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Microsoft-Backed Firm Says IBM Is Anticompetitive
BBCWatcher writes "Microsoft has long claimed that the mainframe is dead, slain by the company's Windows monopoly. Yet, apparently without any mirror nearby, Microsoft is now complaining through the Microsoft-funded Computer & Communications Industry Association that not only are mainframes not dead, but IBM is so anticompetitive that governments should intervene in the hyper-competitive server market. The Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft is worried that the trend toward cloud computing is introducing competition to the Windows franchise, favoring better-positioned companies including IBM and Cisco. HP now talks about almost nothing but the IBM mainframe, with no Tukwila CPUs to sell until 2010. The global recession is encouraging more mainframe adoption as businesses slash IT costs, dominated by labor costs, and improve business execution. In 2008, IBM mainframe revenues rose 12.5% even whilst mainframe prices fell. (IBM shipped 25% more mainframe capacity than in 2007. Other server sales reports are not so good.) IBM mainframes can run multiple operating systems concurrently, including Linux and, more recently, OpenSolaris."
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!
T3 contends that IBM pens in mainframe customers faced with a high cost of switching to other systems, while refusing to share blueprints necessary to offer a cheaper alternative.
I'm not a hardware guy and I'm no fan of IBM but I must be missing something here: what is it about mainframes that makes them so different from servers?
Tampa-based T3 develops mainframe technology compatible with IBM software that is designed for small and midsize enterprises.
Maybe they can't release details but I'm guessing that there's some proprietary chipsets and microcontrollers inside these things to run the (what are they at 32 or 64 processors) CPUs stacked on top of each other and banks of memory and storage and database crap. So what you've gotten software written specifically to take advantage of this stuff? And it's going to be hard to move to another mainframe or standardized servers with that stuff? Are you surprised? It'd be like if I wrote something for Windows and then complained I couldn't get the blueprint from Windows of how the API works so I could move to a "cheaper solution" like Linux.
So if T3 wins this case, what's the ideal outcome? IBM open sources the software that runs on these mainframes? IBM releases detailed chipset information? Both are laughable. And if you're going to argue that, you might as well argue that Microsoft open up Windows or Intel layout the insides of its Atom processors for the world to see.
I wish I didn't find myself defending IBM (I hate their software and these mainframes sound like a scam) but you have to draw the line somewhere or apply to everyone. My advice to the poor companies still at the hands of IBM: get out. Of course that's my advice to anyone foolish enough to buy into vendor "lock-in" software like Flash. Lesson learned: An extra layer of well defined and thought out abstraction will add a bit of overhead but in the end it might save your ass when you need to switch technologies.
My work here is dung.
The mainframe is a dead relic of times past surely?
I love the cyclical nature of all this stuff.
They CANNOT be serious!
they know all about being anticompetitive.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
A huge IBM add posted on slashdot that looks like MS bashing. Really clever.
What, you mean computers were actually capable of opening more than one window at a time?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
As long as the mainframe can deliver the advantage and deliver a reliable service, I don't see it going out of the market. But personally I see the future going toward cloud computing and virtualization.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
As far as I could tell, that HP related link was just some blurb saying "HP would like people to buy their stuff, not IBM's" - what was the relevance of that exactly? It seemed like almost exactly the opposite of the implication in context.
...and not just the titles. The HP one is talking about HP pushing for people to migrate off mainframes. Onto HP servers. Running Windows Server 2003.
And REQUIRE data be transferred and stored in open, unencumbered standards.
Of course, Microsoft and all their paid shills would shit their pants were that to happen...
Microsoft is now complaining ......... IBM is so anticompetitive that governments should intervene.
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!
Well, I think it's more a case of "we got hosed in Europe so let's see if we can turn this same sword on our competitors." From the article:
The CCIA now has added encouragement from a tiny firm backed by IBM rival Microsoft Corp., which has lodged an antitrust complaint in Europe, while pressing a related lawsuit in federal court in New York and sounding out U.S. regulators.
