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Microsoft Antitrust Case Arguments Finished
Well, it's been going on for 11 months, but the DoJ and Microsoft's attorneys finally gave their closing arguments yesterday. Now Judge Jackson will put on his thinking cap and issue a preliminary ruling, hopefully within the next few weeks. The Washington Post has the full story.
On a Computer Science test, you would be correct.
In Reality(TM), the correct answer is the one that I gave.
To Lazy to log in - First time ever - Chandon Seldon
Swords are usually double-edged, and can cut both ways. These guys had better start prayin' to the big G (no, not Gates), 'cause that's all that will save them now. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the "please explain" meeting after the judgement is passed... Microsoft sucked in by their legal team's PR machine? How ironic. (Shorter trials, wins more cases, bigger pay outs etc. ;) Never, ever, annoy the judge.
How about putting Bill G. on the chair, all MS employees in re-education camps, burning down all MS assets, and give all MS customers 24 hours to uninstall all their MS products or face joining the microserfs in their re-education camp?
(In other words, aren't you overreacting just a bit?)
I see your point. But have you read the specs on IA-64? I wonder what you'd think about working on a compiler for it : ) (I pitty the people who have to write the IA-64 compilers) My point I was trying to make in my original statement was that the Instruction Architechture 64 is majorly flawed. I'm also not sure compilers are currently good enough to write efficient code for IA-64 (plus there are other architechtural issues about IA-64 that I don't want to get into) I do agree that complexity can be hidden by a good compiler. But there are just some things that a compiler just can't do (for example judge info only availible at run time).
as for the CISC vs. RISC issue, The reason RISC is used is to simplify the processor design... but having programmed in both RISC and CISC asm, I actually find RISC EASIER than CISC.
BTW, I worked for DEC/Compaq on Alpha Verification
As for no finacial reason... would they split the shareholders as well? That would be intresting to see.
Anyway, all would happen is MS work out some system to get the lot of them to work together.
Splitting up the company is going to have little effect.
The whole problem revolves around the operating system. They should make all the API's fully documented, and quite possibly the source too, but I bet you'd notice a few "adjustments" to the code where some competitions product died around that additions time.
Whoever controls the desktop controls the machine, take that away and you take away the monopoly.
They will produce a documentation of very poor quality, with lots of "accidental" omissions and inaccuracies. Now, good luck proving that it was intentional...
What is Monoposoft? I've never heard of the company.
I've wondered for quite awhile why people insist on using the != symbol like an assignment operator on Usenet and Slashdot.
It performs a test. So you're asking the question if Guilty is Not Equal to the Death Penalty. That makes no sense.
It's surprising how many people seem to know nothing at all about C operators.
Oh and the "penguins for pets" topic was relevant? heh
No, saying that implies that Microsoft is an organization of mobsters.
That's kind of like slander.
Go to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.
"The public-loved Netscape"???
Good grief, that's a crock, no matter which way one sides on the issue of the Microsoft case.
And what did Microshaft do? The little fucks dumped an inferior product at a zero price point on the market in order to kill the competion. An honest company would have tried to SELL a competing browser, HONESTLY earn some of that quarter billion and growing pie, and make web browsers in the '90s what word processors were in the '80. In the end, we would have all won. With more advances in features, stability, and over all quality. Instead we're stuck with M$ not caring now that they've all but won, and Netscape to poor to fix existing bugs.
But honesty and fair competion aren't in Emperor Gates' vocabulary. Instead, M$ backstabbed (ask SpryMosaic if they knew the rendering engine licensed for IE would be given away and they'd make royalties on sales of $jack-shit dollars per browser) and have all but destroyed the market (lets go with the car analogy - Ford, GM, and Chrysler sell cars at $20 below cost for a year in order to drive Edsel under. This is called predatory pricing.)
Microsoft is the Phillip Morris of the Software Industry, and It's time for the government to make them pay for Linux ads on T.V.
How can you judge someone simply by their anonymity? Even with a login you seem fairly anonymous.
I think that it really is an interesting question to ask if the microsoft lawyer violated courtroom decorum with such an intellectually insulting example. I wonder if he actually entered the graph paper in to evidence. Did he he have to notify the opposition that he would be using this evidence so that they could prepare?
Interesting how you can point to the rise of MS's monopoly and link it to the rise in OSS.
Any competant stat master could prove that wrong.
The number of dogs owned has grown at the same or higher rate over the years.
It's obvious that dog ownership drives OSS.
Of course, as the calendar year climbs, so does the growth of OSS. So maybe it is tied to the Julian calendar.
Or to the number of species we have brought to extinction.
Get a clue. OSS is growing because the Internet is allowing easier communication between more people everyday. The Internet drives the OSS revolution.
Not MS or MS's stocks.
Actually, the part I hate the most is the supporters saying "Even if they are a monopoly, they should still be able to get away with abusing their power, because anything could topple them."
Kind of like saying "that mobster shouldn't go to jail for extortion because he has a lot of rivals that could displace him very easily."
Okay, you want the government out of business?
Fine, let's start with copywrites and patents. After all, they interfer with other companies ability to do business. I'm sure that MS isn't arguing to repeal the laws that help them. Are they?
As to murder and theft being defined, you're obviously still in jr. high. Murder isn't defined.
If I accidentally run over a kid. Did I murder that kid?
If I intentionally run over a kid. Did I murder that kid?
The only difference is my intent. Same vehicle. Same effect. Same kid.
Now, what if my defense for murder is that it was an accident?
Seems like you don't ahve any idea what you're talking about.
I'm not a fan of big government, but lets face it indivuals/companies that get too big, and abuse their power, harm nearly everyone, as well as the future.
In all honesty, I hope MS loses because I do think Bill Borg is a horrid, digusting little vermin.
Has this guy ever played team sports? I don't see how. Normally, you can only go so far on your own, and then it's a pleasure to work with others to get ahead.
But this wacko and his company are so far skewed away from a free market/team environment that I see no choice BUT government intervention.
The free market simply didn't work this time, and a correction needs to be made. If the gov can't do it, time and history will not be kind to this situation.
I read the article, I can't believe someone would put up a blank piece of paper as part of a final argument! Are they trying to insult the judge or is that how you guys do law out in the USA?!
I hope the judge has enough understanding of the situation to see that the only reason MS has serious competition now is because it has been restrained already by having the AntiTrust case hanging over it.
What does this mean for shareholders? If MS got split up, are those shares worth more or less? I think I'd throw a party if I saw their stock begin to crumble!
I hope MS's competitors have used this time wisely, once this is all over I expect MS will be back to their old selves...
*shudder*
Damnit I was sleeping did you have to wake me up? What? The trial's over? Already? Are you sure we can't just drag this out a little longer? Certainly we can get Prof VonBrowich from Essex Community College to roll in hear an testify about the socio-econimic ramifications of not emmbedding a web browser in our system DLL files... I mean come on, we're on retainer here! I got it! Let's sue the US government! That will keep us busy for years... uh... hey what's that guy doing? MY GOD! HE'S TRANSCRIBING OUR WHOLE CONVERSATION INTO A SLASHDOT PAGE!!!! STOP HIM! DON"T LET HIM CLICK SUBMIT!!!....
The government is trying to make the claim that Microsoft is preventing competition.
Microsoft is making the claim that they are as popular as they are not because of illegal practices, but because no good competitor exists. Sort of like someone running for office unopposed.
So yes, it's in MS's interests to prove that their market dominance is simply by chance. By taking into account the recent increases in both Apple and Linux's market shares they're showing that their market dominance could evaporate overnight when real competition shows up.
So what they're arguing is that they aren't preventing competition, just that no competition exists. That doesn't make them a monopoly, since a monopoly prevents competition.
Jackson appears to be convinced that the AOL acquirement of Netscape is significant.
Microsoft, of course, took over "the browser market" from the company (Netscape) who completely dominated it at the time. One monopoly taking down another monopoly. I guess I don't see the injustice, or rather, I don't see it as anything worse.
I'm glad, though, that Marc-boy is knocked off his perch. Are they keeping him in a glass display case in the AOL Headquarters lobby yet?
That sounds like competetive business practices. As engaged in by companies all over the world.
The eggheads in the lab, of course, know nothing about business and so are dismayed.
- Home. Home gets Windows 95/98/Millenium, the reference and games software, Internet Explorer, Works, and the hardware bits.
- Office. Office gets NT Workstation/2000 Professional, and Microsoft Office, and nothing else.
- Server. NT/2000 Server, BackOffice, other server-side apps.
- Developer & Legacy Systems. IDEs, languages, the advanced research labs, DOS, Win 1.0-3.11, NT 3.1-4.0, WinCE.
None would be barred from competing in the other's spheres, but would be barred from re-mergers and cooperation agreements. Outside mergers would be carefully watched, of course, but not prohibited.Imagine MS Office-on-W2K [office] competing with StarOffice-on-W98 [home], Corel-on-W2K [server], and SmartSuite-on-NT [developer] as the four Baby Bills form alliances to battle for control of the desktop...
"United Loan Gunmen"...
I Love It!
Actually, HTML Help is basically standard HTML4.
The problem is that HTML Help is stored in a compressed file format that needs browser assistance to read.
Since I don't think Netscape can accept HTML files from the standard input stream, and there's no way of telling Netscape to read an HTML file from memory, it doesn't seem plausible to use Netscape to read a decompressed help file page. Sure you could write the file to temp, but that leaves the prospect of stray temp files laying around and filling up your volume. Not exactly clean.
In addition to those problems, there is the problem with contxt sensitive help. This requires communication between the application and the browser. Netscape has refused to support any of MS's technologies, so it seems unlikely that Netscape would collaborate with MS to standardize an HTML help interface.
This is my biggest complaint. Netscape has gone out of it's way to snub everything MS wants to do, then they complain that they're being pushed out of the market.
I hate to tell you this, but you have to COOPERATE in order for a multi-vendor market to work. Everyone refusing to support anyone elses technologies means that everyone is on a "double or nothing" course.
Lies lies and more d*mn lies. Looks like Billygoat's got some anti-bible with him, you know, a book which teaches you how to lie. All you Linux lovers out there, be careful, Micros~1.sht has got Linux in their targets and are already commencing Operation Annihilation. WAKE UP! or else Linux will follow OS/2...
First call would be to Microsoft. The first question they ask is "What browser are you using for help files?". When the user replies "Netscape.", the response is "We aren't Netscape. Call them.".
Oh, come on now!
I don't know about you, but I *DETEST* when I get this kind of run around from a vendor. It sounds like they're passing the buck. What's to stop Netscape from saying "It's Microsofts fault" and then the user doesn't know who is right.
Not to mention that I don't the Netscape provides any kind of support to people that download Netscape for free.
Wrong. They did exactly that by threatening to revoke Windows licenses or significantly raise prices for manufacturers who wanted to install it.
Perhaps you should go back and check your facts. MS never threatened anyone for installing Netscape. They threatened them for REMOVING Internet Explorer.
*MANY* OEM's have been shipping netscape for years and were never threatened. Off the top of my head I know that Toshiba shipped Netscape (even on the desktop) for several years and I think they still do.
Consider:
Microsoft's competition has moved swiftly to make most of the DOJ arguments ring hollow.
"News for Nerds. Stuff that matters."
/.
It is kind of a question about relevancy. The fact is MS 'donating a large sum of money for some educational thing' isn't exactly relevant on
MS is using Linux as a way to prove they can't possibly have a monopoly. It's just amazedly ironic that the group of people that utterly hate MS will be the reason they win. Kind of makes you admire MS's ability to succeed, even when the odds are against them.
Correct. There should be no applications "integrated" into the OS.
/bin/bash is an application. init is an application. So is ls.
Umm,
Don't make me have to tell you again to stop putting all that on the filesystem without asking the user's permission.
They shipped their OS with the PC, back in the day when IBM dominated the corporate PC business. Maybe we should sue IBM. (I hope not)
private corporations or those of its citizens. I am a Libertarian. And I
generally abhor Government interference in anything.
But I'm willing to make an exception where Monoposoft is concerned. IMO,
this company and the people who command it have done so much to trash the
industry in which I work, that I feel there is no remedy the Government
can devise that would be too harsh.
No, I do not work for a Monoposoft competitor. And no, I do not own a single
Monoposoft product. (I believe in putting my money where my mouth is!)
2) Usefulness of the tool is not at issue in this case. The issue is illegal dumping of competitors products to put them out of business, a practice clearly prohibited by the Sherman Antitrust Act.
It would only be illegal if MS intended to charge for IE after it's competitors were out of business. MS stated from the very beginning that IE would *ALWAYS* be free.
Now, you may not believe that, but MS cannot be prosecuted for things it hasn't yet done. It also seems to stand in MS's favor that they announced that IE would always be free years before they were sued over it.
It hurts Netscape when you consder that browsers began as free (Mosaic, Lynx, etc..) Netscape was the *ONLY* company making a profit off of browsers. There is substantial evidence to prove that the free browser market was around long before Netscapes "pay" browser market was.
