offenses caused people to grumble, but they were perceived as isolated incidents. Then the neighbor did something really outrageous involving explosives. That caused a municipal response, which, just like the federal antitrust trial, was more symbolic than effective, since the damage was already done. Now this same neighbor has gone ahead with another egregious offense. This time, we were prepared. The municipality was alerted, issued a cease and desist, and when that had no effect, is now moving to enforcement. Often, it takes that much crap before the community can mount an effective response. But now, you see, this neighbor is persona non grata with everyone. That's a very diminished place to end up, when nobody will talk to you or help you or do business with you, when there is a massive lien on your property to recover for damages.

Re:Summary

[Jurily]

We need to break up more successful companies, and ruin their products, to let capitalism thrive.

They're not successful because they make a superior product, and they're actively strangling every possible competitor. That's not the free market you want.

Re:Summary

[Slothrup]

Furthermore; the small, leaked part of the source code for Windows contains comments such as "Changing X seems to fuck up the goddamn C compiler" and "Removing this seems to break Office 98" which implies that not a lot of people at Microsoft still know what is realy going on in the subsystems.

Heh. I work at Microsoft and I think there's a lot of truth to that. But no programmer anywhere seems to like to document stuff -- so I'd guess that what's on MSDN is better than you can find for most other bodies of code.

Of course, the best documentation is the code itself and the unit tests for the code, which isn't generally an option for closed source software.

Re:Summary

[Patch86]

How do you mean "buried away"? An Amazon UK search for "ASUS eeepc" returns the top 5 results as Linux options (a mix of Xandros and Ubuntu). Looking on the Dell UK site, every Inspiron Mini page has a Linux option on the first page. I believe a recent /. article told us that 1/3 of the netbooks that Dell sell are equipped with Linux.

Its the nature of the beast that the vendors will always try to offer a Windows option if possible because thats what most non-techies want to buy. The very fact that Linux IS available AND promoted by mainstream vendors (not to mention having a market share greater than 1%) is still pretty amazing, all told.

Re:Summary

[hkmwbz]

Now, imagine FireFox implements some features from HTML5 because that is the kind of stuff that the people want, and it's well received and well used.

Then everyone will know that HTML5 could change, so relying on it is a bad idea, unless you are willing to update your site. So yes, Mozilla will change the implenentation if the finished recommendation makes this necessary.

Re:Summary

[hkmwbz]

Considering there was no real money for MS to make with their browser it made sense to include it with the OS because it meant they could leverage it for other OS-related purposes such as rich help files and things like Windows Update.

You are making them sound like innocent angels that just happened to do wrong by mistake. The truth is that they had a conscious and clear strategy to kill the browser market because they considered browsers to be a threat to their OS dominance.

I think a lot of this "look what they did 15 years ago" stuff is pretty meaningless now.

15 years ago? Excuse me? Recent actions include killing ECMAScript 4 because it was a threat to Silverlight, and stalling the CSS Working Group in W3C! They are still at it!

Re:Summary

[sumdumass]

Don't ruin his world view, it seems that it's all he has left.

Re:Summary

[drinkypoo]

Well, sorry. They at least made some lasting changes while they were there. Why don't you go out and riot in the streets or something? I hear that works in Europe. Here, not so much (see the WTO protest footage for examples.) Although perhaps that's only because enough of us aren't willing to take a bullet (rubber, bean-bag, or otherwise) for freedom.

Re:Summary

[drinkypoo]

And Microsoft was using its dominance of the operating system market to keep other browsers from gaining a foothold. If you recall, Microsoft was telling companies that if they wanted to be able to buy Windows, they couldn't install Netscape on their computers. Microsoft wasn't just making IE, they were using their OS monopoly to prevent Netscape from gaining share on IE.

I do remember, and it's why I don't think that Microsoft should be prevented from bundling IE with Windows. Even the Firefox folks don't want to be bundled with Windows. They like having that cachet of having people use IE once - to download Firefox. They have other excuses too. :)

Instead, let's just fine Microsoft up the yin-yang, and spend down the deficit! We all win!

Re:Summary

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Now you're just being silly and stupid.

Re:Summary

[Meski]

You do realize that such behaviour by several companies jointly is also illegal - it's called a cartel and it's a criminal felony.

Only for car companies. Telephone companies doing it are referred to as teltels.

Re:Summary

[Meski]

If it's a German world view that would be Weltanschauung.

Re:Summary

[Meski]

And Microsoft was using its dominance of the operating system market to keep other browsers from gaining a foothold. If you recall, Microsoft was telling companies that if they wanted to be able to buy Windows, they couldn't install Netscape on their computers. Microsoft wasn't just making IE, they were using their OS monopoly to prevent Netscape from gaining share on IE.

I do remember, and it's why I don't think that Microsoft should be prevented from bundling IE with Windows. Even the Firefox folks don't want to be bundled with Windows. They like having that cachet of having people use IE once - to download Firefox. They have other excuses too. :)

Instead, let's just fine Microsoft up the yin-yang, and spend down the deficit! We all win!

Have you *tried* using IE to download FireFox? After 20 or so "add this site to exceptions" I gave up and downloaded it with command line ftp. Much simpler.

Judging technical documents?

[InsertWittyNameHere]

I hope she went to law school at MIT!

Re:Judging technical documents?

[Martin Blank]

Judge Kollar-Kotelly actually seems pretty bright. She saw through many of Microsoft's tricks, and did well in keeping up with technical discussions in court according to at least some case watchers.

Incidentally, she's the presiding judge for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Since her tenure began in 2002, the number of warrants that had to be modified before being accepted jumped dramatically. Her term expires in May, at which point she will also no longer be part of the FISC, as judges may not be reappointed.

I generally hold judges in high regard, and Judge Kollar-Kotelly ranks highly overall in my mind. She would, I think, make for a respectable member of the Supreme Court if she were appointed, though I think that's unlikely at this point, as she's around age 65 right now, and I think the trend over the next few administrations is going to be to pick much younger potential justices to fill those positions.

What's the point of this?

[seifried]

Seriously? Microsoft obviously is capable of gaming the system and doing and end run around it. This is just embarrassing. OTOH I guess it's one heck of a way to get job security if you're in the judicial system.

Now, that's interesting.

[Bruce Perens]

Still alive? Wow! The Bush administration made it known they weren't interested in pursuing this case, and as far as I was aware, there was little movement in 8 years.

Re:Now, that's interesting.

[Columcille]

Perhaps because there is no case to pursue? It was all somewhat bogus from the beginning. Today it's simply pointless.

Re:Now, that's interesting.

[Fluffeh]

as far as I was aware, there was little movement in 8 years.

If a lot happened quickly, it wouldn't be taking 7 or so years would it, therefore by definition, not a lot of movement is going on.

Re:Now, that's interesting.

[stevejsmith]

Amen. Face it - Microsoft's monopoly is crumbling in the face of Apple, netbooks, and cell phones, and to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure that the government stepping in and regulating computer code was gonna make it happen any faster.

Re:Now, that's interesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft's monopoly is crumbling in the face of Apple

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *squelch*- thanks man, you made me laugh so hard I shit myself

Re:Now, that's interesting.

[StormReaver]

Considering that this is the same judge who agreed Microsoft was abiding by the terms of its reward for losing in court, when it clearly wasn't, I don't hold out a lot of hope that anything will change from the last 8 years of U.S. court-endorsed monopoly abuse.

Re:Now, that's interesting.