Microsoft's been picked over with a fine toothed comb by the EU recently and I think their strategy now is to make sure everyone else is too. If you look at it that way, Microsoft has nothing to lose. They've been scrutinized to the fullest extent and you should expect them to turn this same scrutiny over to other companies in other fields. I wouldn't be surprised to see a sort of anti-competitive gaming lawsuit aimed at Nintendo come about one of these days in the EU.
My work here is dung.
I still remember the old saying after Win95 came out - in direct competition with the mainframe-centric OS/2 - "Windows 95 is a 32-bit shell to a 16-bit operating sysetm, written by an 8-bit company, originally written for a 4-bit processor by a company that can't stand one bit of competition."
Seems to hold somewhat true today.
Seriously, though. When you look at the ability to run VMs inside mainframes and potentially reduce floorspace and the associated costs, it may seem tempting to go mainframe. Even HP is always pushing the SuperDome on me. Funny, tho, I was just at a data center yesterday where they had an AS390 sitting on the side of the room, next to a z9. The z890 bought to replace the AS390 was about to be swapped out for the z9.
Time marches on.
IBM's big iron sill lives.
However, wanna bet that some portion of those running mainframes are running host OS's such as SLED and then running Xen inside of that with Win2008 servers?
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
This is just to distract people from the growing rumble that Vista SPx (a.k.a. Windows 7) pricing is way off the mark ...
Q. Top ten reason why Windows on a mainframe is like Michael Jackson: ..."
A. Neither one can fog a mirror.
A2. Neither one of them can win by a nose.
A3. As of yesterday, you can blend either one.
A4. They both target the immature.
A5. They've both been seriously broken for a looong time.
A6. "It just looks strange
A7. They both have high maintenance costs.
A8. They both have a history of instability.
A9. One's a faceless corporation, the other one's just faceless.
A10. They're both past their "best before" date.
Hello? Mr. Kettle? This is Pot. You're black.
Wait, if the server market is hyper-competetive, then there's no serious anti-trust issue right? I mean, would you call the desktop OS market "hyper-competetive"?
Facebook is the new AOL
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!
Yeah, but you know... they could be right.
Say I'm littering in your front yard. Then you start playing obnoxiously loud music in the middle of the night.
Should I be barred from suing you for being a nuisance, just because I'm a nuisance myself?
If you argue yes, I think the reasoning becomes even thinner than I think it has to be for that case when we're talking about this:
One party does something bad towards not any one particular party but society as a whole. Then, another party points to the first party and says "they're doing it, so we can do it to" and go on to do something bad against society.
True, Microsoft isn't on the moral high ground, but that doesn't excuse IBM. And it doesn't make it incorrect for Microsoft to point it out. Just... the weird kind of funny.
disclaimer: I don't know the facts of the case. I don't know whether IBM is being anticompetitive. I'm not well-enough informed to hold an informed opinion, so I won't state one. I'm just saying that if IBM is being anticompetitive...
IBM makes the hardware & software to work together as a complete marketable unit, if microsoft wants to compete in the mainframe market then they better build their own mainframe & software to run on it as a complete unit ready for market, and quit bitching about being anti-competitive bunch of damn hypocrites...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
"The Computer & Communications Industry Association has filed a so-called Tunney Act challenge to the Department of Justice's controversial settlement with Microsoft in 2001", Sep 2003
..
"The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) is criticizing last month's decision by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to exclusively use Microsoft Corp. software, arguing that recent computer virus and worm attacks against Microsoft products are evidence that such a decision is a poor choice", Aug 2003
I guess this was before Daniel Geer got fired
Membership as of 2003: Yahoo, Oracle, Sun, Nortel, AOL, not.Microsoft
davecb5620@gmail.com
And if you're going to argue that, you might as well argue that Microsoft open up Windows or Intel layout the insides of its Atom processors for the world to see. [...] you have to draw the line somewhere or apply to everyone.
Note that if we're talking about companies being anticompetitive, "everyone" is the set of market players which have the ability to behave anticompetitively.