> I can't for the life of me imagine a help
> system that would be dependent on MS extensions.
Then you have a very poor imagination, I can think of several things you could do to extend HTML and thus make a better Help engine.
In actual fact HTML is pretty damned limited.
I'm not sure where you got your information.
IE was freely redistributable. I could include it on my products CD without a special liscense to redistribute it. Microsoft encouraged this.
Later, they also came out with a seperate install for the common controls so you didn't need to install IE to use them.
This is irrelevent. What is relevent is that MS did not have any intention of including the browser for free in the operating system until they failed to persuade Netscape to divide up the windows market - remember the first version of 95 plus which (1) was sold and (2) contained a version of IE.
You appear to be mistaken. Microsoft has produced documents from as early as 1993 which showed their intention to include a free "gopher" like browser. Additionally, while Plus! did include a browser, from day 1 you could download the browser from MS's ftp or web site for free.
Additionally, the OEM version of Win95 has *ALWAYS* included the browser. Just not the retail version.
How do you measure a free distrabution in terms of market share?
This whole MS/DOJ trial just sort of trailed off into obscurity? Is it still going on? What about all the states that also filed suit? Is the DOJ still pursuing all of its initially filed charges? Will Bill Gates serve time in jail like any ordinary people would if they lied to federal judges? Or will some cash change hands and this whole affair just be swept under the carpet?
It's hard not to notice the same basic arrogance, on a different level, of course, in the typical Slashdot participant. All the Libbertardian ranters who want the "government out of our business" and such basically thumb their nose at the government any time they can (at least in their online persona).
So I see this as an indictment of Microsoft in the same way as it's an indictment of so many of the people participating in this disccusion. No more, and no less wrong.
This is not just about MS. It's a warning to all psuedo monopolies that they are not above the law. I hope INTEL is watching and learning. If they're not careful, they'll be next.
And you don't have AirConditioning????
Yes, but Intel make a good rock solid product!
I've found their prices to be good too, so long as you want to buy last year's model!
If anyone doubts me, check out the speed of MMX Raid checksumming under Pentium III!
Oh, and one other thing. I was a member of the Win95 beta program and I clearly remember reading discussions about the "future" windows versions 6 months before Win95 was released (in other words, long before this "meeting" took place) then code named Nashville and Memphis...
Nashville was the "web shell enabled" version of Win95 which eventually became IE4 (They later made it compatible with NT as well, so it was no longer a Win95 upgrade).
This was fairly common knowledge as well. And it was back when Netscape was still giving away Navigator.
The court of appeals disagrees with you.
MS was found innocent of violating their consent decree, so what they did was *NOT* illegal.
If you go visit Iraq, I suspect you'd have a hard time finding anybody (in public) who would say they like the United States.
So what?
I could see a couple of years after the breakup, a new version of the OS that contains an integrated browser/word processor/spreadsheet.
.DOC format). Internet Explorer (version 5) transformed seamlessly into Word 2000 (which I also have installed) within the same frame, and with forward and back navigation buttons that allowed me to navigate out of the Word document back to the home page, etc.
Go ahead and wait a few years if you like.
Last night I was browsing a friend's home page and clicked on the link to her resume (the copy in Word97
So the Integration has already been done.
If you want a similarly integrated package for Linux, just load up StarOffice. Not as robust (the Web Browser is rather weak) but it's the same idea.
The flaw in your argument is that 1) The phone company was a government mandated monopoly. 2) It was illegal for anyone else to provide phone services. 3.) Even with competition, it was still a government mandated monopoly.
You really are a bunch of little storm troopers, aren't you?
Do we get to bitch-slap Linus for every bug we find in the kernel, too?
I want to Keel-haul the guys at RedHat for 6.0 in general.
Extending the C language, by adding features without the sanction of the C standards committee, is equally, if not MORE damaging to computing as a whole.
And yet GNU with GCC do just that, in the same spirit of "Embrace and extend" as Microsoft with their HTML browser.
This point is discussed in great detail (and of course with great fury) in some Usenet threads lately. The point is, should we mandate the breakup of the GNU organizations because of it?
While this may be a non-issue for folks living in sub 80-degree weather all the time, those uf us in the desert towns where it's 100+ for 6 months out of the year are seeing out chips burn themselves up. I've got squirrel cage type blower fans the size of hard drives blowing on a Pentium (1) 200MMX to keep it cool. It still runs at 180 degrees. Now I see these PIIs and PIIIs on cards with really huge heatsinks and multiple fans and I think this is an indication of bad design pushing the silicon beyone safe spec. If your cooling apparatus has to be that heavy-duty, then something is probably wrong with your chip design.
Actually, Intel has been *extremely* careful about compliance with antitrust laws and preventing a good case against them. I think the last complaint against them they settled out of court (and thereby avoiding any public display of their business practices). As far as I know, Intel doesn't have Microsoft's antitrust problem of shooting themself in the foot.
I refuse to use IE because I do not want my OS shell to crash every time I go to some 'script baby' hacker's site by mistake and it crashes my browser with some JavaScript trick.
I have been using IE for months now, and not had it crashed by this fabled hacker's site. Maybe I'm on a different Internet than you are.
Back when I used Linux, my experience was that Netscape was the single most common cause of taking down my desktop (usually recoverable without a reboot, but Netscape is buggy crap, and far worse than IE)
Microsoft will prove that any corporation with enough money can keep the courts tied up in circles while they run unchained through the marketplace and lay waste to any group that they feel threatened by. ...just as OJ Simpson proved that anyone with enough money can get away with anything despite mountains of evidence.
I've believe that the MS legal department refers to itself as the "sword of god."
No, this is not a joke.
Your memory is faulty.
Win95 had dial-up networking and TCP/IP at it's release. Plus! was also released the same day as Win95. You could also download the browser for free from MS's web site or ftp site. Finally, The original OEM version of Wi95 *DID* include IE. The retail versio did not.
Wrong on all accounts.
Also, no Microsoft Apps run on Linux because it hasn't been proven that more than one of each commerical application per Dormitory or Linux User Group would be sold.
Besides: X-Window? Seriously?
Oh good; closing arguments, then the decision in a few months. Another month or two for penalties to be applied (fanes? breakup? electric-shock collar for Gates?). Then, of course, comes the appeal. A few months just to file, another 6-months to a year for the retrial ... then, another appeal? a few months ... then, finally, the binding verdict finally arrives: MS98 illegally bundled the software and it must be removed. Fine, great ... by that time Win2003 will be in beta. New trial then for Win2003 ... a few more years to wind thru the system ...
ESR estimates that Microsoft has put the computer industry back about 10 years.
Do we care what that neo-pagan thinks? Really?
A.C. thinks Linux is trying to drag the computer inudstry back about 10 years. (to Unix ca. 1989)
Yes, I pitched Linux off my desktop at home. It's running on one machine still on the network. NetBSD is running on most of the other machines.
You wouldn't believe how much nicer it was to run Windows 98. I did it awhile after the Ken Thompson article here on Slashdot served as a wakeup call.
Actually, the fastest 21264s today (667 MHz) use around 100 watts. Intel's most power hungry CPUs have been a bit above 40 watts and the K7 is around this power usage level too. The current G3s and G4s use between 5 and 10 watts.
Personally, I think the PowerPcs are living up to their promise of power and simplicity. Judging by the spec*95 numbers, the 450 MHz G4 (int = 21.4, fp = 20.4) compares to the 600 MHz (int = 24, fp = 16) with about 2/3 the number of transistors (9.5M vs. 6.5M). And I don't think this accounts for AltiVec very well, either. With the PIII/600 selling for ~$600 (pricewatch) and the G4/450 for $355 (Motorola's press release), the G4 has better price/perfirmance. Now, if we could get some non-Apple PowerPC computers we just might start to see that price defefrence.
To digress even further, Apple makes good hardware, but they do charge a premium, even if it is less than it used to be. I am dissapointed to see the reduced price of the PowerPC processors not get passed on to the consumers. I remember when the 601/60 came out, it was cheaper than the Pemtium/60, yet comparable machines were still more expensive through Apple and the motherboard technology then seemed to be about a generation behind the PC world. It took Apple FOREVER to adopt a 66 MHz FSB. Shame.
Matt
Even if the finding of fact goes against MS, Microsoft's legal strategy will be to appeal delay and hope a new Republican administration will make the charges go away.
From what I've seen, all x86 processors are big and hot. PowerPCs run at about 1/3 the wattage and are comparably cooler. (The 300mhz G3 runs so cool that the iBook doesn't even have a fan)
M$ has demonstrated their utter contempt for the spirit of fair competition and the legal system itself by producing FALSE EVIDENCE to bolster their case.
They presented a simulation of what might happen if IE was removed from windows as if it were an actual demonstration. If this were a civil or a criminal case they alone would have been enough to destroy a defendants credibility and cause them to lose.
Remember when they got caught STEALING stacker's code?
Most of the things that M$ has done over they years aren't illegal in and of themselves, but when you look at the big picture they have engaged in a pattern of anti-competitive behavior which is illegal given their position in the marketplace.
M$ has an illegal monopoly and something should be done about it. I don't think that they should be broken up, I don't believe that will do much good, I believe that they should have to pay MAMMOTH fines and be subject to daily DoJ scrutiny until they have proven that they can obey the law.
Forget corporate welfare, I'm talking about corporate probation.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
yup -- this is offtopic.
.sig - should say "chevy metro"!
Your
Karnal
Alternate OSs can compete against Microsoft? I agree that they can, but I think you simplify the issue too much.
Yes, Linux and other OSs can compete, but with substantial disadvantages...
* Limited choice: Look at the systems that don't have Windows in some form installed on them. Personally, I build my own but if I owned a corporation or had to get one in a hurry, I'd be hard pressed to walk in to a store and buy one. This is ofcourse changing, but slowly, and is still much more limited.
* No specs = no support: Yes, I know, I can get great support, most things work very well, and Ieven help others, but just try and buy a webcam. I tried reciently, and not *1* I found in 5 local stores had one I could use. I'd have to order an outdated camera, or wait...to see if someone is sucessful in convincing the webcam chip makers to give out the specs.
I could go on, though I doubt that I'll be the only one with these type of comments.
Of course to speak of that, one needs to define the relevant market. In the DOJ case it is the desktop OS market(which more or less means x86, but not exactly). The existance of other OSes that can run in that market does not perclude MS from having monopoly power. Of course look at the OSes that you listed, the *x OSen don't think of themeselves as desktop systems - maybe workstation, definitely server but not true desktop systems. BeOS sells itself not as a general replacement for Windows or MacOS but as a specialty OS for multimedia work. And MacOS is hurt by being bound to Apple hardware.
Still whether or not there are other OSes is not sufficent to show that MS does not have monopoly power. We need to look at economies of scale and scope, price elasticities, marginal costs and average costs and other cool econ concepts. If you look at the ecomonic testimony in the trial, its easy to see that MS behaves very much like an monopolist - not perfectly, but that is beside the point.
You do have a good point in that market share does not imply anticompetitive. However, looking at MS's behave one can find a seemingly boundless list of anticompetitve acts. Having market power is not anticompetitive, but certain ways of using it are. Tying is a good example - as is exclusivity. So shoving the browser into the OS is anticompetitive as is getting ISPs to only support/distribute IE. Of course there are many other examples that do not have anything to do with the browser. And it needs to be realized that anticompetitive behavior has no effect (or negilible) effect on the market if it is not backed up by market power.
Open Source really hasn't changed MS's tune at all. It might some day, but hasn't yet. And again this is irrelevant to the trial because the trial is about past behavior and not future behavior (though the sentencing phase will take the future into account). OEMs may literally have a choice as to the OS to offer on desktop systems, but that doesn't mean that they have an effective choice. Do you really believe that Dell would not lose market share in a big way if it went with an *x os for its desktop systems? Do you think that they could negiotiate a deal with MS where they aren't charged for win98 on systems sold with another OS on them so that they could effectively sell both? Part of what makes a monopoly bad is that it allows a firm to abuse its suppliers and clients in a way such that the abuse is a stable equilibrium. The big OEMS would be better off without being bound to MS, but moving away from MS costs them in a big way.
Ask yourself first does Microsoft have a monopoly in PC operating systems. If you answered no, what is their market share in the OS market? Now, here in the US having a monopoly isn't illegal, but using your monopoly power to protect and extend your monopoly is.
If you've made it this far, ask you self a few more questions:
Really think about the answers to these questions. A conservative estimate of the costs of developing IE would be 500 million and other estimates have placed it at 1 billion (license fees plus dev). That is a lot of investment for a product you give away. Did Microsoft try selling IE? How did that do? Could HTML and the internet pose a threat to the microsoft monopoly?
Looking at their behavior toward Java is even clearer.