[je ne sais quoi]

I'm not sure that the government stepping in and regulating computer code was gonna make it happen any faster.

You got modded funny, but I'll bite. Why did it take five and a half years for Microsoft to release Vista, and when they finally got around to it, they released software that was so bizarre that they are not even re-using the name for the subsequent release even though it looks to be only an incremental improvement? It's because they're a monopoly. If the government had forced Microsoft to stop leveraging the OEMs, my guess is that Vista would have been released sooner and would have been of higher quality because the OEMs would have been able to threaten to switch to a different operating system unless Microsoft delivered a usable OS. As it is, Microsoft could do things like introducing all the DRM crap in Vista because they don't care about the customer, because usually the customer has no practical choice but to buy their products. Linux adoption would have been improved right now if the government had done something. Also I bet we'd have a native linux version of Office already if MS had been split up.

Re:Now, that's interesting.

[je ne sais quoi]

To whomever modded me troll: There was no trolling sentiment in the above post and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.

Re:Now, that's interesting.

[Xtifr]

Hey, the people who are paid to mod down comments that threaten to reveal the truth about their corporate masters need to pick something. And I think they get bonuses if they use "troll" or "flamebait" instead of simply "overrated". :)

Re:Now, that's interesting.

[stevejsmith]

Microsoft's day is coming (see: decline of the desktop computer, where Windows dominates, and Apple's increasing share of the laptop market), and I agree with you that Microsoft should have fallen earlier, but it wasn't because of a lack of antitrust regulations and government bureaucrats poring over code to make sure it's up to their standards. Face it: if you're going to give people monopolies on their intellectual output (i.e., copyrights and patents), the market will coalesce into a monopoly.

Re:Now, that's interesting.

[magus_melchior]

Even though Bush broke its heart and killed it, and tore it to pieces, and threw every piece into a fire...

(You had to have "still alive" as the first two words of your post? Now I've got GlaDOS stuck in my head. Again.)

What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[phantomfive]

Of all the things I dislike about Microsoft, their aggressive (even outright dishonest) business tactics, their proprietary secrets, their chair throwing executives (honestly I actually like Balmer, he's entertaining), the thing I can never forgive Microsoft for is forcing upon the world such a miserable user environment, especially for developers. Take a look at the miserable little DOS shell.....writing a DOS shell script was the first time I ever actually wanted to stab myself with a fork. And each version has different incompatibilities, it is not even backwards compatible with different versions of windows..... given how feature poor the thing is, how hard could that have been? It's almost as if they wanted to torture developers. Developers developers developer! Right.

And this doesn't even touch on the pile of misery that is MFC, which makes .net look like heave in comparison. .net, which is so complex that they had to implement autocomplete to make it usable.

Nay Microsoft, I shall not mourn thy demise. I have suffered enough at thy hands.

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does every Microsoft Bashing Troll have a homepage that looks like it was designed in 1992?

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[bladesjester]

.net, which is so complex that they had to implement autocomplete to make it usable.

Yes, .NET is complex, or rather it has a hell of a lot of libraries. That, however, is not necessarily a bad thing. It saves you from having to reinvent the wheel every time you write something.

As for needing autocomplete to make it usable, personally, I think that autocomplete and the graphical debugger are two of the best things to ever happen in programming. It saves me time, makes my job one heck of a lot easier and allows me to be more productive.

You may learn the value of that sort of thing some day.

I wish that more development environments had usable autocomplete. As much as I love to use Ruby for writing scripts, my main complaint about the IDE I use for it (netbeans) is that it *doesn't* have autocomplete for Ruby unless they've come out with a new version recently that does.

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[ZosX]

I thought it looked more modern than slashdot! Try browsing the web with mosaic 1 these days.... :P

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[causality]

Yes, .NET is complex, or rather it has a hell of a lot of libraries. That, however, is not necessarily a bad thing. It saves you from having to reinvent the wheel every time you write something.

Open Source is pretty good for that, too.

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[Anpheus]

With open source libraries, you generally have to find the wheel before you can reuse it.

Often people end up reinventing the wheel because they (a.) couldn't find one someone else made, (b.) found one, but it wasn't under licensing terms that they could use with their project, or (c.) found one, but the project lost its way and ended up incomplete with a lead developer who may well have been hit by a bus.

Not saying closed source libraries are more helpful, plentiful, or accessible, but open source is not the panacea that zealots on Slashdot would like it to be.

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[bladesjester]

Open Source is pretty good for that, too.

Is this where I give you a cookie?

It is completely possible to write open source programs on Microsoft platforms and with Microsoft technologies. Open source happens on more than just Linux.

What we're talking about here is "complexity" in a group of libraries for a programming language family/common runtime.

The thing is that that "complexity" is optional. You only have to use the parts of it that you want. The rest you can ignore and the sky won't fall down, just like with every other "large" language platform (such as Java).

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[pseudonomous]

Maybe they were ... actually, that looks like most of the faculty web-pages at my university.

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[dblackshell]

from a shell script point of view they really did a great job with PowerShell, recovering (and making up for the) lost ground...

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[theheadlessrabbit]

Why does every Microsoft Bashing Troll have a homepage that looks like it was designed in 1992?

because those websites were built with frontpage.

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[causality]

With open source libraries, you generally have to find the wheel before you can reuse it.

Often people end up reinventing the wheel because they (a.) couldn't find one someone else made, (b.) found one, but it wasn't under licensing terms that they could use with their project, or (c.) found one, but the project lost its way and ended up incomplete with a lead developer who may well have been hit by a bus.

Not saying closed source libraries are more helpful, plentiful, or accessible, but open source is not the panacea that zealots on Slashdot would like it to be.

Eh, I'm not a zealot and I didn't say anything was a panacea.

It was a tongue-in-cheek type of post, intended to be subtle sarcasm making fun of the exact kind of zealotry you point out. That's alright, bladejester thought it needed a serious explanation too, with lots of emphatic quote marks and patronization and everything. He also mentioned giving me a cookie and assured me that the sky won't fall down. A cookie does sound nice.

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[rohan972]

Why does every Microsoft Bashing Troll have a homepage that looks like it was designed in 1992?

Black text on a white background? Possibly it's a demographic that places importance on information rather than aesthetics. If I put up a web page it would probably look like that. Before I got married I had virtually no decoration in my house other than family photos. I still have less in the way of decoration and entertainment than most, but considerably more tools and educational books than most people.

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[Fluffeh]

Amusingly people fall into categories. People of like characters are often quite similar in other things. One of the characteristics in the common Microsoft Bashing Troll that I have found, apart from the obvious ones (Likes Linux/Unix, writes perl/ruby, can understand and troubleshoot very complex SQL, has a dedicated webserver at home on the local network) is that they generally are not very arty. More about the Arty ones in a tic. Most of these un-arty folk like to have a webpage of some sort, but don't have the design talent to make it look sharp. Following that, they will go through a bunch of CSS styles or a prefab gallery and pick a (to them) sharp, clean looking theme. Due to being freebies, they don't look quite as crisp as we might want, and without the arty talent to pep it up, it ends up looking like you describe - as if it was designed in 1992.

Oh yes, the arty Microsoft Bashing Troll types. Hi Mac users!

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[stevejsmith]

I love the h1'd "My brother is getting married" part. Also, this guy's a terrible HTML coder - he vacillates between using quotes and not, doesn't keep a consistent case in his tags, missed the body end tag, etc., etc.