If we talk about, say, tying music players to online music stores, "everyone" is {Apple}. I don't know much about the Zune--does Microsoft have a music store? If they do, do they also have a big enough market presence to behave anti-competitively in that space? No.
I don't know why you picked Intel and Microsoft as examples, but there are cases to be made that they have the ability to engage in monopolistic behavior. For that reason, one should at least keep an eye on what they're doing; maybe even modify their behavior in ways that encourage competition (or in other ways which avoid the bad effects of monopolies).
We need more details about what anti-competitive things IBM is doing. OK, it sells machines that seem to give customers more value for money, in their perception, while still making massive profits. Lucky IBM, but isn't that what business is all about? What have they been doing to stop others competing with them - if they can? Have they been saying that you cannot connect Windows machines to their mainframes? Have they been refusing to run Microsoft software (if you can get the appropriate license) on their virtual machines? Or what else?
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
http://whatdoestheinternetthink.net/index.php?s=microsoft&st=google
http://whatdoestheinternetthink.net/index.php?s=microsoft&st=bing
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Windows 95 is a
32-bit shell for a
16-bit extension to an
8-bit operating system designed for a
4-bit microprocessor by a
2-bit company that can't stand
one bit of competition.
(stolen from http://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-users/2003-May/018396.html)
Also, "two-bit" means "(1) cheap; gaudy; tawdry; or (2) Mediocre, inferior, or insignificant".
(stolen from http://www.yourdictionary.com/two-bit. Try to find the definition in-between all the ads.)
The sad part is that IBM only became a monopoly in the mainframe market because no one else wanted to make and sell them anymore. So now people are thinking about mainframes again for things like cloud computer and suddenly the argument is that IBM is not allowing competition in the market. Maybe if other companies didn't abandon the mainframe market, there would be more than just IBM left standing in it. The issue though is not whether they are a monopoly in that market (which they are, probably just as much as Microsoft is on the desktop market), but are they using it to prevent competition from others or in other markets?
IBM in no way forces a customer to use their systems. At any time, a customer could leave and move to another setup.
It sounds like the issue is competitors want IBM to release more details on how things are engineered, so they can design solutions for people who want to transition from IBM to other products.
IBM stuck with their investment and are positioned to make some great cash of this. The other companies need to make their own solutions that are good enough to win over customers. Lawyers have way to much time on their hands imo.
IBM is "anti competitive" because it is beating the crap out of MS in the new environment. I don't remember IBM screaming when MS was riding high on cheap Windows servers displacing mainframes. And MS was lying through their teeth. At the time, the Windows servers were nowhere near as reliable as the mainframe. Just cheaper.
A system Z mainframe is always run in virtualization. That's been one of their big features.
In terms of 'cloud', the term is so ill-defined and buzzed it's hard to say much, but generally speaking, a 'cloud' on a mainframe is not any less possible than a 'cloud' on disparate x86 rackmount servers.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
where's my mod points when I need them?
+9 Insightful
Say I'm littering in your front yard. Then you start playing obnoxiously loud music in the middle of the night.
Should I be barred from suing you for being a nuisance, just because I'm a nuisance myself?
Yeah, but I'm not sure it's really like that. AFAICT it's almost more like if you were littering and the trash blew over into your neighbor's yard, and then you complained to the neighborhood association that your neighbor wasn't taking good enough care of their yard, because it was covered in trash.
If IBM is dominant, it seems like it's at least partially because they're the one left standing after Microsoft leveraged their monopoly to drag the whole market in a different direction.
But it didn't stop you from offering an opinion...jackass.
But sir thats the point - It is difficult to make an informed decision when the information recieved is from Microsoft.
http://p8ste.com - Web based Clipboard
Well... I take it you weren't around back in the days when IBM was every bit as vile a monopolist as Microsoft is now. Look up some of the writings of Rex Malik (in England) or Nancy Foy (in the US), and read about the history of IBM. I personally would have loved it had Burroughs prevailed.
Just because you don't remember it doesn't mean that it didn't happen. The back and forth between Microsoft and IBM has been going on since the DOS days.