I think splitting the OS groups from the App groups would be very helpful, as long as there was someone paying attention so they don't just join together again under some sort of fake agreement between two seperate companies. Splitting them would force the OS firm to do what is best for the OS firm, not what is best for MS. For example, if MSOS wanted to build browser functionality into Windows, the logical thing would be to build hooks into the OS that any browser could hook into and perform that same functionality. As it was with MS and IE, the OS group had zero incentive to let any other browser perform that functionality so they hooked the MS browser into the MS OS. Despite the "we're not bundling" cry by MS, that's exactly what happened, to the detriment of consumers. That's just one example, there are many more (such as the fact that Office changes Windows dll files that you can be sure the Wordperfect people don't have access to). You're right in saying there would be 2 huge semi-monopolies but at least they would be on somewhat even footing with the rest of the industry.
I wish there was a law about having to present facts in court, because FOLDOC does a better job than your average lawyer on the Microsoft payroll. Incidentally, I used Netscape 1.1 back then, and it was the best browser around. :)
Netscape Communications Corporation
(Formlerly "Mosaic Communications Corporation") A company set up in April 1994 by Dr. James H. Clark and Marc Andreessen (creator
of the NCSA Mosaic program) to market their version of Mosaic, known as Netscape or Mozilla.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
One view of what Intel is attempting with its forthcoming Merced is to take these RISC ideas, and extend them by demanding that the compiler perform instruction-to-instruction dependency checking, and then format them into "bundles" of instructions that can all be safely issued at the same time.
fwiw
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
heh, almost everyone I know that uses Microsoft is anti-Microsoft.
No, not almost. I even know a lot of Windows coders. I don't think I know ONE person who is deep down, true-blue, go-to-bat-for-Bill-Gates Microsoft.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Well, part of the undocumentedness is obviously incompetence, not an attempt at occlusion.
How do you legally FORCE someone to do something (and do it WELL), that they are incapable of doing?
I think we'll see some injunctions about product tying, maybe some fines, and endless appeals, and flagrant abuse of the injunctions, and the Govt. not being able to do a damn thing about it.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Had Bill stayed at Harvard, we'd all be running OS/2 and LOVING it!
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
no browser is neccesary to download the browser of your choice.
Windows 95 has shipped with a nice little app called FTP.EXE since day one.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Apple: You omitted how Microsoft quite skillfully killed the Apple platform - by making an end-run around all of the other office-suite vendors with MS Office for Mac, in terms of feature-creep, and file-format compatability (office heterogeneity), killing all serious competition, (WP was beat down pretty good, as was Claris and others). Then when all the other vendors either offered sub-par products or no products due to cancellation of development for the Mac platform - because they were starved for cash from competition in the Windows market, they released the infamously bad Office 4.0, and cancelled their product. Now there were no office apps for Macintosh - and the platform's last holdouts in the office space abandoned it.
This is why the resumption of Office, Office 98 for Mac, was such a big deal, and is probably one of the greatest factors in Microsoft's resurgence. There's so much FUD and voodoo about translating office documents to/from WordPerfect and Claris/AppleWorks, that nobody will bother - even now that WordPerfect is free (no future), or that AppleWorks is actually an excellent suite for $99.
Microsoft could kill Apple (again), if they simply announce no new Office version for Mac. They've already done some recent damage by delaying IE 5 for Mac until next winter.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Oh, folks would invest in R&D because since they no longer pay taxes, they'd have all sorts of extra money laying around.
(never mind that they have to use that extra money for their own private police force, private investigators to investigate their uncertified doctors, private investigators to watchdog their private investigators, their own private chemistry lab to constantly test the air and water to make sure FreindlyCo isn't dumping toxic waste, and their own private meat inspector to make sure their food isn't infected with botulism, etc. etc. ad infinitum.)
Like Kythe said before. READ the Libertarian platform. You'll be suprised.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Hard time. For every employee above the level of Manager.
eh, okay, if you can get NT to boot on a 486/25 with 8 megs of RAM, you'll be eligible for parolle.
This eliminates all those sticky questions of "government control" and how to split the company, and fines being passed on to the customer.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Pardon me, but Netscape WAS NOT giving away their browser untill MS started to. You could download Navigator and use it for free in an "Educational" environment. But for use in a comercial application you were suposed to purchase a full license.
MS came along and tried to push their way into the market place with Explorer under the same license as Netscape. It wasn't working so they began bundling it with Windows and allowing download use with no restrictions. Netscape was then forced to begin to give away their browser for free use inorder to maintain their market share.
Ex-Nt-User
I'll second that! I was just telling a colleague over dinner how bogus it is to be doing file i/o. It should be a criminal offense to ship an OS for 64 bit systems that does not use memory mapping of files as the basis of access to secondary memory. "Save" is a concept that should have been buried long ago.
I wrote parts of this stuff
I'd love to see a non MS world. Only if the alternative looked as good as Windows and had the same amount of apps.
I'm wondering who computer companies need to target. Do people buy Windows machines because they use them at work and are familiar with them. Probably so. What percentage? I don't know. Would targeting coporations to change OS's help build the home consumer base. Probably so.
Question: Why do corporations run Windows software? In order to break MS's dominance, corporate software needs to be written on different platforms. Which thanks to Oracle, IBM, etc., it's starting to.
Microsoft got to be who they are today, because they got in to the desktop market early. They created a product that wasn't available on the desktop for the PC and locked companies into their product. If IBM had used the same strategic plan with OS/2, they might own 90% of the market.
So, build good (functionality and pleasing to the eye) applications on an alternate OS, while maintaining compatibility with current infrastructures, and we might have a winner. Or we can convince all of the CTO's out there to dump their current infrastructure and rebuild. Why would a company do this? Just to spite MS? I don't think so. Obviously the only sound attack is to convince new companies to build around the "alternative" OS.
From my orignal post, no one is going to want to build around an alternative OS until the software is easy to use, looks good, and costs little to maintain.
but a larger distributer with an established customer base has the clout to do it
Would they lose a lot of business because people looking for MS products just can't get it from them? MS has showed they won't settle for companies selling competitors products. So the distributor can't sell both MS and it's competitors. This is what the DOJ case should REALLY be about. Not the browser issue.
An operating system (sometimes abbreviated as "OS") is the program that, after being initially loaded into the computer by a bootstrap program, manages all the other programs in a computer. The other programs are called applications.
Read Operating Systems, Design and Implementation by Andrew Tanenbaum
Or check out whatis.com
It's a textbook used in Operating Systems CS class (at least it was used at Arizona when I went there).
I believe that Linux is as popular as it is today, because of how everyone has turned anti-Microsoft.
Almost everyone I know that uses Linux is anti-Microsoft. Yes, there are some people who like both Linux and Microsoft (me being one of them), but that's rare in my opinion.
Now because of this hatred towards Microsoft, Linux is gaining coders that were previously Windows coders.
It's funny how religious computers are. When I was 12 years old it was Vic 20's and C64's vs. Atari ST's, and Apple II's. Then it became Amiga's vs. Mac's and PC's, and now that PC's dominate, it's turned to OS's. Windows vs. Linux.
As The World Turns...
I'll give you OJ, but the other two?
There has always been other choices out there
Not for the desktop. Linux isn't there. Who knows if it will ever get there. Not everyone likes to edit perl scripts and configuration files to get things working. It took me a long time to get comfortable with Linux. I used to install it, put Windows back on my machine, a year later, install a newer version of Linux, put Windows back on my machine.
To this day, I still run Windows. Believe me, I hate Microsoft, but currently there is no other alternative to the number of apps, and the type of apps that run on Windows. Everyone talks about the quality of Linux/X apps. They might have less bugs in them then a lot of Windows apps, but they are just starting to LOOK good. Appearance is almost as important to a user if not more, than an occasional crash.
I use Windows NT everyday, both at home and at work, and yes it does crash, sometimes. So does Linux. It's not always the OS, but rather the application running is poorly written.
I've been using Linux off and on since '94, and I am extremely comfortable with it, but it's just not even close to being as easy to use as Windows is (most of the time).
Well MS needs to get profits from somewhere, so they can't possibly compete with Open Source software forever
Sure they can, how does RedHat make their money? Through support.
Solution: Give Windows away for free, and offer support contracts just like RedHat. MS would have to scale down, because their revenue would drop, but with owning 90% of the desktop market, they certainly wouldn't be hurting.
So I am not saying that MS must be allowed to hang deer carcasses upwind of Seattle, only that a company has the right to decide what it peacably does with its own assets.
"Peacably". Yes, absolutely...
HOWEVER: Microsoft has demonstrated time and again, with their disthonesty (astroturf campaigns, staged evidence, cooked and leaked memos), and the way in which they throw their weight around (Thou Shalt Not Ship Netscape, or else), that they cannot, or will not, use their assets "peacably".
If someone repeatedly jabs you with a pointy stick, what do you do?
Personally, I'm a 3-stage-approach kind of guy:
1) Ask Nicely: "Please don't poke me, that hurts."
2) Tell, not so nicely: "Knock that shit off!"
3) Break out the can of whup-ass.
I can promise you that MS passed stage 1 and 2 a long time ago. The DOJ's "can o' whup-ass" is removing MS's right to do what they will with their own ass-ets.
--Mark
That's why I find it rather comical to note Eric Raymond's justifications for the DOJ's going after Microsoft (or lack of outrage at the DOJ, take your pick). Since he's a self-described Libertarian who has written several papers on the matter, he should know better.
I strongly suspect more people would renounce Libertarianism if they looked closely at the LP's positions, and really thought about the consequences.
Kythe
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Kythe
Attempting to beat competition is not "anticompetitive". Attempting to prevent competition is anticompetitive, when one is in a position to do it. These are not really difficult concepts; they are the meaning behind antitrust laws. Perhaps you have an example of when they've been applied successfully using a different interpretation?
Also, despite your assertions, all laws are open to some interpretation, no matter how "vague" or "specific", and all have qualifiers.
In addition, the Constitution is not a law in the same sense as other laws. It is a limitation on the power of government, not a limitation on the actions of the people. Thus it is much less important that it be narrowly focused, since an overly broad interpretation will provide more freedom to the people while a broad interpretation of other laws leads to less freedom.
This is simply untrue. The U.S. Constitution is a description of general principles of government. As such, it provides limitations on the rights and priveledges of all parties. Using your example, an overly broad interpretation of the 4th Amendment would allow the government to conduct what you or I might view as "unreasonable" searches and seizures -- surely, something you would view as "less freedom".
Capitalism means the free market. A free market in which the Federal government is allowed to step in and stop companies who act "unfairly" is a contradiction in terms.
This is a Libertarian interpretation, one which equates "Capitalism" with "free" with "lassaiz-faire". Furthermore, there is NO (non-idealistic) reason to believe a lassaiz-faire market is always superior; rather, history tends to indicate the opposite, in many cases. Ever hear of the "Theory of the Second Best"?
Over the long term, monopolies are impossible in a free market, even without antitrust law.
Perhaps over the VERY long term, individual monopolies won't last (though there's no real reason to believe they won't, either). However, I for one don't think a series of abusive monopolies are any better. Further, free markets are predicated upon easy entry into the market. If a market is cornered or coerced, it isn't free.
Your faith in lassaiz-faire markets is quite idealistic. Check out "The Bigness Complex", by Walter Adams if you'd like an alternative point of view.
Kythe
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Kythe
It'd be pretty foolhardy not to have such a contingency plan for times like that.
Kythe
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Kythe
I'd like to point out that the Good Libertarian would respond to this by claiming all copyrights (in fact, all intellectual property protection) should be abolished completely.
Unfortunately, Libertarians have yet to turn around and explain how reasonable investments in R&D would continue to be made, when any gains from such investments would be public domain the moment a product goes out the company door.
Kythe
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Kythe
If MS do get off scot-free, they will view this as a vindication of their position and they will once more push Windows onto PC's using discounts as the incentive. All their old practices (which have been slightly subdued in the last few months due to the case) will return, except worse since no-one will want to waste time on a case which has already been fought. Let's face it, if they win, it will make a lot of potential prosecutors back off, since MS will have precedent on their side.
I don't expect some huge penalty to MS, but a good, solid wrist slap is in order for some of their past practices.
--
As far as I'm concerned I'd rather see Bill Gates and the rest of his Microsoft Gestapo put behind bars where criminals like them belong. However, unfortunately there is no possibility of this happening as this is not a criminal case. I remain convinced that Microsoft and the people who run microsoft are indeed thieves, liars and back stabbers. Apparently being a thief, liar and a back stabber in the US is legal.
Microsoft has a bigger fear from being found guilty than a potential forced breakup of their 4th Reich. Indeed, a guilty verdict would open the door for many companies and individuals to sue them in civil court because of damages due to the monopoly. Really, it's not a breakup they are worried about, its all the legal problems they will have to deal with after the fact.
And I think they deserve every bit of it too. Microsoft officials have lied,threatened,bullied and stole their way to the top. As far as I'm concerned (though it won't happen) if Microsoft were to dissappear off the face of the earth tomorrow, the entire industry would be far better off. Really, all Judge Jackson needs to do to determine MS monopoly is to simply use Windows for even a small period of time. It's such a bloated unreliable piece of trash that it would amaze anyone with even the intelligence of a pissant, that 95 percent of all PC's in the world run it. And if that isnt proof of a monopoly, I don't know what is.