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[bladesjester]

Cookies are always nice unless they're the browser kind or have something in them that you're allergic to. Many problems could be solved with them =]

As for my patronizing manner, having been the editor of an OSS mag, I've seen my fair share of zealot email, comments, etc on both sides of the debate. It burns you out after a while - especially when you're a pragmatic person who sees benefits to both open and closed source solutions in various situations.

You've never had fun until you've been at a conference and had someone come up to you and basically start yelling at you because your banner has a technology listed on it (it was on one of the covers) that "cost them business" because people moved to it from what they were doing.

Believe me, it's a surreal experience. After a while, you start to doubt that "subtle humor" is actually meant as humor with that sort of thing because you see it used in a serious manner far too often...

To be honest, the response you gave to my first post is really easy to mistake for actual zealotry. I've gotten real comments (both in person and online) that were just like it.

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[Samah]

IMO, the best autocomplete in any IDE I've used would have to be Eclipse. The amount of work it can do for you is ridiculous. NetBeans is pretty good too, but I find it to be a bit clunky at times.

YMMV.

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[RightSaidFred99]

and it's made me realize how much more precisely the Java APIs are defined compared to Microsoft's stuff

Umm.. guh? Windows API's? Buh? Really, what in God's name are you on about? The .NET libraries are no more or less precise than the Java libraries, that doesn't even make any sense.

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[RightSaidFred99]

Not used VS, eh? Yeah - it's that much better. Don't get me wrong, Eclipse and Netbeans have come a long way but VS is just so much more integrated and helpful in so many ways.

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[achurch]

Yes, .NET is complex, or rather it has a hell of a lot of libraries. That, however, is not necessarily a bad thing. It saves you from having to reinvent the wheel every time you write something.

Instead you spend the time rummaging through your toolbox trying to look for the one wheel that's exactly the right size, with the proper axle connections and everything, and pray that it doesn't fall off when you make a left turn.

(I jest, I jest. But I have found that after a certain point, the effort required to deal with complex libraries properly begins to outweigh the benefit of code reuse.)

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[internettoughguy]

may we continue with the slashdot Microsoft apologist categories? first we have the developer who has invested so much time into learning the windows API that he's scared shitless about the thought that customers/bosses might consider using anything else, and his livelihood rests on making jokes about the Linux desktop, free BSD, macOSX, the iphone, google android, or anything else that threatens the software dictatorship that he's to ignorant to look beyond. Second we have the childish one that likes to play these silly things called "games". strangely enough i have more patience for the second one, because their position is a little more justifiable.

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[jamstar7]

With open source libraries, you generally have to find the wheel before you can reuse it.

At least the wheel is findable and useable, and if it needs fixing, you can at least get it fixed. With closed source, the wheel is patent-pending, heavily encumbered, and if you write something that works just like a wheel, you can get called into court for infringing on said patents. Closed source isn't the end all and be all that you seem to think it is, either. There's advantages to both sides, as well as disadvantages.

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[rdnetto]

Not saying closed source libraries are more helpful, plentiful, or accessible, but open source is not the panacea that zealots on Slashdot would like it to be.

I think you must be referring to closed source libraries in general, because Microsoft recently made the source code for the .NET Framework publicly available:

The source code for the .NET framework base class library is available for reference purposes only under the Microsoft Reference License. [39]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.net_framework

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[bky1701]

Likes Linux/Unix, writes perl/ruby, can understand and troubleshoot very complex SQL, has a dedicated webserver at home on the local network

I program in C++ and PHP, you insensitive clod!

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[shentino]

The case B you mentioned is exactly why I think open source should be used from the beginning.

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[ion.simon.c]

The thing is that that "complexity" is optional.

Except when it's not. I work on software that can -unfortunately- be nothing *but* complex. (Trust me, my cow-orkers and I wish that the software was *much*, *much* simpler.)

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[ion.simon.c]

My beef with autocomplete is that it encourages a kind of cowboy coding style,

The medicine for this is simple. Fire the cowboys. Autocomplete (whether it's in Visual Studio, Vim, Emacs, or KDevelop 4) is a godsend for those of us who suffer from RSIs, the "too many goddamn projects at once" syndrome, or just plain forgetfulness.

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[ion.simon.c]

Two things:
1) Have ever used Eclipse for Java programming?

2) You haven't used KDevelop 4, have you?
When you can get KDev4 to run (as of last month, it was alpha software and was rather crashy), you can see that the autocomplete is light-years ahead of VS.

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[Jedi Alec]

Cookies are always nice unless they're the browser kind or have something in them that you're allergic to. Many problems could be solved with them =]

Indeed. I currently work under several project managers all making claims on my time. So lately we have a very simple system for settling disputes...whoever's ahead on the cookie index gets to claim me first ;-)

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[Rockoon]

Open Source doesn't have licensing terms?

You are backwards. A .NET programmer does not have to worry about the licensing terms of the framework, but if he wants to use something that is open source, suddenly he is in the licensing restriction quagemire.

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[ignavus]

And here was I thinking that they re-invented the wheel because they got sick of driving carts around on wooden wheels, and discovered that it was better to drive around on wheels with pneumatic tyres.

Basically, today's wheel is a lot better than the original wheel. I'm glad somebody re-invented it.

Why does everybody diss re-inventing the wheel? Are wheels beyond all improvement? perfect and totally mature? the best we can possibly ever produce?

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[Samah]

Yes I have used Visual Studio (admittedly, it was a couple of years ago), and it may have improved a lot since I last used it, but I'm simply stating my personal experiences. I'm using SharpDevelop at the moment for .NET stuff, and that's not bad (but not quite on par with VS/Eclipse/NetBeans).

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[Samah]

I've never used KDevelop, because I only use Linux on my server (not for my desktop). Having said that, I do most of my development at work where I use what I'm given. After 5 years of Windows 2000 and 512mb ram, I just got upgraded to XP SP2 and 2gb. Yay for my stingy company.
And yes, I do 8 hours a day of Java and PL/SQL. :/

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[VGPowerlord]

And this doesn't even touch on the pile of misery that is MFC

Wasn't MFC just a cheap copy of Borland's OWL? So, shouldn't we be blaming Borland for how crufty it is?

The Windows API, on the other hand... *shudder*.

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[daveime]

Yes, but at least with closed-source, the wheel is generally wheel-shaped.

OSS tends to be a semi-defined octagon shape, and you have to hack the source to round the edges a bit.

Ouch, these analogies are giving me a headache ... couldn't you have used something involving cars ?

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[Mystra_x64]

That'll end as soon as I learn how to bash Microsoft properly.

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[RightSaidFred99]

Yes I have used Eclipse, and continue to occasionally. I usually go back and forth between Eclipse and Netbeans depending on which seems better for what I'm doing at the time. Currently I'm on a Netbeans kick because they have such nice web services support.

I've never used KDevelop, but I'm interested in how it's better. I'll have to check it out. Considering VS2008's autocomplete is pretty close to perfect, it's hard to imagine something "light years" ahead of it, but I'll keep an open mind.

You want sweet - try the latest SQL Management Studio. Autocomplete for SQL, including DB context. Now _that's_ f'ing hot.

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[mcgrew]

Black text on a white background? Possibly it's a demographic that places importance on information rather than aesthetics.

You hit the nail square on the head. Most of us geezers grew up reading books; those things made of paper and ink. We're used to black on white, and it's the most readable combination. If your page is gray on black, that tells me that what you've written is so unimportant you don't care if it gets read.

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[wastedlife]

Second we have the childish one that likes to play these silly things called "games".