Oh, shut the fuck up.
...something like Ballmer with a chair, Gates has been gone for a while now (and scarily enough - being incredibly philanthropic.)
Loading...
Should I be barred from suing you for being a nuisance, just because I'm a nuisance myself?
Yes. It is called "unclean hands" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unclean_hands).
You being a jackass undermines your suit against me being a jackass.
Microsoft calling anyone anti-competitive should result in the court bursting out in raucous laughter.
I am anarch of all I survey.
The interesting part here is that Microsoft used a sock-puppet company for those statements.
Has MS come out and say it themselves it wouldn't be quite the news it is.
True. Too bad IBM didn't go with the UCSD Pascal system back in the day. Or that Digital Research wanted too much for CP/M-86.
Has microsoft ever had a mainframe? No.
Do they have a mainframe OS? no.
Could they develop one? HPC could theoretically be considdered one if they added storage virtualization to it, and a few other mainframe class systems.
Would we use a microsoft OS to replace out IBM mainframes? No. I'll elaborate:
- We have MILLIONS of lines of code ON the mainframe that would ALL have to be completely re-done from scratch to move off the OS390 platform.
- We have 10 times that much code that would have to be modified to talk to a non-OS390 mainframe.
- We have hundreds of servers that run support applications for the mainframe or mainframe apps that don't run on Windows.
- Any competing platform uses far more space and many fold more power, and does not have the HA features of true mainframes.
- A LARGE part of the security of our mainframe environment is that since you can't exactly get access to OS390 easily, hacing it is damned near impossible... Moving to a windows kernel based mainframe would NOT be adviseable even if we could afford it.
- IBM is here, and has been for decades, and there's more legacy code running on OS390 that's 10 years old than code running on it that's less than 10 years old. they're NOT going to drop support for it. I can't say that about any competitor.
- IBM has a FULL suite of tools to manage, monitor, and protect the mainframe. Most technologies entering the x64 space now have been in use on mainframes for 5-10 years... some longer.
- Licensing prices on the mainframe are a FRACTION of the price of lecensing x86 and P6 systems. (we're saving about 10 million this year in licensing alone moving a few hundred machines to Suse Linux virtualised on z10 IFL processors.)
- Component hardware costs of the mainframe are a bit higher (about $8K for a gig of RAM), but the system as a whole is actually not only cheaper than an equivalent VMWare or hypervisor supercluster, but it;s energy use is also a fraction of the equivalent.
- the Z systems have 5-10 year lifespans, we have a few running 12 years without a critical outage, not 3-5 years like all other platforms...
We pay a never-ending maintenance plan on our mainframes. We add new ones every year or two to replace old ones, but we don't really "buy" new mainframes, we simply pay to have a base number of MIPS available and IBM keeps the hardware running. (and pay to increase those MIPS as necessary. The licensing and hardware costs are FAR lower than out other platforms.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
Yes, my comment is redundant but, if you look at the times, they are 2 minutes apart. I was editing mine when he posted his. Sorry about that.
Better, Affero GPL3.
Um.. No
The court ordered sharing of the IBM Principles Of Operation (POO) deal ran out in the early 00's. At this point HDS (who was phasing out the mainframe) and largely Amdahl could not afford to pay the price that IBM demanded for access to the POO. Amdahl had a 64 bit CPU up and running in development, and was getting ready to announce when this happened. That was it, Amdahl kept selling the 31 bit CPU for a few years, but it was over at that point.
Microsoft can't call IBM anti-competitive; I'm sure IBM already has patents on technologies related to "methods by which a pot calls a kettle black".