Microsoft: You reap what you sow. With all the illegal criminal actions you have committed in the industry and have got away with for so long, It's pay back time.
You can flame me all you want. But it is outright wrong for criminals to hide behind white shirts and ties and say what they are doing is ok becaue it's the capitolist way.
You have been assimilated.
I fail to see how anyone can accuse a company of being anticompetitive in an industty where there's a concept like Open Source.
Hmmm... I fail to see how anyone can get wet in a rainstorm when there's so much space between the raindrops.
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
DOS was a clone of CP/M bought by Microsoft from the person who developed it. And this is your example of innovation? Have any more?
No, Microsoft does not have a record of innovation. It has a history of cloning, polishing, and bundling. But not of innovation. (ESR estimates that Microsoft has put the computer industry back about 10 years.
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
> A lot of people stipulate that if the Windows licenses were revoked from these manufacturers, they would be done for. Kaput. Well, that might be so. Alternatively, those same manufacturers just might have a harder time. What if they put OS/2 on those machines?
Well, I hate to harp on this again, but that's pretty wishful thinking. If Compaq, who was one of the ones threatened, made an announcement that they couldn't sell Windows anymore, but they'd be glad to offer their customers these OS/2 boxes (or Linux, or BeOS) they'd be done for.
Companies have to keep growing to survive in the market, especially with competitors around like Dell and HP and all the other vendors. Compaq would instantly lose most of its revenue, partners, and customers. Not to mention the tanking stock, shareholder lawsuits, etc. etc.
Even if they just had the price of Windows raised substantially, the effects would be less drastic, but they'd lose substantial profit on each machine and therefore customers.
No matter the outcome of the trial, one very positive thing to result is that these manufacturers can load machines with Linux, BeOS, etc. without suffering reprisals from MS because MS is so carefully scrutinized.
> There has always been other choices out there, but the point is that computer manufacturers have always been so enamored with Microsoft's software that they've chosen to ignore the competition.
You are completely ignoring the threat factor. MS was shown to raise the cost of Windows to those computer manufacturers who stepped out of line, be it to load Netscape Navigator on their machines or perform other acts of MS heresy. Windows is an essential facility for computer manufacturers (more proof of monopoly) and losing a Windows license would be a death sentence. "Enamored" ain't go nothing to do with it.
Warden spent the bulk of his time arguing that Microsoft does not have a monopoly, saying that any one of many new technologies, from the rival Linux operating system to Internet-based software applications, could quickly threaten the dominance of Windows.
As my one friend put it, "We're not a monopoly, but anyone can threaten our dominance. Bu we're not a monopoly." Makes me sick.
Dunno... if there were real competition in the x86 market (at least, real enough to the perception of the suits at Microsoft), don't you think they'd try to port their software?
(The only reason I don't include the Macintosh in there is because the original poster said x86.)
--
QDMerge 0.21!
how to invest, a novice's guide
Windows 95 Gold installed IE2. Thus IE has been distributed with Windows in someway. This is one of the most foolish accusations made by the DOJ. I hope that Jackson will not consider this allegation since it is not true. He should consider all the other ones (which are true) and rule according to those. If he does rule on the browser one there is essentially going to be an automatic appeal. Not that there isn't already. This just makes it even easier.
Let's start with perjury. Microsoft executives, up to Bill Gates himself, have been caught flat-out lying to the court. This doesn't require a fine on the part of Microsoft, but in fact is a series of criminal charges against members of their high command.
Fine, then we can charge him for that. That's a seperate issue however.
From there, we go to violating an agreement that they signed to get out of legal trouble earlier. The Microsoft position on the "bundling" issue is that the definition of "bundling" is indefensible, and that they thus signed a bogus document.
They signed that document to avoid being prosecuted for the same unjust laws they are being prosecuted for now. If antitrust law didn't exist, they never would have signed that document.
From there, we go to violating an agreement that they signed to get out of legal trouble earlier. The Microsoft position on the "bundling" issue is that the definition of "bundling" is indefensible, and that they thus signed a bogus document.
Antitrust law makes illegal "combinations in restraint of trade," and "anticompetitive practices." Taken literally, that makes all businesses criminal, since by definition, they work to beat their competition and drive them out of business. If that's not vague, I don't know what is. Now you might think that other parts of the law clarify that, but the fact is that government lawyers come up with new types of "combinations in restraint of trade" whenever a new bad guy comes along. It's elastic law, which means tyrranical law. Most of the things that Microsoft has done were not considered crimes when they were doing them. That's why the government emphasizes "patterns of behavior." Very few of MS's specific actions are illegal, but only "when taken as a whole" they are illegal. That seems to me overly broad.
As far as predicting which things are and are not illegal, forget the reinterpretations. Using a monopoly position, as such, to either keep that monopoly or gain a new monopoly, is illegal. Having a monopoly position by virtue of superior products, and keeping that position by improving one's product, is not illegal.
That sounds pretty vague to me. How much market share is a "monopoly?" How broadly do you define the market? How long do they have to hold the market? How much use of a monopoly in another market is acceptable? Taking the above literally, Microsoft should be prohibited from making software other than Windows, as should Apple. And who decides how much a given monopoly is based upon "product superiority?" That puts the courts in the position of judging the merit of computer products.
Now you can say that the courts can figure this stuff out, but my point is that it shouldn't have to. There's no ambiguity abouyt what constitutes murder. There might be some uncertainty at the edges about which kind of murder a given act is, but if you kill someone and you were not being attacked at the time, you are guilty of some form of murder. Antitrust law defies simple summary. If you are asked to say which specific acts constitute "anticompetitive practices" or "combinations in restraint of trade," you can't do it. Because the law does not regulate specific actions but "patterns of behavior." And that's so open-ended that any successful company is open to harassment.
I disagree. A law that is too specific can be worked around; the best way to avoid pseudocrime (acts which shouldbe crimes but really aren't due to a technicality) is to write a general law.
OK, how about a law that says "no one may do bad things." We can work the details out in court.
The point is that anything that can't be summarized in specifics (like murder or theft) should not be a crime. The law should be written in a way that given a set of facts, 90% of the people will interpret the law in the same way. This is because people need to know which things they are or are not allowed to do. Allowing the courts to decide after the fact whether a given action is illegal is a recipe of tyranny.
Remember that the highest law in the land, the Constitution, is written up with a lot of vague laws. the vagueness of these laws is precisely what makes them useful two hundred years later.
Generality is not the same as vagueness. "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech" seems pretty straightforward to me. You can pretty easily determine when a law abridges freedom of speech. Of course the Supreme Court has decided that there are other concerns that overrule the first amendment in some cases, but that's a problem with their choices, not the law itself.
In addition, the Constitution is not a law in the same sense as other laws. It is a limitation on the power of government, not a limitation on the actions of the people. Thus it is much less important that it be narrowly focused, since an overly broad interpretation will provide more freedom to the people while a broad interpretation of other laws leads to less freedom.
The DoJ is prosecuting Microsoft on antitrust charges because their other crimes are committed against specific entities that can and should prosecute them seperately. Note that Sun Microsystems is currently suing Microsoft over their Java implementation. Caldera is or was suing Microsoft over their efforts to sabotage DR/DOS. The DoJ trial is not the only thing landing Microsoft in court these days.
Fine, and if those prosecutions are for real, specific crimes, I support their right to do so. But let's keep them seperate from this trial, which is not about specific crimes.
I don't care about punishment, and I don't want to punish anybody. I do care about keeping capitalism working. Monopolies break the assumptions of capitalism, and thus break the capitalism.
Capitalism means the free market. A free market in which the Federal government is allowed to step in and stop companies who act "unfairly" is a contradiction in terms. Over the long term, monopolies are impossible in a free market, even without antitrust law. Antitrust law is not a safeguard of a free market. It undermines it and makes it less free.
As for Microsoft being a "wrench" in the gears, I think you might be suffering from myopia. From a technical standpoint, Windows is a mediocre product. But for most users, it is *still* the best choice for many tasks. The Mac OS doesn't have the software base and the commodity hardware, and the Unices are intimidating for the average user. I hope something better comes along to replace Windows, but for now I think the existence of Windows is a good thing. I'd hate to see that obstructed by government interference.
No one claims Sun has done anything wrong when they bundle their own version of ls without including a copy of an alternative version. Are they engaging in "anticompetitive practices" when they install their ls by default?
The concept of "dumping" is absurd. Please tell me how low Microsoft's prices have to be to qualify as "dumping."
The per-unit cost of Windows is practically zero. A few bucks for the box and manuals, a couple of bucks for the CD burning, and that's it. IT WOULD seem that they could sell Windows for $20 and still not be "dumping."
Of course, they need to recover their R & D costs, but then the question is, how much of those costs must they recover with each sale? This depends on how many copies they sell. But then that means that you can't define "dumping" without a coplicated formula taking into account R & D costs, demand curves, and the like. The concept of "dumping" becomes ridiculous.
Besides, MS has made loads of money on Win98, so I don't see how it can be considered dumping in any case.
Now, you might say that their prices are lower than those of their conpetitors, but so what? That's what compatition is all about. Do you really expect Microsoft to charge the same amount as each competitor in every industry?
As for Netscape, keep in mind that both companies have been giving away their browsers for years, and both are doing just fine. It would seem that the fair market cost of a web browser is zero, the same way that the fair market cost of most web-based services is zero (recouped with ads)
The point is that "dumping," particularly in the conputer field, is simply not economically meaningful, and is a lousy basis for the law. For every genuine dumping complaint, you get 2 complaints from mediocre companies who can't compete in the market place, and so are whining to the government to prop them up. Laws against "dumping" and "predatory pricing" should be repealed.
How is the software industry any different from any other, so much so that it shouldn't be scrutinized by the government in the same fashion every other industry is?
No different. I think other industries should not have to deal with antitrust either.
Your assertion that "even if they did break a law, it's a stupid law to begin with" holds absolutely no water. I happen to think having to stop at a red light is outdated and stupid, too. I think I'll start running them from now on. Let's see how far that gets me.
And that would be a stupid decision, because the law against running a red light is a good law and so you should be punished. I don't see how that's the least bit relevant. The fact that I object to antitrust law doesn't mean that I dislike all laws.
The fact of the matter is, the antitrust laws in this country *are* specific and to-the-point. If they weren't, there would be countless cases prosecuted under them every year. I don't see too many going to court, do you?
That's because only large companies are targets, and because the DoJ and state attorneys' general can bring antitrust suits. Study the history some time. You'll find that there are many cases in which people are prosecuted for categories of behavior that had never previously been prosecuted as crimes.
Microsoft broke the rules. Now it's time to pay up.
That's an incredibly concrete-bound mentality. Are you telling me that all laws are just? That's ridiculous. Legislators are mortals too, and they make mistakes. Your unwillingness to consider the merits of the specific law is disappoointing.
never mind that they have to use that extra money for their own private police force
That makes no sense.
private investigators to investigate their uncertified doctors
There's no reason that everyone has to do this on their own. That's what the media and various research organizations are for. You could subscribe to a magazine, for example, that would rate doctors. And there would still be med-school diplomas. They just wouldn't be coercively enforced by the govt.
their own private chemistry lab to constantly test the air and water to make sure FreindlyCo isn't dumping toxic waste
Again, this doesn't have to be done on an individual basis.
their own private meat inspector to make sure their food isn't infected with botulism
If a meat packer sold meat with botulism in it, how long do you think it would last? In fact, meat packers would hire outside testing services to test their meat to prove it was safe, so they could get more customers.
ad infinitum
Exactly. All the wasteful, coercive, destructive things the government does would be replaced with voluntary private alternatives.
> Actually, you do. If you install some random shell, and renamed it to 'bash'
Actually bash itself is a (free) replacement for sh. If bash is called as sh, it behaves just like sh. So it seems, at least in the unix world, that even something as integral as the shell is not integrated into the OS. The behavior and the standard are integrated, but not the specific app.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
I think the "ls" command is pretty useful tool, too. But on my Solaris 2.6 machine, I can replace it with gls.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
I described the original IE 4.0 policy. Microsoft loosened up later on.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Merky1 makes a critical point that shouldn't be ignored in the back-and-forth. Microsoft took a bunch of stuff that was in the base OS (or like digtal signing, should have been), and moved it from Windows to Internet Explorer.
For example, the CTL3D32.DLL has been a standard system DLL in Windows since the beginning of time. All of a sudden, all updated versions became part of IE. If you are a 3rd Party Windows developer, and you require some new functionality in CTRL3D32, your product has suddenly become dependant on Internet Explorer to run.
But here's the catch - In order to get a licence to include IE with your product, you had to jump through a bunch of hoops far more restrictive than the licence for Windows DLLs. For example, Microsoft required IE licencees to use IE-only content (ActiveX, DHTML) on their public websites, blocking out Netscape users. They also were requiring that the "Channel Bar" (basically banner ads on your desktop - revenue going to MS) be installed on any machine with IE.