Yes because heaven forbid people do something they enjoy with their free time. It would be childish of them to not work like a drone 24/7. Although, I personally do not agree with being an MS apologist just because most PC games are Windows only. That would be similar to defending Walmart's business practices because your favorite brand of shoes is only sold there. (Sorry, I couldn't think of a good car analogy for that)

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[wastedlife]

I love the h1'd "My brother is getting married" part. Also, this guy's a terrible HTML coder - he vacillates between using quotes and not, doesn't keep a consistent case in his tags, missed the body end tag, etc., etc.

Maybe he used Frontpage?

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[jamstar7]

Depends on the application you need to use the wheel for. Example: a camshaft, an object with wheel-like shaped lobes on it to raise and lower valves in an engine. The lobes themselves are out of round, necessary for this application, otherwise the valves wouldn't open and close. Had someone had a patent on the wheel and all applications, inventing the camshaft would have been illegal until the patents ran out. Likewise, if somebody could have invented the stick, the pushrods that a camshaft actuates would be illegal as well.

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[causality]

I should say I'm not exactly known for brevity, but I had a lot to say about this. I also felt that someone with your appreciation of truth is a worthy audience.

Cookies are always nice unless they're the browser kind or have something in them that you're allergic to. Many problems could be solved with them =]

As for my patronizing manner, having been the editor of an OSS mag, I've seen my fair share of zealot email, comments, etc on both sides of the debate. It burns you out after a while - especially when you're a pragmatic person who sees benefits to both open and closed source solutions in various situations.

I'd imagine you need a thick skin to be effective in a position like that. I'll be honest though, I don't think it burns you out. I think reacting to it burns you out (even if only in your mind), which is something else entirely and comes with an element of choice. It's just one of those things where even not making a choice IS making a choice. Our general culture doesn't grasp those things very well. It just isn't on our collective list of priorities, so we get the victim idea that because someone says A you absolutely must experience emotion B. Most people only know how to re-act.

You've never had fun until you've been at a conference and had someone come up to you and basically start yelling at you because your banner has a technology listed on it (it was on one of the covers) that "cost them business" because people moved to it from what they were doing.

At the risk of sounding like a braggart, I pity the fool who tries that with me. Someone who does that has already shown that they are emotional and reactive and petty. Well, that was knowable before they opened their mouth if you observe people; they have merely removed all doubt. When calm, collected strategy is placed against emotional reactive pettiness, calmness wins every time. I refer to the strong indomitable kind of calmness, not the fake people-pleasing kind that's based on wanting to react and suppressing it. That is emphatically not because I am so clever or skilled or whatever. It's because of the extreme weakness of the position of anyone who acts this way. I need do little more than refuse to validate that position and its absurdity will be apparent. The person to whom it will be most apparent is the fool who acts that way.

A position of weakness needs to be propped up. To the person with the weakness, it feels like need and doubt and insecurity. They want you to get upset and they want you to take them seriously because that's how they get their power, how they feel significant and worthwhile. I don't need to defeat such a mentality; that's not really my place. All I need to do is endure it patiently and stop propping it up by taking it seriously and it generally backfires and defeats itself. People like that (i.e. most people) run on stress or anger or tension or conflict as surely as the engine in my car runs on gasoline. Just think of how stressed out and pressed for time most people are; that's because it's how they feel alive and important. When you get upset you are not only validating what would fall apart without your validation, you are also playing their game and giving to them the energy that they run on. That's why they do what they do instead of finding a more graceful way to handle criticism or a difference of opinion.

The trap is that when you see these things and understand them, it's easy to feel tempted to judge and condemn the person. Doing so will utterly cripple your ability to patiently endure; it will make you more like the person you judge and condemn. My answer to that is to see how ignorant they are and to genuinely want something better than that for them; I combine that with the effectiveness of leading by example to show that something better does exist. Whether they understand it or not is their choice and I respect their decision. They really are ignorant. It's a

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[GWBasic]

I wish that more development environments had usable autocomplete. As much as I love to use Ruby for writing scripts, my main complaint about the IDE I use for it (netbeans) is that it *doesn't* have autocomplete for Ruby unless they've come out with a new version recently that does.

I've been playing with Eclipse (Java IDE) for the past few months. Not only does it have a comparable autocomplete; it also has some simple auto-correct of syntax errors!

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[mahadiga]

Often people end up reinventing the wheel because they (a.) couldn't find one someone else made, (b.) found one, but it wasn't under licensing terms that they could use with their project, or (c.) found one, but the project lost its way and ended up incomplete with a lead developer who may well have been hit by a bus.

Exactly vindicates my Signature.

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[shentino]

Most copyleft licenses are designed to force you to share, whereas proprietary code often cannot be used at all without at a minimum hefty royalties.

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[Rockoon]

"most" copyleft?

Think about that for a second. Basically a programmer needs a lawyer in order to use an open source library, because he does not know his rights or liabilities without one. The licenses such as GPL come in multiple substantialy different versions.

The .NET framework is licensed to the end user, not to the programmer leveraging it in his program. The programmer only has to deal with distribution rights when he distributes the framework itself, which is nicely packaged as a redistributable that is intended to be distributed and subsequently leveraged by the program. He does not have to deal with ANY licensing headaches at all.

Substantial difference there. With open source you have to deal with a license, while with the .NET framework you only have to deal with distribution rights.

Of course if you make a mono port, suddenly you are back in licensing hell.

Re:What if they had broken Microsoft up?

[shentino]

What copyleft does is prevent someone else from scooping up YOUR work and proprietizing it.

Whether that work is original for you or was itself copylefted from someone else, it protects you as a deriver yourself.

Re:Windows 7 is dead

[martin-boundary]

I know!! It's like the judge doesn't read slashdot or something. I swear, if the next time she writes about Microsoft, she doesn't quote extensively from your comments, iminplaya, I'm definitely calling her out as a poser!

Re:Windows 7 is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh what's the point? It's like the woman with the two black eyes.

Just like the women with two black eyes, the M$ customers will stay in a relationship with M$. Lots of them will defend and stick up for M$ and really make you wonder if they're paid shills even though almost all of them aren't. "He didn't hit me, I ran into the door!" and "it'll be fixed in the next version!" "He's a good man, honest" and "Microsoft takes security seriously". "I gotta stay with him because of the kids" and "we need to buy Windows because we need the support of a big vendor".

Da Nile? It's not just a river in Egypt ...

Re:M$ Should Be Finished

[binarylarry]

M$! From hells heart I stab at thee!

*wave finger*

Re:Windows 7 is dead

[justinlee37]

The only downside to using Windows is the cost. It takes a reasonably competent user to install a Linux distro, drivers, use WINE to make Crysis work, and so forth. A reasonably competent user can also operate Windows without losing the system to malware and repair any infections that do occur. So a reasonably competent user should be indifferent between Windows and Linux.

I would never purchase Windows for a business enterprise, just because of the cost, and because at work you don't need to run Crysis. It fulfills all of my needs at home, though.

I wish they would sell Direct X as a separate product, though. Using it to try and force Windows upgrades on gamers is a dirty move.

Re:Windows 7 is dead

[Hashi Lebwohl]

You rang?

Re:Windows 7 is dead

[Fluffeh]

Actually most reviews of this by people who really let loose on Vista is that this is indeed a step in the right direction. Is it perfect? No. If you feel that you can do a lot better for any hardware that I happen to slap together, be my guest. If you thin that's too big, try contributing to one of the distos of Linux. If that's still too big a project then Shooosh, and like what you get, cause you aren't getting anything else.