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Why would anyone spend huge sums of $ on a mainframe and the scarce mainframe programmers to keep it running, just to run a virtualized copy of linux? That's *way* too much overhead. Never mind that you can't virtualize windows on a mainframe -- talk about inflexible. IBM's increase in mainframe revenue has more to do with the success of its sales force in making existing hardware sound obsolete, and twisting the arms of existing customers who haven't managed to get off the 'legacy' mainframe environment yet. OTOH, if you use VMWare (or Sun xVM or Zen) you can run on pretty much commodity hardware, and virtualize linux, windows, and solaris to your heart's content. My macbook pro runs VMWare's Fusion which allows me to virtualize Microsoft from Vista back to Windows 3.11, and any linux variant I can get my hands on, and Solaris 8 thru 10, and *bsd, and Netware, JunOS, etc. And whatever skills I learn from running VMWare's desktop virtualization product is fairly transferable to virtualization on their server and management products (think ESX and VirtualCenter).
IBM just happens to be the last buggy whip manufacturer...
This time, however, the apparent benefits of the horseless carriage are being outweighed by the known benefits of the horse.
I'd be willing to bet that this is still the case, actually.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Indeed. We should be enjoying 72-bit computing now but instead Burroughs' inferior competitors are shortchanging us with 64 bits.
It seems that You assume that the only, or only successfully, way to compete with IBM is to use the same machine architecure and operating system.
You could really compete with Your own software and hardware. Yes, it's not as easy but there have been several such competitors. And it should be easier now when the bigger part of the customer applications is in 3:rd or higher level programming languages (e g COBOL).
There is of course a tough task to build up the whole hardware infrastructure to be able to deliver high mainframe reliability. OTOH, if You skip support of IBM legacy assembler You can skip all the backward compatibility mess that IBM have to deal with in every new version of the OS (and also hardware).
Mundus Vult Decipi
Microsoft has plenty of money. If they don't like the way the mainframe market looks then they should enter and build their own. IBM has already been through the anti-trust wringer for their mainframe hardware and has spent decades under supervision by the Justice Department.
The article is missing the fact that T3 bought it's technology from Platform Solutions. Platform Solutions was acquired by IBM. Without reselling Platform Solutions' product I don't see how T3 has any offerings that IBM competes with. They look like a distributor that has been cut off form a supplier, that's not grounds for anti-trust.
I always love it when these types of articles are spewed-forth, especially from Microsoft. M$ gets whacked in other countries so now it wants to try and turn an ugly head towards IBM.
Out of all the companies I've worked with (currently in production AIX enviornment); IBM is leaps and bounds ahead of M$ when it comes to services and support from both a hardware and software perspective - and guess what- their hardware and software just plain works. If you want to look at the IBM business model and compare against M$ - what IBM doesn't do is tell it's customers (For example), that they have to change their OS and core systems every 2-3 years, as is the case with Vista, or fill the servers with bloat ware and unneeded services, faulty if not dangerous patches, and so on. Another example is the 'IE tied to Win' problem that was the original lawsuit filed against them & still plagues new systems to this day- and it's gotten worse from there. Businesses didn't upgrade or even consider moving to Vista and I hear now that Win7 will be priced in the range of $120+??? what a joke !
Amazing - goes to show how quickly the mighty have fallen...
Prediction: In less than 5 years M$ will no longer be the dominant force in software/hardware sales & computing - with open source technology (BSD, Unix/Linux, Mac) and the handheld front taking center stage players such as RIM, iPhone, Android and many others will completely kill the WinMobile platform - which is now still large, and that spills over into the consumer market when it comes to PC's as well. We won't need to have M$ at home, because the options given us will not be M$ - but opensource, reliable, and far more trustworthy than what were seeing now.
We can run MySQL or other db's, and don't have to be forced to run Windows, IE, Office or any of the other apps they'd like to shove our way
Kinda like the current situation with GM & Chrysler - kinda eerie isn't it! - this will likely be the same route of downsizing and the new crap works as bad as the old crap
mentality.
Considering that many of the world's most powerful and critical organizations and corporations use Windows Server 2003/2008 in even mission-critical environments, I wouldn't throw my money down.
http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ato/publications/oep/version1/reference/eram/ Host Computer System is a G3 mainframe running code from the 1960's/70's, although the FAA is on-schedule to replace it by 2012 with non-mainframe computers.
Now, *that's* a "business critical" application!