My understanding is that many of these requirements have been dropped, but if that isn't predatory monopolistic behavior, I'm not sure what is.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I may be wrong, but from what I recall: ...
There was a point when some parts of the WWW development as a standard were still getting DARPA money. And at least at that time Netscape was actually officially authorized to extend the protocol specs. This was somewhere back in 1995 I think
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
By that logic, a word processor is a natural extension of an operating system because it is a useful tool, so you'd have no problem if MS bundled MSWord with windows, and pressured OEMs to not ship competing word processors.
An operating system consists of a kernel and hardware drivers and nothing more. Anything else, including GUIs, "system" libraries, editors, compilers, WEB BROWSERS, word processors, or email clients all fall under the category of _bundled apps_.
Whether or not Microsoft's bundling of these apps is an illegal attempt to grow its monopoly, is now up to the judge to decide.
When does the judges finding of fact get released? Before or at the same time as the verdict?
The Judges "Facts" are hard to get reversed.
Decisions based on the "Facts" are easier to get reversed or overturned, since the judge may have inncorrectly applied the various laws. The "Facts" will be the most interesting, and could force MS to settle.
MS has a 90% market share
MS has used exclusive contracts in the past
etc
I do not think that any of these suggested punishments are fair.
:)
"Force MS to release full specs and write full export capabilities" - no, no, no. If enough people want those capabilities and will not buy MS Office without them, Microsoft will write the capabilities. But if people will buy MS Office without them, let them buy what they want. Who are we to tell someone what they are using is less than optimal if it is sufficient enough for them. There are various alternatives (StarOffice, Corel, etc), but the simple fact is that most people will just buy MS Office out of habit or popularity, which is THEIR DECISION.
"Prohibit MS from bundling multiple packages together" is perhaps the best idea, although I would modify it to read "Prohibit MS from bundling multiple packages together which cannot be removed individually or used separately", but even THAT is unfair, because if they want to, say, use a single component as a base class for all their software and make every single component proprietary, let them. As long as people will use their software let people buy it and use it. When someone wants something else, they will change, or Microsoft will (more likely) change their product to match.
"Prohibit MS from deviating from standards" is interesting also, especially considering their completely worthless 'version' of Java. Being a Java developer I know first hand what deviating from standards can do, about half of my development time is spent writing hacks to get Java functionality which works perfectly under a real Java to work under Windows' jview or IE. And I think that since Sun has a license that you cannot make a bad copy of Java, Microsoft should be prohibited from what they are doing. But unless a particular license exists (like say with the TCP/IP standards you mentioned), if they do not follow the TCP/IP standard then they are screwed, and if they present what we might view as a shoddy implementation of TCP/IP, then AGAIN, let people buy it if they want to. If someone wants a really really good TCP/IP implementation, they should come to Purdue and study under Comer and Park and write their own. Or simply use something else.
disclaimer before continuing: I have no idea about the laws concerning anti-trust stuff, and the few bits I have heard are probably heresay or complete rubbage, nonetheless I will state what I think based on the limited information that I have.
Personally I do not think that Microsoft is doing something wrong if they ask/force Gateway2000 to use only windows on their machines. If their deal is good enough and gateway can sell enough computers, I don't care, let people buy it, let gateway and microsoft make their deal. Perhaps that is unfair to JohnDoeOS, which of course is not allowed to be preinstalled on a gateway PC because of this deal, but hey, if enough people wanted it to warrant it, gateway would not make the deal. I think that the 'deals' Microsoft has with PC companies are extremely good for the average PC user, who just wants a freakin' word processor and net connection and doesn't care about how good his/her implementation of Java and/or TCP/IP is, because these deals help bring cost down for some systems (I.E., if there was no deal and you wanted windows, you'd have to pay more).
BUT, and I repeat, BUT, these kind of deals are prohibited BY LAW (I am COMPLETELY UNSURE OF THIS FACT/NON-FACT). If that is true, then perhaps Microsoft does need punished (how I will not begin to assume to know). But I think that the laws, if such they are, are crap. I hate capitalism to the extreme, but that is the way things work here.
BTW, I run FreeBSD for my servers, Solaris x86 for development, Linux for my desktop, and of course Windows NT for administrative work at work. My favorite flavor is...
none of the above. (read the sig). I hate computers.
i am sam i am. i live in a cave.
burn the computers. go back to the abacus.
That sounds like one of the arguments that the next round of lawyers will bring up in the appeal. "Your scumness, we believe our client didn't get a fair decision from Jackson, because our client's representation at that time was very insulting and arrogant in court." Perhaps they've known from the beginning that they were going to lose, and have been making fools out of themselves all during the trial, in order to tempt the other side to take advantage of it, so they can use it in the appeal?
---
Have a Sloppy day!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
They never prevented Netscape from being installed. Use it to your heart's content.
No, they didn't. They did, however, prevent me from using Netscape as the only browser on the system. They made it so that I must install MSIE to use their software, whether or not I want it and whether or not I install any other browser. Even though they themselves created the functionality that would let Netscape be used for everything they claim as a reason to make MSIE part of the OS.
Netscape is a buggy piece of garbage
Not relevant. If you don't like Netscape, don't use Netscape. If you don't like MSIE, though, MS has insured that you don't have that option, which is the problem.
there are other browsers out there. For an OS to use a browser as a fundamental tool (especially help pages), there needs to be a standard browser that the OS can depend on to have standard functionality (which, in Netscape's particular case, actually works right)
Wrong. You need a browser which supports particular standards. If your help pages require HTML 4.0, though, then any browser which correctly implements HTML 4.0 will display those pages properly. If this were not the case, the World Wide Web wouldn't exist because Netscape couldn't display half the pages and MSIE couldn't display the other half. That I can write HTML pages and check them with Netscape and through NetMechanic and have them display correctly in MSIE without specifically checking them using it is evidence that you do not need a specific browser to display standard HTMl pages. For Windows to interface with the browser the browser has to provide the appropriate COM interfaces, but the whole point of COM according to Microsoft is to let you use something without knowing the exact implementation behind it.
Well, we already get this sort of run-around. If you've got a problem, Microsoft blames any third-party drivers or software for the problem and the driver and software makers blame Microsoft. The only difference is that, in this case, the HTML source is available and can be checked against the DTD. If it validates and the browser doesn't display it correctly, then the browser isn't implementing the DTD correctly. If it didn't validate, the help file isn't HTML. Either way, there's an unambiguous answer.
init can easily be removed. In fact, I have a startup mode that only runs a shell without init at all. Very useful for clean-up after a particularly messy crash-and-burn.
ls is likewise removable. If I'm using sash, I don't need the ls binary at all.
If I install some random incompatible shell, such as tcsh, then yes it'll break. If I install a shell which uses Bourne syntax and follows the POSIX standards for shell behavior, it'll work just fine. I've tested the relevant startup scripts under bash, the original Bourne shell, ksh and pdksh. Original Bourne shell doesn't work very well because I like to use some extended constructs that POSIX allows but Bourne is too old to support, but the other three shells are close enough to be relatively interchangeable.
That is *not* the point of the trial. It is legal in the U.S. for a company to hold a monopoly, it is illegal to use that monopoly to exploit other markets. The government's case is that Microsoft used their OS monopoly to take over the browser market.
Even after all the evidence in the DOJ's favour, I still think MS will win.
Call me a pessimist, but even that botched video tape hasn't convinced me that the DOJ will succeed.
Don't get me wrong, I do think that MS is guilty as charged. I just think that BillG and co. are teflon coated...
:-(
----- Documentation is worth it just to be able to answer all your mail with 'RTFM' - Alan Cox.
A browser is a natural extension of an operating system, for the simple fact it is such a useful tool.
Spoken like a true Microsoft drone. That's the silliest thing I've ever heard, as it was when MS first tried to use that argument. Sure, that's why there's a big chunk of the Linux kernel devoted to "browser" (not). If "useful tool" was the criterion for what goes in an OS, why doesn't MS bundle Word and Excel in there too?
If a manufacturer wants to, say, put all his help pages into HTML, how can he do it? He can't, unless there is a standard browser built into the operating system.
Utter nonsense. Coding standard HTML doesn't require the presence of a browser. Even reading HTML help pages doesn't require a full browser, just an HTML-to-(possibly formatted)text routine. If MS had merely included a library of routines to interpret HTML rather than a full up internet browser, they might have a case. They didn't, and they don't.
-- Alastair
Or, how about this....
Build a no-frills browser that works with your help files, but not much else. This way it probably won't be your browser of choice on the internet.
consider lynx. Very useful, but not exactly appropriate for graphical pages etc.
Karnal
The most commonly touted break up possibility is seperate applications and OS companies. Personally I think that's absurd. Instead of having one ultra-mega-monopoly, you would have two
mega-monopolies. Sure monopolies aren't illegal, but you can't tell me that the M$ culture of bullying companies and consumers wouldn't continue in each of these Baby-Bills.
Personally I think that M$ needs to be broken up into several comapnies. Break up on a team/group level (50-200 people or so). Split all the concrete asests (equipment, finances, etc) n ways, and give each group a copy of all the intellectual property. Have a court order ruling that they can't remerge until after a period of time (We don't want a scene out of "Terminator 2" now do we?) and give them some sort of legal protection from being immediatly swallowed up by a competitor (i.e. Sun) for an equally long period of time.
Some of them will die off, some will survive. Eventually each of the Baby-Bill's would go they're own way. Some specialize in WinCE, others NT, others Win9x, still others Office. The key thing to remember is there are multiple Baby-Bills for each of these products, not just one.
(Personally I'd expect WinCE to die first. I can't imagine that piece of shit can survive without the Power of Lord Bill behind it.)
Of course that's just what I'd want to see. I bet they're just fined.
I never said either, did I?
Extending HTML is a bad thing, if done in the wrong way, ie without the community (and/ie W3C)'s blessing. It should be a free give & take of definition and sample implementation between companies and the open-source "world".
Both NS and IE have their pros & cons; you just have to choose which you want, based on the advantages of one over the other, coupled with the mindset behind it if you want to involve some politics.
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
I think anyone is, or at least should be, authorised to extend the specs, it's when they extend the implementation without producing a publically-available version of the spec underneath for all to criticise, that it sucks.
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
In one word: Autoconf :)
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
ISTM that there are a few possible responses to this sort of thing, especially in slashdot, being the, LINUX R0X, unbiassed place it is.
In particular, the bit about linux as a 'rival' needs defining. At the moment I suspect it's more that there should be more machines out there with linux on (fair enough) with more desktop-level users (OK, ish). However, with users come lusers, and even worse, fundamentalist advocates.
I recommend a new "metric" for having "won" - that the linux community's signal is at least as strong as the microsoft community's, although there are *fewer* *geeks* doing the promoting but more quality per capita, as it were.
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
But they haven't done it in HTML - they've done everything in MSHTML, whatever that is - it's not as though there are sources for MS parsers around, nor have the W3C exactly ratified it...
I don't think browser ability is required anywhere else in the OS. If they'd approached it that way up, then fine. But I'm far from convinced...
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
Actually, If Bill had stayed in Harvard, OS/2 Wouldn't exist, remember, it used to be a Microsoft/IBM joint venture.
If bill had stayed in college, there wouldn't have been BASIC on the altair...
And we would all be running CP/M-86 and GEM
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
OJ
The Menendez Brothers
Leon Lett
There is no real justice in America. I'm only thankful the case wasn't tried in California.
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
The only way to do that successfully is to break up the application business from the OS business, placing them into two separate companies. There's no way to prevent secret APIs being slipped over the transom to the app developers unless there is no financial interest in doing so.
I wouldn't balkanize them further into different companies for database, user applications, different levels of OS, since that unnecessarily weakens each business. If a breakup does occur (which will never happen in our lifetime because the lawyers will delay it till the trump of doom), then each component should be kept strong enough to compete successfully but not so strong as to allow monopolist tactics.
In other words a breakup should be designed to maximize competition in all areas.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The problem is, this isn't japan. It's America. And that is anti-competative. And we have laws against that here.
But if MS is broken up then MS Applications Inc. will no longer be beholden to MS Operating Systems Inc. It will seek to make the biggest profit it can, and if there is profit in porting MS Office to Linux then they will do it.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
I think that breaking up Microsoft would not do much to them. Instead, here's some other things that could be done to Microsoft to cripple it:
1. Force MS to release full specs on all application file formats (i.e. MS Office) and force them to write full export capabilities to the other top competing applications for Windows and other platforms (not just Mac).
2. Prohibit MS from bundling multiple packages together (i.e. Office 2000 integrating a photo publishing package to kill off Adobe).
3. Prohibit MS from deviating from standards set outside of MS (i.e. HTML, HTTP, TCP/IP) or from generating new internal protocols when standard protocols/file formats already exist.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
reminds me of the Warner Bros cartoon, with Daffy and Porky doing 'Dragnet'
"Like all criminals, he had an elaborate alibi."