Also, for the record, jokes about giving women two black eyes as lessons might be funny on redneck.com, but slashdot generally requires some sort of wit to have entertaining comments modded funny. Or at least some Dr Who reference. Or a Monty Python kickback. Or a car analogy.

Re:Windows 7 is dead

[Belial6]

I'll give you that it takes a reasonably competent user to make Crysis work, but if your not running on cutting edge hardware, installing Linux with the drivers is trivial enough that my son did his first Linux install (unassisted) 2 weeks after his second birthday. This was way back with Ubuntu 5.10. While there was a time that Linux was hard to install, that day is long past.

Re:Windows 7 is dead

[timmarhy]

i love how /. proclaim win7 dead, when it will sell more copies in it's first day than the entire market share of the linux desktop.

Is there any lawyers in the house?

[grimharvest]

Who can give us a real assessment of the case?

Re:Is there any lawyers in the house?

[Max Littlemore]

I think you might be on the wrong site.

Re:Windows 7 is dead

[justinlee37]

That's true. Those boot-from-disk copies of Ubuntu are criminally easy. People who just use their computers to browse websites and check e-mails ought to stop paying for Windows.

Re:Windows 7 is dead

[iminplaya]

I'm using 7 now. It's junk. Being marginally better than Vista don't cut it. And we already have many things that are better, including of all things XP. And Linux supports new hardware better than XP now because fewer people are making XP drivers. Nope, the new Windows is still dog slow on anything less than a massive cluster that would fill a 747. Unimpressed I am.

Re:M$ Should Be Finished

[ozphx]

Parent's excellent monologue, delivered in the style of renowned technology analyst (or analysts!) Twitter, shows solid construction and consistancy throughout. With clever use of symbology - especially with the dollar symbol - this well-reasoned posting is a pleasure to read.

Truly excellent application of delusion and paranoia. Four and a half stars.

Re:Windows 7 is dead

[iminplaya]

You are aware of the concept of inertia, aren't you? I don't care if it still sells. That doesn't make it less crappy. People buy crap all the time, even when a perfectly good alternative is right there beside it. Microsoft is a forgettable operation now. We have plenty of good options before us. But here we are with the old "lead a horse to water" routine. I guess some people still prefer swill. Fine by me.

Re:Windows 7 is dead

[RightSaidFred99]

Yeah, wishful thinking has turned into delusional thinking around here.

Re:Windows 7 is dead

[ozphx]

However those people are the ones getting a bundled OEM copy, which is a far cry from the $100 a retail Home Basic costs. Try around $10.

I've posted before that my gut feel is that the bundled trialware with a box pays in full for the OS. So cost for home users barely matters.

When it gets to enterprise level, well you're going to have 100k of salary running a decent sized network - so the OS cost will be insignificant as well :/

Red Tape

[flyingfsck]

Essentially, Microsoft has been burdened with red tape to make them less competitive and slowly reduce their market lead. Preventing them from forcing unfair business practices onto their vendors also helped a lot. Dell and others can now sell Linux machines without fear of reprisal by Microsoft.

Re:Windows 7 is dead

[gallwapa]

7 has serious workflow/productivity improvements for people with multiple monitors. I use 4 monitors in a square configuration and managing more than 30 windows at a time is much easier.

That in itself is worth it to me. As far as home use, I'm considering it to replace my Vista Media Center. The improvements are nice.

Microsoft's engineering ethics are not bad.

[Dogun]

Name an OS consumers use that is browserless. Fact is, an OS without a browser in this day and age is utterly useless. Less than useless. It's a paperweight.

In general, Microsoft has made great strides to make its OS more transparent and more 'fair' than ever. A lot of people (who are technically aware enough to agree) will probably attribute this to the court, but I think the reason is a lot simpler: good engineering is winning out over corporate greed. Case in point? UAC. A lot of people give Microsoft crap over UAC, but the truth is, if you're a standard user, your life has never been better, and it's getting better every time someone gripes about what a pain UAC is.

Re:Microsoft's engineering ethics are not bad.

[agnosticnixie]

Average linux/BSD distro, MacOS X, Solaris, etc - comes with a browser, allows you to install others, will not break if you remove the bundled browser, and will not kill the OS (although kde tried hard to with konqueror ;) ).
Windows - The integrated browser is barely removable as it breaks functionality, some software will use it even if it's not the default browser, including first party software. It crashing means the OS might go down, entirely as it tends to escalate into the entire gui, and in windows' case that tends to mean the os, going down.

Re:Microsoft's engineering ethics are not bad.

[Computershack]

Average linux/BSD distro, MacOS X, Solaris, etc - comes with a browser, allows you to install others, will not break if you remove the bundled browser,

You what? Last time I tried to uninstall Nautilus or Konqueror, the package manager listed Gnome and KDE desktop under the list of other packages to be removed. And can you show me where Windows doesn't allow me to install another browser or set it as the default? Hell, you can even remove every shortcut to IE if you want.

Re:Microsoft's engineering ethics are not bad.

[agnosticnixie]

Konqueror, yeah (but kde is not the OS, and while it's good, it has some issues that are very windowsy) Nautilus, in most distros, is only installed if you grab the gnome-desktop metapackage, same as mono, and will only flag the metapackage for removal.

Re:Microsoft's engineering ethics are not bad.

[je ne sais quoi]

if you're a standard user, your life has never been better

That's like the frog in the cooking pot saying, "oh good, the water only got one degree warmer, it's not boiling." A user's life might be better, but as someone who knows what decent privilege escalation and user controls actually look like, I would say that UAC is still a joke, but that joke would not be funny. Do yourself a favor and use a different operating system for awhile, it'll open your mind I promise. You may still continue to use Windows, but you'll at least recognize that it has flaws and could be better.

Oh and it's got nothing the OS not having a browser, the OS having a browser is fine, the PROBLEM is when the OS won't let you uninstall the default browser and use a different one. On Mac OS X, I can delete Safari and the OS does not reinstall the way Windows does. On linux, I can remove the firefox package and put in midori, or I can remove konqueror and put in kazehakase.

Re:Microsoft's engineering ethics are not bad.

[Dogun]

I have been running linux exclusively at home since 1995.

Think of it this way: can you imagine anyone thinking UAC was going to be a big selling point? They did it because they needed to to.

As far as IE; try setting a different default browser and try to find instances where IE still gets launched. I imagine people do take dependencies on IE's rendering engine, so I wouldn't be surprised if you're going to have a hard time getting rid of ieframe.dll.

Re:Microsoft's engineering ethics are not bad.

[Xtifr]

Name an OS consumers use that is browserless.

A) Define "consumers". B) Define "browserless". C) Unless you're willing to count lynx, I can name lots. Many that don't even have the option to install a browser, e.g., the OS on my home router and on my DVR. Not to mention my cell phone, though I admit that's becoming more of an exception than a rule these days.

On the other hand, of the half-dozen desktop/workstation operating systems I've used, only one comes with just one choice of browser out of the box. And only one comes with a primary browser that is essentially uninstallable.

Re:Microsoft's engineering ethics are not bad.

[hkmwbz]

Name an OS consumers use that is browserless.

Who cares? The browser doesn't have to be bundled with the OS. It can be bundled by the OEM or whoever you buy a PC from. Or you can get one from your ISP, local PC shop, whatever.

In general, Microsoft has made great strides to make its OS more transparent and more 'fair' than ever

Not really, and not without being dragged the short way they've come, kicking and screaming.