How does IBM's practices in the 1960s and 1970s relate to the companies that were competing with IBM in the mainframe marketplace in the 1990s? Fujitsu and Hitachi, both huge corporations with substantial financial resources, were competing with IBM in the 1990s with mainframe compatible systems. Both Fujitsu and Hitachi decided they had better places to invest funds than developing mainframe servers. Both Fujitsu and Hitachi lacked IBM's faith in the technology and vision of where it could go. IBM is now reaping the benefits of its decision to continue investing substantial funds in mainframe R&D while many in the industry were declaring the technology a relic of a bygone era.
> Why would anyone spend huge sums of $ on a mainframe and the scarce mainframe
> programmers to keep it running, just to run a virtualized copy of linux?
So that you can run ten thousand copies of linux. Virtualized at the hardware level.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
IBM demanded for access to the POO.
You said access to the POO.
Market dominance based on technical superiority is anti-competitive. Market dominance based on FUD, dirty tricks, bribery, intimidation, and theft is just business success.
I understand now, Microsoft! Thanks for clarifying that for us.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
In all honesty, I didn't understand how IBM was being anti-comp ... this story helped me understand the situation a little better
http://www.crn.com/hardware/196601593;jsessionid=XPBGBSFXHFVD0QSNDLPCKH0CJUNN2JVN
For those that don't want to read it, it basically states the IBM will not license it's z/OS operating system (used on mainframes) for any hardware but their own. I can see where this could be considered as bad as with the whole Windows/IE thing ...
Ironically, the main distinction between IBM and MS in this case is that people actually want to use (or have to due to legacy) the z/OS operating system without IBM hardware where-as people want to use PCs without having to use Windows :)
It's kind of funny how quality difference between MS and IBM enterprise products can affect peoples perception anti-trust.
The issue though is not whether they are a monopoly in that market (which they are, probably just as much as Microsoft is on the desktop market), but are they using it to prevent competition from others or in other markets?
I agree there is question about whether or not IBM's actions constitute an abuse in other markets, but that is not the only form of antitrust abuse. Methods of gaining the monopoly, preventing others entry into the initial market, or price fixing can all be issues. Further I'm not sure I would conclude that IBM has a monopoly on the relevant market. They certainly sell most of what people refer to as mainframes, but it is unclear that that label defines the competitive market in which they operate. The general server market and the supercomputer market may well constitute part of the relevant market for antitrust purposes. Do potential buyers of mainframes consider either as potential solutions when buying? Remember also software incompatibility itself does not make that question a "no" based upon precedent involving Apple computers versus Windows based PC's.
Why would IBM and Cisco be better positioned than Microsoft in the cloud? That makes no sense. Microsoft is still the leading or one of the leading developer platform providers. 10's of thousands of companies and millions of developers use Microsoft frameworks and tools for software development. Yes, there are lots of great alternatives (Java, Php, Ruby etc. etc. etc.) and that's a good thing. But all things being equal I'd probabyl rather be Microsoft right now than pretty much any other company trying to establsh itself in the cloud except perhaps Amazon and Google. In addition to the developer platform assets, they have the capital to build lots of big/expensive datacenters, the network of partners/ISV's who use their platforms and lots of mindshare. IBM, from what I can tell, is essentially just doing the same thing they've been doing forever - offering good but expensive outsourcing services for very large businesses who have too much money to spend.
Yes but mission critical wintel deployment it's probably a lot more expansive in terms of redudancy and support cost then the older mainframes. when they grow to the scale where mainframes used to live.
Windows biggest drawback stability wise was always that it had none and now only week self protection features, a renegade application will take a wintel host down while a mainframe will remain mostly unaffected by bad application code. With properly tested application code you can make a wintel stable, but thats not all that common in the cloud world where almost everything is perpertual beta and to keep that stable you need a underlying platform who can protect itself the way windows can't. especially if your going to rent out the hardware on a timeshare basis, to almost anyone. Unix/Linux remains as always the middle ground it runs on any hardware(now even clasical mainframes) and gets a lot closer to mainframe like behavior then windows.