"I didn't do nuthin'. I didn't do nuthin'. Uh, like I said, I didn't do nuthin'"
MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
A lot of people stipulate that if the Windows licenses were revoked from these manufacturers, they would be done for. Kaput. Well, that might be so. Alternatively, those same manufacturers just might have a harder time. What if they put OS/2 on those machines? Well OS/2 may not have the installed base that Win95 does, but it's far from being unusable. It's *very* usable. So is MacOS (although, admittedly that wouldn't do x86 manufacturers much good). Moreover, by switching to something else entirely, rather than submitting to MS's dominance, these manufacturers could have proved to be the catalyst for pushing the X operating system (say, BeOS) into the limelight. Smaller companies might not be able to get away with that sort of thing, but a larger distributer with an established customer base has the clout to do it. After all - how did Microsoft get to where they are in the first place?
I will concede, that is an interesting point, and I had not thought of it before. The question that remains is: Would MS ever do something like that? Well, I suppose if they had to, yes. Of course, for something like that to happen, Linux (or another system) would have to present such a threat to MS's dominance, that this sort of tactic would be the only way to compete. To become such a competitor, this system would have to be much better for the average user than Linux is today. We're making inroads, but this is still a ways off.
As for specs, well you do have a point. However, I think that companies are starting to accept the fact that people want to use their equipment with more than just one OS. People like John Carmack are helping enormously.
Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, BeOS, and OS/2 (well, not anymore) are all x86 operating systems that can compete with MS for the Intel desktop. The fact is that MS has an ENORMOUS market share, but just because it's an established powerbase, doesn't mean it's anticompetitive, does it?
There's nothing that MS produces that OEMs and other companies can't get somewhere else - sometimes MS has better leverage to get that software to the user, but I think the Open Source community has shown that Microsoft is in no place to make any demands.
Well if what you are describing really happened (and I'm not saying it didn't but well, you know how it is with ACs) then that's anticompetitive, but I was under the impression that this trial was about MS's role in the desktop/browser market.
How does this (a webbrowser) extend my operating system? It doesn't. It doesn't make my OS run faster.
Indeed it's likely to actually make it run slower
Every OS distribution needs a browser enabled after installation
Not correct, if the system is never going to be
used to browse the web, then it will never need
a web browser.
An AC wrote that Intel chips have thermal problems, and cited his 200MHz Pentium MMX processor running at 180 degrees in an unspecified 'desert town.'
...)
What about other manufacturers' chips? Are they better than Intel in this respect? (Obviously this seems to be something that would vary by chip more than by manufacturer, but I'm curious
The indictment of Intel chips alone as having thermal problems just seems strange.
enlightenment sought,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Just for grins, imagine that Judge Jackson finds against Microsoft and fines them $1.00 (that's one dollar US, no change)
Pause.
Savor for the moment the dilemma that that would put Bill in. He has, for all practical purposes, won. Certainly the headlines will read that way. And yet he'll have to appeal.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
A browser is a natural extension of an operating system, for the simple fact it is such a useful tool.
This is irrelevent. What is relevent is that MS did not have any intention of including the browser for free in the operating system until they failed to persuade Netscape to divide up the windows market - remember the first version of 95 plus which (1) was sold and (2) contained a version of IE.
One of the more amusing bits of the trial was BG, in his video testimony, denying that Netscape was a threat, and then the DOJ producing copious corresondence from within MS that showed the exact opposite.
There can be little doubt that MS bundled the browser free, tied within the operating system, purely to get a strangle-hold on the browser market. This bundling used their monopoly in the OS arena to gain market share (and what is getting close to a monopoly) in the browser arena in at least three ways -
(1) making sure that every copy of Win9x had a copy of IE on it
(2) making the installed IE just about inextricable from win9x
(3) using its Market development agreements with OEMs to prevent them distributing Netscape with win9x on consumer machines at an affordable price.
As has been pointed out many times, here and elsewhere, this type of predatory use of a monopoly is against the law.
Dude, an Operating System consists of that software/data which comes on the instalation media. In the case of the "Red Hat Linux" operating system, that includes the web browser called "Netscape Communicator". In the case of "Debian GNU/Linux", it includes a program called Xaos that allows you to smoothly zoom into and out of fractals. In the case of "Microsoft Windows 98", that includes a browser called Internet Explorer 4.0 - wether it's embedded is irrelevent, and it's being embedded may make it "Anticompeditive practicies".
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Well, I haven't been keeping an eye on this case at all, but from the way the Washington Post put it, the legal depart of Microsoft was rather arrogant... I don't know how the US legal system works, but I would think that just about anything could influence the judge, and I for one would try and make a good impression... but then again, those of us north of the border usually don't have many experiences with the court systems in our own country, let alone another. Or at least I haven't. Does the attitude of either party have any influence on the decision rendered? No matter how impartial the judge, I don't suspect that he would appreciate having his court mocked...
But have you read the specs on IA-64?
:) However, I'm afraid that Intel, being the 600 pound gorrila that it is, may wipe that smug smile off our faces when their marketing machine kicks in.
You caught me. I've glanced at them(we actually printed them out the first day they became publicly available), but certainly haven't given them enough attention to critique them. I understand your point now.
We're actually a little smug about Merced. Probably a couple years until they even ship, and we've had 64 bit RISC for about 7 years now.
Break up on a team/group level (50-200 people or so)
Do you have any idea how many people work at Microsoft?! 30,000/100=300 small companies!! Besides, the infrastructure of a small company is necesaraly much different from a large one. The logistics of that sort of arbitrary breakup would be a nightmare from every perspective.
It's a programmer's nightmare because they decided it would be easier to let the programmer/compiler do the optimizations than to actually design them into the chip.
If I understand what you are saying, that's silly because that's the whole point of a RISC architecture. It's not a matter of it being "easier". (I'll resist the urge to go into in-depth processor design theory) Optimization requires assumptions. If you go with a CISC architecture, you're doing general purpose optimizations, while with RISC you get what you need, at the price of code complexity. Complexity can be hidden by good compiler optimizations, giving the best of both worlds. Most code isn't written in assembly anyway, so who cares? If something in particular needs to be hand optimized, you can do it, with out too much of a hit.
BTW, I work on for Compaq/Digital on one of the Alpha compilers.
Tell me about it. In my office, I've got 15 Miata's (Alpha 500's) and one Rawhide (a Dual processor Alpha Server). It gets like an oven in here.
While it may not be criminal, using anticompeditive practices to drive compeditors out of the morket is definately illegal. That's what this trial is about.
"Warden said Microsoft decided to include its browser in Windows and give it away for free before Netscape was formed in 1995. He called the government's contention 'a chronological impossibility.' "
WHAT??? As far as I remember, when Win95 has been released in 1995, there were no browser in it. The were no Internet connectivity (dialup) tools in Win95 either, no e-mail. They (and MSIE 1.0) came later, in the beginning of 1996, as a part of Plus! pack, which hasn't been "included" in Windows and it wasn't free - you had to pay $$ to get it.
The DOJ did go after Intel for some anti-trust/unfair business practices, right after the DOj took MS to court..
Intel settled out of court.
well, now that they have done absolutely nothing against microsoft why not try the same thing with intel. i think intel is more guilty of using strong-arm tactics and underhanded business deals much more than microsoft.
microsoft just outright buys companies. the ftc can regulate microsoft's acquisitions just fine.
signatures are for fools with hands
That one word wasn't too informative. Are you saying Caldera will take over if Red Hat becomes too evil (I think Mandrake would be in the best position for this), or providing it as an example of a "suck" distro? (From my experiences with Caldera, I'm inclined to believe the latter.)
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Microsoft has been in the business of arm twisting much longer than 3-5 years...
I recall when Word and Excel were sold only individually, and FoxPro was the domminant DB software, and Access was being released. Access was truly crap back then. In order to sell it, if I remember correctly, MS attempted to bundle is original "MS Office."
Since FoxPro survived that attempted attack, MS just bought it. Sure it is now included as a "programming environment" in VS, but it beat the heck out of Access, both in ease of use and in performance... Access in later versions, just contained slower stolen portions of FoxPro with very few new features...
Then they see mosaic...and the rest is the trial...
As far as splitting up the company and having them loosely re-attatch? Not possible... when AT&T went, it went... while it may take some getting used to for Microsoft, the verdict would be enforced with the strong arm of the law. The real question is this: who is rich enough to purchase any part of Microsoft from Bill Gates? I belive he looses rights to be the CEO/principal stock owner in all but one of the companies...
You say you want a revolution?
The people M$ were licensing the Browser off. When they dumped it free they pretty much killed the Spyglass company.
>>>> If a manufacturer wants to, say, put all his help pages into HTML, how can he do it? He can't, unless there is a standard browser built into the operating system.
Do you mean it's OK to put MS-Office into operating system (and claim it is essential part of it) if any part of system configuration is saved in Word/Excel/PowerPoint document? I think not.
Microsoft Needed the browser because they "cheated." They used it to distribute updates for Windows 95 (ADO, ActiveX stuff, etc.) There are a bunch of apps (WordPerfect 2000 uses IE5 for dig. signing, ICQ used parts of IE4) that require IE to be installed for functionality reasons.
Why they incorporated it with Win 98, don't know. It probably saved them time, not having to write the same code into both file windows and internet windows.
I'm sure that the Netscape issue was also influential, but probably not the main reason.
--WooooHoooo--
2) Ah, but what I said was that should have been the issue. Or should MS have never added TCP/IP into the OS? There are many TCP/IP add-on companies that were severely hurt when MS did that. Those meanies!
1. TCP/IP allows my operating system to do something it couldn't do before. That makes it
a natural extension of the operating system and thus MS can do what ever they bloody choose.
2. MS wasn't making deals with PC makers to get their TCP/IP stack ont he machine and others off.
3. Your example is flawed by nature as the things being compared to not similar. A protocol and a mark-up language are two very different beasts.
I find being offended by me offensive.
So, by your logic, an operating system should come with absolutely no applications? At all?
Correct. There should be no applications "integrated" into the OS. Ship all the apps you want but I had better not have to run them.
Hmmm. That means I can't have an FTP transfer program, since that would put FTP transfer program companies out of business.Therefore, I couldn't download your free browser in order to read the help files (which would presumably tell me where to download the browser).
Ship with whatever you want. I never said anything about shipping with apps. I don't want to be forced to into using app "foo" because it's
been built into the OS.
Quick Dirty Summary
Bundle - Whatever you want.
Integrate - Nothing.
I find being offended by me offensive.
Exceptions make the rule.
/bin/bash? Nuke it. There are other shells, which is my argument exactly. Also if someone writes a different init or ls you can change which one you use very easily.
You don't _need_ init. Oh lord that would be messy, but you don't need it.
My argument is that init should be an application and not part of the kernel. Thus I can use someone else's init if I want. I have no trouble with bundling, it's just integrating that I have a problem with.
I find being offended by me offensive.
You don't need a browser built into the operating system in this case. If the author wants to put
his help files in HTML then he should put them in HTML. If he is worried about people not being able to read them then he should either include a viewer or tell people where to get one, as there are many free ones available. This is case with PDF, well except for the many viewers.
Back on topic. You don't need the browser. It is
a "useful tool" but it is in no way a natural extension to the operating system.
What does HTML do? It lets you format text and jump from 1 document to another or to a different
location in the current document by selecting certain text. How does this extend my operating system? It doesn't. It doesn't make my OS run faster. It doesn't make my OS do anything it couldn't do with a non-integrated HTML viewer.
Really back on topic. Since it is not an intengral part of the OS then they must be adding it for some other reason. They could just be adding polish to the OS or they could be doing it
wipe out Netscape. I haven't seen enough of the
court case to make a choice yet. Anyone know where I can get transcripts, on the web?
I find being offended by me offensive.
In that case, you _CAN_ remove explorer, if you don't want to use explorer as your shell - replace the windows shell with netscape if you prefer windows to take 2 hours to load.
netscape could have easily written a windows explorer replacement if they wanted to (providing they found some programmers that could program).
harl> Anyone know where I can get transcripts, on the web?
.htm
See http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms_depos
A new kind of meat designed to appeal to vegetarians.
I'm not sure that I follow.. Red Hat would become the next Microsoft? They might find that a little difficult to do, given the nature of their product. It's not like they have a proprietary OS they can use as a leverage to screw us. And they're not exactly the only distro maker in town. There will always be competition in the distro field.. Sure the "little guys" (otherwise known as those who make "suck" distros) will fall, but those that fill a niche will thrive and compete. Due to the nature of the GPL, competition will remain on an even playing field.
Or did I miss something?
~ Kish
1) That's the primary focus.
2) Ah, but what I said was that should have been the issue. Or should MS have never added TCP/IP into the OS? There are many TCP/IP add-on companies that were severely hurt when MS did that. Those meanies!
3) You are criticising implementation issues, not the fundamental fact that the browser is a useful part of any OS (see KDE shell).