A lot of people give Microsoft crap over UAC, but the truth is, if you're a standard user, your life has never been better

LOL. Every single one of my "standard PC user" friends hates UAC in Vista with a passion.

Re:Microsoft's engineering ethics are not bad.

[QuietObserver]

Out of curiosity, when was Nautilus a browser? I thought it was just a file manager.

Re:Microsoft's engineering ethics are not bad.

[agnosticnixie]

Er, yeah, I realized later... I meant Epiphany, oops.

THE FREE MARKET!?

[AlgorithMan]

That's how the free market works

if you seriously think, that the OS market was free, then you obviously don't know about Windows Refunds.
If you speak german, read this article where VOBIS (german pc vendor) describes exactly how Microsoft blackmailed them to make them stop selling any OS except windows and not tell anybody about this.
also read how microsoft tried to kill linux by silently funding SCO's lawsuit against major linux distros.
If you actually think, the OS Market was anywhere near "free" in the last 24 years, then you have no freakin clue about what you're talking and should just STFU!

Re:Windows 7 is dead

[jamstar7]

i love how /. proclaim win7 dead, when it will sell more copies in it's first day than the entire market share of the linux desktop.

Probably because it'll hit the OEMs first, and be shipped on every new piece of x86 gear that comes off the line. As for individual sales, it'll be because it's really Vista SP2, and upgrading to it from Vista will make the machine run marginally better. Doesn't mean it'll get the most out of the machines, though...

Re:Windows 7 is dead

[timmarhy]

that's not really the point is it. here are people stating MS is dead as if it's some kind of fact. linux has a hell of a long way to go, and the sooner OSS crowd see it the better.

don't forget that...

[AlgorithMan]

Shortly after the break-up order was rescinded, George W. Bush came into office and all efforts to obtain a reasonable remedy were dropped

And don't forget that this happened right after Microsoft heavily "funded GWB's election campaign".

Re:don't forget that...

[mcgrew]

And don't forget that this happened right after Microsoft heavily "funded GWB's election campaign".

That's how American politics work these days. We have the best laws, legislators, and governments money can buy.

That's no Flamebait!

[AlgorithMan]

Nobody, who has ever programmed windows apps on API level, would tag this comment as "flamebait", but "insightful"! It's atrocious, I tells ya! and just go to MSDN and try to find ANYTHING you want there! forget it! I spent weeks reading the CRAP articles there (and I'm a graduate computer scientist who has studied at an elite university!) and still can't do stuff in windows that would require 1 line of bash-script!

Re:Windows 7 is dead

[iminplaya]

Yeah, it is the point. Mac and linux have more bases covered every day. Windows is becoming irrelevant. The big hassle with linux now is the lack of standardization in package management. And a big pain in the ass it is. And of course microsoft seems fully intent on dragging linux through patent and copyright hell. So they have two things going for them, inertia and the law. That is the thread they hang on today. But we no longer need them. Provided you're not using a Canon printer on an RPM based system. But then, I blame Canon for lack of support there. Let me show you a little something where linux blows microsoft out of the water. If this was an open source project, a script would have been written to automate the entire process. Time to say bye bye, MS. I only tinker with it to stay up to speed for the people that need my help. But I finally got a client with an eee pc. She couldn't happier, except for the damn canon. Everything else she figured out on her own. Wireless, the works. And also, for people who want to upgrade their HPs and Compaqs back to XP, good luck finding drivers. You gotta search through older models to find one that works. Linux? Out of the box, ready to run. There is no need to be a Windows Defender.

BSA ad

[shentino]

Ok why the hell is slashdot running an ad for "report piracy" by the BSA?

And in the YRO section of all places?

The irony...

ob Microsoft Antitrust: Reminds me of why the BSA's power needs to be trimmed in some way.

Re:BSA ad

[drinkypoo]

Ok why the hell is slashdot running an ad for "report piracy" by the BSA?

slashdot doesn't love you, it just wants your money.

Re:wiping competitors with reformat, reinstall

[Computershack]

MS "systems" have lacked and still lack a unified, easy to use package management system such as have been available elsewhere for years. APT is probably one of the oldest and best examples, and there are abundant graphical front-ends. Lacking a point-n-click, (nearly) single step installation method for packages, and automatic handling of dependencies on MS Windows, means that when practicing the MS "reformat, re-install" there is an extra barrier to re-installing 3rd party apps. As a result, given enough iterations of the mantra, or when a large enough install base is considered, the loss of market share through attrition is quite large.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Please can you tell me the last time you installed something on Windows and had to download 100MB of dependencies or in fact, any dependencies at all which would require automatic handling? And as for lacking a single point and click installation - are you on crack? MS software is sold on its unified systems. Perhaps you'd like to tell me what software there's been over the last 5 years which you can't install on every single Microsoft OS since Windows 2000?

There doesn't need to be a package repository because, in the respect to third party software, you don't have to have a version compiled for your OS. If it's win32, which pretty much everything is, it'll work on every version of Windows from 2000 on. You're full of shit.

Re:wiping competitors with reformat, reinstall

[Antique Geekmeister]

It's not the installer. It's the packages themselves, which do not obey standards for where libraries go, where packages may be installed, how to report and manage library dependencies, and most especially how to manage that database obscenity, the Windows Registry.

Until those issues can begin to be resolved, there is no _point_ to having a nice point and click installer. It's like putting a keyboard on a Lego.

Re:wiping competitors with reformat, reinstall

[drsmithy]

MS "systems" have lacked and still lack a unified, easy to use package management system such as have been available elsewhere for years.

That's because packaging systems (*especially* on Linux) exist largely to solve a problem Windows doesn't have - massive amounts of intricate and interlinked software dependencies.

OS X lacks a packaging system for much the same reason - there's simply no compelling need for one.

(Of course, it doesn't take much imagination to realise the level of apoplectic outrage that would come out of Slashdot, et al, if the only easy way to install software on Windows was via a centralised repository controlled by Microsoft.)

effects of 11 year old US antitrust case

[viralMeme]

A real solution would be to have an independent third party inplimenting and documenting the protocols. What effect has the antitrust case had on Microsofts way of doing business. It strikes me that the whole business of 'updating' and documentating the new protocols is nothing more than MS doing business as usual. Which is continually keeping Windows a moving target so as to continually wrong-foot their competitors. Publishing API calls and some source code was not exactly what the EU commision meant when they said open up the protocols, as Microsoft well know. The difference between this and the eleven year old US case is that the EU commision seem to actually want a real resolution.

Re:wiping competitors with reformat, reinstall

[tomhudson]

.. and if you compile statically, you also don't need a package system, since there are now no external dependencies ...

... but to claim that "a problem Windows doesn't have - massive amounts of intricate and interlinked software dependencies. " is a lie at best, since the whole antitrust case was on the way that IE was supposedly such a core component of the Windows OS, and that so many processes and programs depended on it, or libraries (dlls) that were part of it ...

Remove all the dlls from your system - Windows won't even boot.

jury duty

[joeharrison]

And I told work I would only be out for jury duty for a few days!

I don't get it, is this a troll?

[drinkypoo]

Until that time, let us people who produce goods that we need to sell in the brutally competitive free market have a few tools to have a steady income. If that means proprietary file formats, exclusive deals with distributors, making funny protocols... so be it. The free market will determine when that is too annoying to bother dealing it and get with the competition.

If all that shit was eliminated, you'd have a level playing field to work on, and be able to compete based on merit.