When microsoft claims that most windows crashes are due to 3rd party code they are actually right, the only problem is that Windows is the making it damn easy for 3rd party code to take the entire system down.
The Microsoft approach with all of the desktop computers networked together is becoming fabulously expensive for support, maintenance, installation, and security. The 'mainframe' computer still connects the desktops but the good stuff (apps and data) is on the 'mainframe' rather than the local desktops so most of the support, maintenance, installation, and security is done on a few of the 'mainframes' rather than the thousands of desktops. The cost advantages of that are so enormous that Microsoft should be attempting to find a way to play in that space by buying companies rather than bellyaching about the anti-competitiveness of IBM. Microsoft has never figured out what they want to do, anyway...video games, corporate computing, home multimedia centers, small business computing, or what? Microsoft wants to do everything but they don't do anything very well.
Of course they are right. The pot/kettle analogy is a statement implying that both parties are guilty of the same accusation/offense. Besides, most corporations are anti-competitive in the sense that the attempt to counter the efforts of their competitors. That is simply 'business as usual' This sort of accusation by Microsoft is simply an indication that they have weighed the risks and deemed that there is some tactical advantage for them in bringing such an issue forth at this time.
Actually, it would be much bigger news.
"It's OK when then other companies compete with each other, but if they start to compete with Microsoft then it's unfair..."
Sure. That's why Sun and AOL pushed the government into investigating MS. It was OK to compete with each other, but they thought it was unfair that they had to compete with MS.
Such as?
includes Google, the Linux Foundation, Oracle, Yahoo and Red Hat as members.
What competition they are speaking about with 98% of computer OS market? Oh! does mainframe run windoze? It does not? What a pity! It is anti-competitive practice of IBM and mainframes must be killed and eliminated if they are still not dead already!
Hitachi didn't get out of the Mainframe biz. They may have said they did, but they didn't. They've converted their mainfram biz to a hardware based virtualization solution based on intel Itanium and Xenon VT chipsets.
The interface to their blade symphony virtage systems is traight out of their mainframes. Hey've taken a position of doing the mainframe thing but on comodity chips. We bought one of these a year or so ago. it basically scales up to 16 LPARs per blade, with failover and all of the niceities, just jeep adding blades and LUNs to your fiberchannel array, and you can just keep scaling up. The price point for these things come in about the same as VMware intially, but tends to beat them in the long term.
Well, tagged memory sure would have some benefits. We could scrap some parts of all those JITs and VMs and simply let the hardware do the checks. But I guess this road fell out of popularity when RISC entered the spotlight.
Ezekiel 23:20
More than THAT, this appears to me that ms is just hopping mad and grousing that the Obama administration is tapping an IBM Open Source advocate for USPTO...
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/06/19/1941241/Obama-Taps-IBM-Open-Source-Advocate-For-USPTO
http://www.uspto.gov/main/homepagenews/2009jun19.htm
Eat your HEART OUT, microsoft. Instead of BITCHING behind proxies (read: paid-for-shills, sychophants, and suck-ups attorneys and advertisers (*computer manufacturer* recommends MICROSOFT *product* for ALL YOUR COMPUTING/SURFING/ENTERTAINMENT needs. See if keep bying products from pricks that lie to me in the name of getting marketing dollars from you....)), go and try to make an iPhone killer and get it right. Stop trying to commit subterfuge against Open Source and people's RIGHT to not be sewn in or sewn up by you and companies LIKE yours. And, stop hiding behind "there are no morals in business". If a company can be accorded the rights and privileges of a person, then maybe if ms is smacked, prodded, and skewered LIKE a person, then you might GROW UP.
Sheesh...
(JUSt TRY it... just TRY to send the suits after me....)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Well, there were companies making CP/M clones, IBM could have gone there. I seem to recall one called "Quick and Dirty Operating System" from Seattle Computer Systems for instance.