4) Insult me all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that you are wrong. :)
So, by your logic, an operating system should come with absolutely no applications? At all?
Hmmm. That means I can't have an FTP transfer program, since that would put FTP transfer program companies out of business. Therefore, I couldn't download your free browser in order to read the help files (which would presumably tell me where to download the browser).
Netscape is a buggy piece of garbage... Not relevant. If you don't like Netscape, don't use Netscape. If you don't like MSIE, though, MS has insured that you don't have that option, which is the problem.
No, exactly relevent. When Netscape screws up displaying of the help pages, who do you think gets the support call?
I mean, what is the real issue here? Why, in particular, do you oppose a browser versus any other aspect of the OS such as, say, Notepad? I mean, if you don't like it, don't use it.
Actually, you do. If you install some random shell, and renamed it to 'bash', there's a very good chance your system won't boot because of incompatibilities. And when it doesn't, Joe Loser is going to call Red Hat support and ask why his system is completely broken.
They never prevented Netscape from being installed. Use it to your heart's content.
But -- 1) Netscape is a buggy piece of garbage, and 2) there are other browsers out there. For an OS to use a browser as a fundamental tool (especially help pages), there needs to be a standard browser that the OS can depend on to have standard functionality (which, in Netscape's particular case, actually works right).
And Netscape never extended HTML? Please. Or is Netscape the only company that is allowed to add HTML extensions?
Finding MS guilty would NOT automatically lead to a breakup. And even if MS wins, the trial has arguably been very valuable in exposing and discouraging some of the MS monoply-maintaining tactics.
Why is it that Microoft's closing arguments sound like a bad Jon Lovitz skit from Saturday Night Live?
"Competing with Netscape? No...they're...they're competing with us! Yeah! We...uh...we had the idea weeks...no months...no...years! before Netscape even existed! Yeah, that's the ticket. We were going to ship Internet Explorer with Windows 3.1...no 3.0...no DOS. Yeah, with DOS. We even licensed Internet Explorer to Altair back then! Yeah, that's the ticket...
1) This case is not only about browsers. 2) Usefulness of the tool is not at issue in this case. The issue is illegal dumping of competitors products to put them out of business, a practice clearly prohibited by the Sherman Antitrust Act. 3) Actually a browser is not a natural part of the OS. I refuse to use IE because I do not want my OS shell to crash every time I go to some 'script baby' hacker's site by mistake and it crashes my browser with some JavaScript trick. Not to mention the insecure environment that has been created by excessive integration with products like Outlook (look out). The browser is far better as an app that runs on top of the OS. 4) Hm, I am suspicious of anybody who makes pre-emptive attacks on the rationality of those who disagree with them. Perhaps you could look into some more persuasive rhetorical devices.
Picture the (former) US telephone monopoly.
Now picture people getting so fed up with them that they, as volunteers, build their own parallel phone system and let anybody use it for free.
Now picture the phone company arguing in court that that is competition, hence they are not a monopoly...
I recently worked on a project, we came up with a cool system for modular multimedia components for use with education.
We were approached by Microsoft for a deal. I referred my manager to the many documents explaining how anyone who goes into partnership with MS usually ends up *much* worse off.
They also wanted us to dump the Unix servers and use an NT server farm!
After much pleading to my bosses, they refused the deal. At this point MS bought our biggest customer and then proceeded to starve us of cash to put us out of business.
It worked. I don't see anything that can happen to them as being unfair.
It is simple - just make them document all network
protocols and APIs.
This would preserve Microsoft as a corporation and
would allow a reasonable amount of competition.
More importantly, it would set a precedent for the
future on how to preserve competition. If someone
truly comes up with a novel new protocol, they can
get a patent.
The only thing consumers really have to fear is
Microsoft illegally tying one product to another
with an undocumented network protocol; for example
the Office 2K collaboration features which ONLY
work with NT. Or the secret Front Page
extensions. Microsoft has clearly laid this out
as a probably tactic (see the Halloween document).
Microsoft has the resources to stay ahead on a
level playing field like this. SMB has been
reverse-engineered and yet people still use NT
server...
Mark
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Your assertion that "even if they did break a law, it's a stupid law to begin with" holds absolutely no water. I happen to think having to stop at a red light is outdated and stupid, too. I think I'll start running them from now on. Let's see how far that gets me. The fact of the matter is, the antitrust laws in this country *are* specific and to-the-point. If they weren't, there would be countless cases prosecuted under them every year. I don't see too many going to court, do you?
Microsoft broke the rules. Now it's time to pay up.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
_Jail_ actual people. Send a personal message of that nature. This wouldn't harm any theoretical capacity of MS to innovate, wouldn't mess up the industry with largely hypothetical troubles of government code auditing and checking, but there are two major positive reactions:
- it would be a real wake-up call to these morons who figure that corporations get to be as sociopathic as they like, because nobody is accountable
- Microsoft is already suffering rot, and would collapse at the loss of its main sparkplugs.
A company has a personality, which is similar to the personality of its leaders. Microsoft's leaders are criminals, so Microsoft's personality is criminal. Remove the leaders and leave everything else, and eventually there might be leaders there who actually care more about producing products than they do about killing competition. The same programmers, artists, writers and possibly middle managers would be perfectly at home with the new personality. Never mind fussy legal corporate sanctions, which everyone is terrified about anyhow (a terror, mind you, orchestrated by Microsoft itself, and likely not worth the hysteria it gets). Instead, just nail the _people_ and send specific guilty-as-hell _people_ to jail. I think it is certainly likely that they can be reasonably charged with obstruction of justice due to their blatant attempts to subvert, lie to, and 'hack' the US judicial system....Most of us code because a tool we need doesn't exist, or isn't good enough. A breakup of Microsoft doesn't change this at all.
If anything, it might galvanize the open source community .... all of a sudden the spotlight would be equally distributed, less FUD from Microsoft, and less time spent deflecting stupid questions like "but who can we sue when something doesn't work?"
Werd.
"Microsoft has done some really innovative things in the past. Without Microsoft, where would we be in the OS business today? They kinda were in it from the beginning....waaaay back with MS-Dos. I remember running MS-Dos on the PCJr. and it was cool back then to have a command prompt. No, for all of their faults, Microsoft has contributed in a major way to the advancement of computing."
I sure hope you are being sarcastic, although I didn't detect that in your post. Because otherwise you are making me feel really, really old, and usually only my wife... well, skip that.
But the general point is that personal computer hardware, OS, and software development were going on when Bill Gates was still in grammer school. If Digital, to name just one possibility, had taken their blinders off for just a few minutes and released a reasonbly-priced desktop PDP-11, which they considered and rejected twice, for example...
Now this doesn't negate what bg accomplished, because he _did_ recognize the potential of what was going on and he _did_ negotiate a contract (for MS-DOS) that took IBM to the cleaners. Those aren't insignificant accomplishements and shouldn't be treated lightly. But bg and M$ didn't by any means invent the personal computer.
sPh
"Is this a joke?! Look at where we are in the OS business today: the mainstream is hardly a step beyond the 70s in some ways, and mid-80s in others. I just can't believe this. The 90s are almost over and it's still an uphill battle to introduce 80s technology into the mainstream."
How many times have I wished for a PC OS with 10% of the features of TOPS-20? Or Multics - that should be perfectly possible on today's hardware. But MS-DOS froze the state of the art at 1981 8-bit computing.
Again, I don't blame bg for doing what he did - how many of us would have passed up the chance? RMS maybe, but probably very few others. But still, the wasted potential is awesome.
sPh
Either OSS is a viable alternative on its merits or it is not. If OSS's success were dependent on the success or failure of MS, we'd be screwed. The beauty of OSS is that it will succeed for those who need it, want it, love it, etc, regardless of what the rest of the world does.
> They never prevented Netscape from being installed.
... ummm ... bundled, unremovable browser ... to go out and download another ... browser. Hmm.
Wrong. They did exactly that by threatening to revoke Windows licenses or significantly raise prices for manufacturers who wanted to install it.
They paid bounties to ISPs who dropped Netscape Navigator, too.
Oh yeah, but of course that wasn't forclosing distribution because average Joe user was just expected to use his
The last thing we need is a precedent for government harrassment of the software industry. The idea that Microsoft should be punished for out-competing its competition is ludicrous. Given the number of alternatives there are to Windows, and given that both sides give their browsers for free anyway, I fail to see how Microsoft has done anything illegal in this matter.
Even if they have broken the law, we're talking about antitrust. Antitrust law is the most vague, overreaching, intrusive law that can be imagined. It literally gives the Feds the power to harrass any company that manages to get a large market share. And it gets reinterpreted every few years, so there's no way Microsoft can possibly predict which things are and are not illegal.
I don't deny that Microsoft is sleazy, but sleaziness is not a crime. Laws should be specific and to-the-point. If the best charges they can dream up are antitrust charges, that tells me that either they are innocent of any real crime, or there needs to be new laws to address the specific types of crimes they have committed. But to twist antitrust law to cover whatever activity the current dominant player in a given industry is without warning is a very bad thing. There was no way Micrsoft could have predicted what would be considered a crime, since the things they are accused of doing have been done by many other companies with no legal repercussions.
I just hope Microsoft gets off the hook. Even if they broke antitrust laws, they don't deserve to be punished.
Ah, yes, if Microsoft was broken up, the baby MS' would still be strong. They just won't be able to use anti-competitive practices to keep their products being used. They'd have to be ethical. And an ethical company is not any "enemy". I think that if MS was broken up, the Baby Bills would just be a normal competitor, not an enemy.
Linux and Windows side by side. Is that to good of a dream to imagine? I'd love to be able to take Linux and Windows as well as other OS's and compare them side by side and use whatever is technically the best for the job I need it for. Right now, Microsoft products I don't compare. Because I refuse to use products by a company that is unethical. That's not to say that Windows *would* be better then Linux. But at least I'd give it consideration.
-Brent--
I completely agree with almost all of this post, particularly the spirit of it (see my post a little further down, re: microsoft punishment).
:)
:)
But I have to point out a couple differences, especially the house-renting analogy (which is a good one).
"If I say you can rent my house only if you agree to also water the lawn once a week, it's up to you to accept the exchange."
What happens if it is more like...
"IF I say you can rent my house only if you agree to have only dogs as pets, it's up to you to accept the exchange."
Still looks pretty good, but what if -every- house in the area where you have to work has this agreement.
Then you have a problem (unless you are a dog person). Basically then there can be no cats in this city, which is unfair to my cute little cat
I suppose one could then build their own house, but that is at great expense.
Or, as is happening now, if the market for houses which allow cats is large enough, perhaps a new house-builder will form up (linux cat houses) and build lots of houses for cat-lovers to live in.
But then again you run into the trouble of, hey, what if all the land zoned for housing is taken up
Rezone... (or perhaps take dog-only house owners to federal court).
Of course, how a discussion about operating systems and questionable marketing strategy turned into a discussion of house pet merits, I don't know.
as always my completely uninformed, kneejerk opinion which fluctuates hourly.
i am sam i am. i live in a cave.
burn the computers. go back to the abacus.
No, I do *NOT* worship Bill[tm] or his Empire[r].
... all Open Source (of some form)!!
Actually, I severely DISLIKE Microsoft, however my loathing for MS is less than my love of Open Source.
I think that a guilty verdict would do more damage to OSS than it would do good. Think about it - if they were found guilty, then the DOJ would put in place jurisdiction to level the playing field for other competitors.
But what "competitors" would such laws help to leverage into the market? Sun, IBM, SGI and Apple come to mind to name a few...
However - consider what tactics these companies are using to combat Microsoft - Open Source of course! Look at projects such as Apple Darwin and Linux4SGI
If MS *WAS* found guilty, then the DOJ would put in place laws to help companies such as Sun, SGI etc.. get a more equal footing.
But this would be at the expense of OSS!! No longer would OSS look as much of a good looking alternative to combat MS's monopoly - and I'm sure many of these companies will dump their OSS projects when they find themselves on a more equal footing with MS - it would be back to normal business practises (and no OSS.)
In fact, looking at the growth of Open Source and corellating it to the growth of MS's monopoly - you see a trend - as the monopoly grows, so too does OSS. I'm not a statistician, but I'm sure theres some truth to this relationship.
Then again, I would still be happy to see MS found Guilty - my point is that if they ARE - we shouldn't just jump to the conclusion that it will be good for us (the users/consumers).
everyone here keeps referring to microsoft being "punished".
my question: is a breakup really "punishment"?
i mean, you wind up with the interesting position that microsoft claims that their monopoly on O.S. doesn't help them to foist their applications on people; but then again they claim that having the O.S. and applications be different companies would be somehow bad for them. How?
The obvious answer is that if microsoft can't use it's 90+% market share to leverage its other products, the other products won't be used, or else MS will be forced to promote the products on basis of their own merits, something they've up to now only done occasionally. But microsoft won't admit this, of course. interesting to wach their minds at work.
Claiming that microsoft would be somehow be hurt by a split down the middle is, in fact, admitting that their strongest asset is their monopoly.