What are you afraid of?

I'm not living in a world where my neighbor who makes windows break my window every morning, so I have to pay him to fix the window.

I personally have never had a problem with it, but that sounds like WGA to me.

For that matter, it sounds like the Windows update schedule (or OSX, I'm not prejudiced.) Either way, a new OS comes out every so often with new APIs that developers are convinced or cajoled into using so that we have to buy a new operating system. Sometimes it's made sense, because computers have come very far since the last release. Sometimes it doesn't; Windows XP supports all of today's hardware. And for that matter, paying so much for OSX minor releases is pure bullshit.

Would the world be better if everything was free as in freedom? YES...and I won't argue with that. But we don't live in that world... and I don't feel like making my industry a martyr.

So wait, you think it's a bad thing if this industry is regulated like every other industry is regulated, while this industry more than most could NOT EXIST WITHOUT THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE in the form of their obeyance of copyright law? They are LOSING THAT WILL. Your customers don't want the future you want. You'd better correct your course, or you and they are going to be sailing in different directions.

Re:Windows 7 is dead

[Locklin]

Except that installing and configuring Linux is a one-time cost (which can be repeated if desired, when desired). Dealing with malware is a recurring cost and is unpredictable. I could go years on my Linux workstation without doing any administration at all (if I wanted to).

Re:Windows 7 is dead

[Locklin]

That cant be right, 2 years old?? I fail to see how a pre-reading, pre-counting>10 child can install an operating system. He'd be more likely to take the CD and smash it with his toy cars.

Re:Windows 7 is dead

[daveime]

Ah FUD FUD FUD ...

Like sendmail never needed patching, and openssh never had any flaws, and MySQL never needed upgrading to fix bugs.

NO O/S is a one-time-cost experience. The fact that Linux has no initial payment involved doesn't mean it doesn't still have a financial impact in terms of user's / sysadmin's time.

Or maybe you think all Linux users are geeks with infinite time on their hands, and nothing to do but sit in the basement hacking source ?

Re:wiping competitors with reformat, reinstall

[drsmithy]

.. and if you compile statically, you also don't need a package system, since there are now no external dependencies ...

Of course, the amount of RAM and hard disk space you're going to waste will be rather large. To say nothing of the maintenance nightmare that any required security patching will produce.

... but to claim that "a problem Windows doesn't have - massive amounts of intricate and interlinked software dependencies. " is a lie at best, since the whole antitrust case was on the way that IE was supposedly such a core component of the Windows OS, and that so many processes and programs depended on it, or libraries (dlls) that were part of it ...

That is a completely different and separate issue. Interdependencies within the standard OS components have next to zero impact on anyone outside of the OS vendor.

Windows does NOT have the problem that Linux[0] has, where installing application A requires application B, which in turn requires library C, which then requires a more recent version of library D, which then requires newer versions of applications E, F, L, R and S, but application L doesn't work with the current version of library C, so you need an older one, but the older one means that application Z loses some functionality - and so on, and so forth.

Remove all the dlls from your system - Windows won't even boot.

Duh. If you deliberately set out to break Windows, you can do it. What's your point ?

[0] Strictly speaking, it's probably more accurate to say "GNU", rather than "Linux", since dependency hell is largely a non-issue outside of GNU/$SOMETHING. "Non-GNU" Linux systems, however, are very thin on the ground, so it's not unreasonable to treat them as interchangeable.

Decline and fall

[christurkel]

Microsoft reached it's peak power around 2000. Since then it has been in a slow decline. It's nowhere the dominant powerhouse it was ten years ago. Maybe the antitrust action was part of it, but I think it was because PCs became only part of the computing equation in people's live. There are tons of non-MS products out there; cell phones, PDAs, netbooks, etc, markets MS either missed or simply was incapable of moving fast enough to exploit.

Don't get me wrong, MS isn't going anywhere but their glory days are behind them.

Re:Windows 7 is dead

[Locklin]

Security updates are about the same on either system. I have only really felt the need to upgrade Firefox and OpenSSH on my workstation for security reasons. I have never "patched" either, apt works fine.

In fact, most people don't really need OpenSSH (and I don't really need it). So, were left with Firefox, and plenty of people run older versions of Firefox without issue -so, yes, I could set up a workstation to be left alone for years without administration. No need to "sit in the basement hacking source" just to get some work done.

Re:wiping competitors with reformat, reinstall

[goltzc]

There doesn't have to be a a centralized repository controlled by Microsoft. In apt you can add N number of repositories as-is applicable.

Re:M$ Should Be Finished

[dkleinsc]

* Genesis device explodes *

Re:Windows 7 is dead

[jamesmcm]

I agree, I think forcing Microsoft to develop an open source, cross-platform implementation of DirectX would be much more productive than more fines or removing bundled IE.

Re:Windows 7 is dead

[mcgrew]

It takes a reasonably competent user to install a Linux distro, drivers, use WINE to make Crysis work, and so forth.

Try Mandriva, it doesn't and hasn't for a long time. Windows is only easy for the end-user because it's preinstalled on the PC. I build my own computers, so I wind up installing Windows on them (dual boot) and Windows installation is a long, frustrating ordeal. Installing Mandriva is a piece of cake.

Actually the only reason for Windows is games.

Re:Windows 7 is dead

[justinlee37]

the only reason for Windows is games

Agreed. However, you're talking to someone who also builds their own computers and installs their own OS. Personally, I don't think the Windows install process is arduous. Long, maybe, but not arduous.

[offtopic]

[V!NCENT]

I always wanted to know this from a Microsoft programmer, so I'm just going to ask you ;-);
Did you ever take a look at the Wine source code? And if so; what are your thoughts? Does it make you laugh or sad? Are they completely missing the boat in some cases? Is it totally different from the Windows source code? etc. What are you thoughts?

Re:Windows 7 is dead

[Belial6]

While he didn't start really reading for another 10 months at almost 3, he certainly could count, and all it took to install Ubuntu was to be able to recognize 'Next'. You are confused for three reasons. 1) Kids have far more potential than they are given credit for, and are usually held back by the adults around them. 2) Ubuntu is INCREDIBLY easy to install. 3) Yes, my kid is a super genius. But he tends to only hover at just a little below the level of kids twice his age. So, if he could install Linux at 2, normal kids should easily be able to do it at 4.

Once they got to the point that your average 4 year old could install it, 'difficulty' is a non-issue. You know those commercials that are being run with the little girl?

Re:Windows 7 is dead

[Hatta]

The only downside to using Windows is the cost.

The lack of basic interface features like virtual desktops and "always on top" is a downside. The lack of a comprehensive package manager is another one. Having to install Cygwin to get essential tools like SSH and GNU Screen is still another downside. As a competent user the dumbed down Windows interface is a downside I experience constantly.

Re:M$ Should Be Finished

[shermo]

You must be so annoyed that Paul Allen doesn't have an 's' in his name.

Re:wiping competitors with reformat, reinstall

[ozbird]

That's because packaging systems (*especially* on Linux) exist largely to solve a problem Windows doesn't have - massive amounts of intricate and interlinked software dependencies.

DLLs?

Thomas Penfield Jackson

[mahadiga]

To summarize and answer your question: Not Much.

Had Thomas Penfield Jackson Judgement prevailed, how would have software industry evolved?

What if Windows is Open Source

[mahadiga]

And IE is bundled in Windows?