Wonder what happened to that.
nob
And in the far corner, weighing in at just over the weight of an IBM mainframe... SUN MODULAR DATACENTER!
Consider yourself spoken to.
To be upfront here I worked at several companies over the last 40+ years and they all has IBM Mainframes. I have a slant which is a little different than most so here it goes:
In the beginning and up until Amdahl came along yes IBM was extremely non competitive. After Amdahl IBM still retained its uncompetitive stance and when IBM went to OCO (Object Code Only). Once they essentially did that any and all so called competitors were(are) dead in the water. You cannot reverse engineer (it would be way hard) a lot of machine instructions. Although IBM documents(well I might add) most (not all) in a book called POP (principals of operations). Remember I did not say *ALL* I said most.
IBM has also come up from time to time with new instructions and most of them are miscellaneous places in their code so if the code was to run on a non IBM machine it would fail. Good bad its a mixed bag, IMO.
In the recent time IBM pulled some fast tricks(IMO) on an OEM that was trying to sell a small version of the MF. There is a long story that I will not go into here but users are really clamoring for a small machine to do testing/development work on and IBM shut the OEM down so fast you could not blink an eye.
Fast forward to this year and IBM is coming up finally with smaller machines. I still hear groans from OEMs as they lost some business. Will it succeed (IBM's forced that you must use IBM hardware) maybe. Ibm, IMO is on the brink of a bug fall they have screwed so many people I am almost tempted to say "yes they will fall"
I think I understand IBM's position but do not agree with it. Yes they have in server box enough resources to run possibly 1000's of servers.
Are they short sided? YES they let go a large number of extremely talented people in the 80's & 90's. The marketing rep and the SE (Sales engineer) were a just plane stupid move. If you had good SE & MR you could open doors all over IBM and actually had some input to IBM future. Now its a miracle to find either of these individuals let alone good ones.
Well, there were companies making CP/M clones, IBM could have gone there. I seem to recall one called "Quick and Dirty Operating System" from Seattle Computer Systems for instance.
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I believe it was bought by a person named William Gates, and was sold on to IBM to becom MSDOS. To be fair though, it wasn't much better than CP/M. (Major problem was no support for subdirectories
The difference is, US Court system somehow managed to make IBM listen and get afraid while MS doesn't really care about their decisions.
I think you speak about the original FUD campaign by IBM. They got hit hard by the court later. Or... competitors being allowed to run 100% compatible with their systems... They got ordered by court to accept it and they respected.
Now install Windows 7 beta freely from Microsoft and look at that giant IE icon right next at "start" menu with links to "Get Live software" when you press the start menu first time. Can you claim they actually care about US court decisions, EU investigations? If they cared, that "IE" icon could be easily opening a giant window showing current selection of browsers which are major (FF, Opera, Safari, Chrome etc.) and when you click on icon, it could download the latest (e.g. mozilla.org/win-7.latest.msi) via cURL and set it up.
Microsoft and partners are the last people on planet to talk about "evil" behavior.
You have a gasoline monopoly and you sell your gas at $5.00 per gallon. This allows you to live the luxurious life with swimming pool, 3 cars per home, etc. Suddenly a competitor comes along with the same gasoline, only it is at $3.50 per gallon. What do you propose to do? Force them to sell at $5.00, or learn to give the consumer the break, and drop your costs to allow selling at the same consumer cost.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
"principles of operation site:ibm.com" says it's still publicly available. It still has the detailed (and it seems to me expanded and improved since I last looked) explanation of not just the operation but the principles and purpose of UPT and CFC, the hardware-assist implementation of a killer minimal-recomparison algorithm I'm pretty sure they invented.
In fact, I'm sure they've been working on it. What is it now, forty years since they implemented that instruction, its operation was a key competitive advantage, they did a clear and complete job of documenting it under court order, and they're still improving the tutorial explanations for it?
Tell us again how the documentation Microsoft produces under court order is clear and complete and constantly improved over the course of decades even after the court orders expire?
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
The EU needs money just like every other government nowadays. So, yeah, a shakedown of Nintendo seems likely.