Re:wiping competitors with reformat, reinstall

[tomhudson]

"Dependancy Hell" is also pretty much a non-issue with OpenSUSE. When there's a problem, the resolver either suggests a solution that works (usually by switching to an alternate package supplier, such as packman.de, who has the prerequisites) or you wait a few days, and the dependencies are fixed, as sevelopers push out their own updates into the repositories.

Try that with Windows. There is no "alternate package supplier".

Re:wiping competitors with reformat, reinstall

[drsmithy]

Try that with Windows. There is no "alternate package supplier".

Yes, there is. That would be every third-party software developer who makes Windows software.

The point, however, is that in Windows (and most other non-GNU platforms), the fundamental problem itself (unknown or broken dependencies) surfaces so infrequently that it may as well be nonexistant. Other platforms and communities place a substantial priority on legacy support and backwards compatibility whereas the general Linux community does not. Indeed, one of the biggest reasons for vendors like SuSe and Red Hat existing is their work against the prevailing attitude to maintain a stable platform over a reasonable period of time.

Re:Windows 7 is dead

[mcgrew]

Compared to installing Mandriva installing Windows is. Mandrive takes maybe half an hour or so, and when done all the apps are installed.

With Windows, you have a long installation, including entering that damned long antipiracy number that users of pirated versions never see, loading drivers for all the hardware (each from a different HW mfg's CD), and then installing all your apps.

With Mandriva all the drivers and apps are on the OS installation disk. Compared to installing Mandive, Windows is a complete and total pain in the ass.

Re:Windows 7 is dead

[justinlee37]

I tend to download my drivers from the mfg's website. Then I keep all of them in my data partition, so if I ever have to reinstall they're all in one place and I don't have to go hunting for them again. The only driver I really end up having to spend a long time reinstalling is my ATI Catalyst install.

Re:wiping competitors with reformat, reinstall

[tomhudson]

Riiiight ... keep drinking the koolaid. Or have you conveniently forgotten all the problems with different 3-4d party Windows apps interfering not only with each other, but also with bringing down the OS?

A "stable platform over a reasonable time" is a couple of years. Software isn't like oak trees or fossils ... it grows fast in the right environment. Of curse, you're welcome to return to Win9x or Win3x, or Win286 if you want "stable" (as in unchanging).

Re:wiping competitors with reformat, reinstall

[drsmithy]

Or have you conveniently forgotten all the problems with different 3-4d party Windows apps interfering not only with each other, but also with bringing down the OS?

Unless you're talking about conflicting software dependencies, which I can't imagine you are, this is completely irrelevant to the discussion.

A "stable platform over a reasonable time" is a couple of years.

Maybe if you're a Linux hacker. Responsible developers and the people and businesses who rely on them, however, consider a stable platform to be one that lasts on the order of 5-10 years minimum.

Re:wiping competitors with reformat, reinstall

[tomhudson]

Responsible developers and the people and businesses who rely on them, however, consider a stable platform to be one that lasts on the order of 5-10 years minimum.

That is SO full of it that I don't know where to start. For example, I spent all week shelled into a BSD box in New York ... BSD 4.8-RELEASE - April 3rd, 2003. Do you really want to try deploying on that platform w/o doing serious updates? STABLE != FOSSILIZED; when you look at the application stack, sticking with something from 15 years ago means you can't even find too many people who can work with it without significant loss of productivity, or worse - project failure.

Release early, release often. What you're talking about is so last century. It's not practical when targets move so fast.

Re:wiping competitors with reformat, reinstall

[drsmithy]

That is SO full of it that I don't know where to start. For example, I spent all week shelled into a BSD box in New York ... BSD 4.8-RELEASE - April 3rd, 2003. Do you really want to try deploying on that platform w/o doing serious updates? STABLE != FOSSILIZED; when you look at the application stack, sticking with something from 15 years ago means you can't even find too many people who can work with it without significant loss of productivity, or worse - project failure.

A stable platform isn't one that is never updated, patched, or improved. It's one where you can be reasonably confident will remain compatible for longer than the typical Linux hacker's attention span.

Release early, release often. What you're talking about is so last century. It's not practical when targets move so fast.

What I'm talking about is how real businesses and people expect to operate.

Re:wiping competitors with reformat, reinstall

[tomhudson]

>p>"Real businesses?" - well, let's see. Real businesses look at the bottom line. That's why they do virtualization, consolidation, and upgrades (not just patches).

As platforms get older, the cost of support rises, as does the cost of adding new features or services; additionally, it often doesn't make sense to repurpose a machine when a newer one can do a better job cheaper, and has a larger base of capable programmers and support personnel. We don't use 12" green-screen or amber monitors any more for a reason - they're not cost-effective. If we're smart, we don't use a mix of older and newer versions of operating systems because it's easier and cheaper to maintain everything if it's all up to date (I'm not talking pseudo-operating systems like Windows, obviously. An OS that can't easily run headless, tail-less, and without a graphics card is not a real operating system - it's a pistache of ____ [fill in the blank] ).

It doesn't make sense, when using an OS such as *bsd or linux, to not keep current. If you don't, eventually you end up with a box that simply cannot be successfully maintained. The only option then is to wipe it, since otherwise it's worse than a paperweight (at least paperweights don't consume electricity).

Re:wiping competitors with reformat, reinstall

[drsmithy]

As platforms get older, the cost of support rises, as does the cost of adding new features or services; additionally, it often doesn't make sense to repurpose a machine when a newer one can do a better job cheaper, and has a larger base of capable programmers and support personnel. We don't use 12" green-screen or amber monitors any more for a reason - they're not cost-effective. If we're smart, we don't use a mix of older and newer versions of operating systems because it's easier and cheaper to maintain everything if it's all up to date (I'm not talking pseudo-operating systems like Windows, obviously. An OS that can't easily run headless, tail-less, and without a graphics card is not a real operating system - it's a pistache of ____ [fill in the blank] ).

I had my suspicions, but that's for actually confirming you don't have a clue what you're talking about.

It doesn't make sense, when using an OS such as *bsd or linux, to not keep current.

The BSDs don't have the problem Linux does. They *do* maintain a stable platform, as do the proper UNIXes like Solaris. The only platform that has serious issues with legacy support, backwards compatibility and dependency hell, is Linux (which, as I said, is the main reasons distros like Red Hat and SuSe exist - to swim against the tide of "release early, release often" and provide the stable platform that businesses want).

Re:wiping competitors with reformat, reinstall

[tomhudson]

You're living in a dream world. The '90s called, and they don't want it back.

The BSDs don't have the problem Linux does. They *do* maintain a stable platform

With a broken ports system. FreeBSD 7.1 bit us on the rear last week with exactly that problem ... fresh install on new hardware, and it wrongly insisted on adding other dependencies that then prevented apache from installing because of previously-installed APM??? That's b0rked.

And your 10 to 15 year timeframe is also nonsense - try upgrading from FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE to 7.0-RELEASE ... much of the software is no longer available via ports - it's manual install time. So, 7 years out, and yuor "10-15 years stability" is already in the crapper. The cure for that is, of course, update early, update often. Not patch, but update.

Anyway, keep dreaming ... the world has changed, and those who insist on standing in place "in the name of stability" will be left behind.

Re:wiping competitors with reformat, reinstall

[drsmithy]

Anyway, keep dreaming ... the world has changed, and those who insist on standing in place "in the name of stability" will be left behind.

What's funny is - thoroughly demonstrated by your "examples" - you still don't understand what "platform stability" means, nor why it is critical to a properly run IT infrastructure.