I hope that MS gets cut up, just because that would free me from the "microsoft guilt" of using MSIE4.5 for macintosh. Although the "AOL guilt" of using netscape is pretty much worse, so whatever. A MS breakup would help _everyone_; it would destroy MS's more worthless products, force them to make the others better, and generally restore choice to things. My only regret is that it wouldn't really hurt microsoft's OS business; but that seems to be doing a pretty good job of destroying itself.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
What I read in (today's?) paper here in Albuquerque was that he donated 170 Gateway computers (presumably with 'Doze installed on them) to some schools around here. So now we get a generation of kids growing up, thinking that Windoze is "normal". Is this education, or indoctrination?
---
Have a Sloppy day!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
In all seriousness, I actually looked up to the top of your post to see if Gerald Holmes had written it.
Some MS defenders sometimes claim Microsoft has done innovative things in the past, but does anyone ever cite an example? And when they do cite an example, is it anything later than the 1970s? Geez, I'll concede they made some fun BASIC interpreters back then; I used to use their ROM BASIC on 65xx, and I was impressed that they had quite thoughtfully made parts of their program jump through some pointers in RAM, so that you could change the pointers and hack how their BASIC worked, even though it was in ROM. That was neat. But since then? Not a goddam thing.
Is this a joke?! Look at where we are in the OS business today: the mainstream is hardly a step beyond the 70s in some ways, and mid-80s in others. I just can't believe this. The 90s are almost over and it's still an uphill battle to introduce 80s technology into the mainstream.
Good god, so many wasted years... it's so sad...
Well, that settles it: you're intentionally writing satire. There's no other explanation. Gerald Holmes has met his match.
Ok, I'll say one nice thing about something Microsoft has done in the 90s to advance computing: the inefficiency of their products has created some large markets for certain types of hardware -- RAM and hard disks would cost more today, if it weren't for MS. They've influenced the hardware industry. But don't ever forget: it was at our expense. Don't ever think that it was somehow "free."
Well, it has been publically very obvious since 1989 at the absolute latest. Insiders may be able to trace the roots back earlier....
I agree with you there. I don't wanna see 'em broken up either, and figuring out the astronomical compensatory damages would be next to impossible. But there's one thing you left out, which must not get overlooked: we also need criminal indictments against the individuals who are responsible. Criminals should not be allowed to anonymously hide behind corporations.
---
Have a Sloppy day!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
If a manufacturer wants to, say, put all his help pages into HTML, how can he do it? He can't, unless there is a standard browser built into the operating system.
No, you need a browser somewhere on the system. You emphatically do not need one particular browser, though. That's why the W3C HTML standards exist, to allow an HTML document to be displayed by any browser that wants to.
Easy method: during OS installation or afterwards, the user installs a browser that registers an IBrowser COM class. Until this is done the HTML help isn't available. If the user has no other browser he can elect to have MSIE installed as the default, but if he prefers Netscape he can skip MSIE and install Netscape. When Windows needs to display an HTML help page, it uses Microsoft's own COM facilities to instantiate an IBrowser object and uses that to display the help pages. If Microsoft has written standard HTML, the pages display correctly enough. And yes, I know about ActiveX. I tend to dismiss it, since I haven't seen any use of it on Microsoft's help pages that couldn't be duplicated using W3C-standard HTML tags.
No, exactly relevent. When Netscape screws up displaying of the help pages, who do you think gets the support call?
First call would be to Microsoft. The first question they ask is "What browser are you using for help files?". When the user replies "Netscape.", the response is "We aren't Netscape. Call them.". Since the HTML source is readily available, Netscape can look and see whether it's standard HTML or not. If it is, Netscape has the bug and they fix it. If the HTML isn't standard, then Microsoft created the bug and they get to fix it. Simple, no?
Why, in particular, do you oppose a browser versus any other aspect of the OS such as, say, Notepad? I mean, if you don't like it, don't use it.
Because Microsoft hasn't made it impossible to not use Notepad. They don't claim Notepad is part of the OS, and force it's use for editing certain files. They have made it impossible not to use MSIE for certain things, even when alternatives are in fact available and Microsoft themselves created the means to make use of those alternatives. All Microsoft has to do to let any browser be used for their help files is interface to their own browser in exactly the same way they tell everyone else to interface to it for viewing HTML pages.
I'm not a lwayer. I haven't followed the evidence in the trial. I have idea of the legal merits of the government's case. Even so, if this were a jury trial instead of a adminstrative law procedure, and I were on the jury, I would have been deeply offended by two things Microsoft did that were widely reported. First, there was the misleading videotape -- even if Microsoft is right and the tape was factually correct, entering into a court of law and submitting evidence of "the same PC" before and after IE's removal with a tape that can be proved to have shown two different PCs would seriously damage their credibility with me. Next, in a grandstand move, to put up an empty sheet of graph paper and claim it was the analysis done by the government's expert economist is likewise insulting. The lawyer can call into question the accuracy and thoroughness of the witness without recourse to an obviously phony grandstand ploy. That was done for the court of public opinion.
All of this said, while I long to see Microsoft broken up into seperate companies, I remain completely ignorant of the actual legal issues and quality of evidence in this trial. I have no idea what will happen, although I eagerly await the results...
A lot of folks seem to be confusing the term "monopoly" with "owning 100% of the market", and so see alternatives like the free unices, BeOS, etc as proof that MS doesn't have a monopoly.
Sorry, but that's not the legal definition. Even if it were, when this all went to trial Microsoft certainly had a monopoly on OS preloads on x86 PCs -- that monopoly which they illegally used to leverage the success of their IE browser at the expense of Netscape, in clear violation of a consent decree Microsoft signed when several on-line service providers sued over the MSN icon on the original Windows 95 desktop.
(These things are never as simple as the press makes them out -- remember the audience the press is writing for.)
-- Alastair
Comparing this to the telephone breakup of the 80's is very worth-while. The US gov't broke up AT&T Bell into Long Distance (AT&T), and seven (I think) regional local telephone companies (Bell South, Bell Atlantic, etc...). This breakup was supposed to end AT&T's monopoly in the telephone carrier business.
Did it work? In short, no. Only after a bit more legislation (the Telecom Act of 1996) have we begun to see some serious competition as far as local and long distance telephone companies.
The Microsoft case has some similarities, in that Microsoft controls the OS market (analogous to the telephone wires of AT&T), and it has used that control to dominate the software market (analogous to local & LD telephone service). OK, maybe weak analogies, but stay with me. Both companies used their monopoly to prohibit competition in another related market.
But there are differences, too. Specifically, AT&T's monopoly was complete & absolute, mostly because of the prohibitive high cost of entry into the market. To sell a competitive telephone service, you'd have to literally string up your own wires & lease your own land all over the country. That's not the case with Microsoft. They have some scant competition (MacOS, *nix, etc), and there isn't the high entry cost.
I think the government remembers the mistakes they made in breaking up AT&T, and all the hassle they had to go through to get the Telecom act of 1996 through (12 years after the fact). So, my guess is if they do break Microsoft up, they'll do it with a vengence. I predict (& hope) that they separate the OS development/marketing/sales structures from the application development/marketing/sales structures, forming at least two different companies in place of Microsoft.
But that doesn't mean Microsoft will disappear. Look at AT&T and all the Baby Bells -- they're still alive & kicking, they're just not making as much money as they used to. That's probably what will happen to MS as well. So, the Linux/OSS community will still have a common enemy to fight; that enemy just won't have as many teeth as before.
-- Mid
N.B. -- for a lengthy discussion of the Bell Telephone System, see the MIT HyperArchives
Yes, and No. The problem is that a few years ago when microsoft was first on trial, it was rulled that microsoft could not bundle anymore software into windows than they already had. Given a browser is an important thing to bundle into and operating system distrubution, but it is not the operating system itself. Microsoft is trying to get around that language by saying that the browser is an intergral part of the operating system and cannot be removed. Bundling is generally a good thing, and I generally appeciate it when any operating system bundles packages that I like to use with their operating system. But Microsoft was banned from such practices, thus making it illigal.
You switched from Linux TO Windows? Your a sick man... I do have to admit that netscape has had some major instability issues since 4.0. But I would recommend you try 4.61 (not 4.60) its amazingly stable, it accually made a IE to Netscape convert out of a MCSE friend of mine.
Sure, and you need a wordprocessor to read many other documents. An operating system consist of a kernal, and hardware interfaces and a shell and or GUI (though a GUI really isn't part of an operating system.. but I'll let that slide). Please before you make any arguments about what an operating system consist of go to school and take a class on operating systems, I promise, you will learn a lot. (and no I havn't taken such class but plan too as soon as I can).
I don't know whether it's true that Einstein said that the most powerful force in the universe is compound interest, but I'm proposing a rival: inertia, specifically corporate inertia.
... do most business users need a 600MHz chip in their desktop PCs? Ha! (Do most business users need a *three* hundred MHz chip in their desktop PCs? Again, Ha!, but not as loudly. The PC Magazines usually advise readers to get 'current' technology (that is, not bleeding edge, but the Good Stuff nonetheless), even though in many / most cases that is overkill overkill.
... having a market preponderance shows that the sum of decisions (some good, some bad, some neutral) which affects your product favors your product over the competition, for the moment. Markets are always.
..."
MS knows how to encourage it and profit from it, but that's their deal -- being clever is hardly a crime.
If the businesses you deal with (say the clients at the agency I work for) all use MS applications and exchange their documents in less-portable formats because they don't see that this could ever be a problem ("Well, everybody has Word, right?!"), then one of the costs of doing business with them is remaining compatible.
Besides this (fairly reasonable, I say, though misguided) trend to keep businesses MS-only, there's also a knee-jerk reaction of the Newest Fastest Highest variety
Same goes for computer companies. If they want to toady up to MS and agree to, say, exclusively offer MS operating systems on their machines, or agree to *not* install Netscape (or whatever), that's their deal. If I say you can rent my house only if you agree to also water the lawn once a week, it's up to you to accept the exchange. VA systems and a number of others chose not to take that deal; this limits their appeal to some customers and increases it to others. Choice, choice, choice.
So when people complain that other OSes are not 'competitive' with MS Win9X or NT, it's important to point out that 'competing' is not the same as 'winning'
What surprises me is the vitriol and glibness with which large-scale intervention and oversight is accepted when it comes to MS. A lot of (even semi-positive) posts on MS start "Now I hate MS as much as the next guy, and I'd like to see Bill Gates thrown onto a pile of punji sticks then torturously baked, but
Live and let crumble, I say.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
There seem to be a lot of opinions here on how best to subdivide Microsoft, right down to how many people should be in each of the resultant divisions.
Consider that this means some sort of arbitrary decision by an outside authority, if such a breakup were actually to be effected.
How far down the line would you like that kind of control to be exerted? If you own a business, do you have the right to organize it the way you want? I say yes. 'Size of business' is not a factor, morally, and it *shouldn't* be one legally, either. In fact, if you don't have that right, you don't truly own it at all, because ownership carries the right to organize according to the will of the owner.
(A brief aside: this does require context. Mowing a profanity into your lawn will probably have ill effects on your neighbbors, but how you organize your home- based programming business inside your house oughtn't. So I am not saying that MS must be allowed to hang deer carcasses upwind of Seattle, only that a company has the right to decide what it peacably does with its own assets.)
just thoughts,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Pity these guys who work for the Gates, at least on this score (they are raking in the dough, but man this has to hurt them when they realize they're whores in the worst sense of that word). They have to stand up in front of a judge who has seen their clients lie, and get caught incontrovertibly in that lie. Moreover, their witnesses have said such things as "I don't know what 'piss all over'" means, and so forth. Then, of course there are the astroturf campaigns. What can they say in reply? It seems like the only place to go is claim that your opponents are doing it, because the opponents are saying the opposite of what your client is saying.
What else can they come up with? "This case is motivated by jealousy." True, possibly: the DOJ might never have initiated proceedings had Ellison, Barksdale, McNealy, et al not pressured them to. But that of course has nothing to do with the merits of the case. Plenty of evidence points to the fact that MS has not only pursued the "top of the heap" location, but has used dirty tricks to stay there.
Their clients have treated the rest of the world with contempt; they have treated the judge with contempt, and they have treated consumers with contempt. What do you say to defend such a client? I, for one, am glad for the fact that IANAL.
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
"Windows 95 has shipped with a nice little app called FTP.EXE since day one."
:).
I agree, its a nice little app. Fine for you or me, but if you think a typical Windows user even knows ftp.exe exists or is able to use it, please re-estimate the problem a little
One of the most common questions I get when helping MS friends with new computers is "what is a directory?" They don't even know what an "exe" is because Windows Explorer hides file extensions by default. CLI tools usually aren't even on their horizon for a few weeks, and typically require line by line help over the phone to use them for a while. Just finding a file after it's downloaded provides a challenge to many. They aren't stupid, just totally inexperienced.
I don't think this situation is healthy or good, but it is reality.
I agree with you that the browser bundling is a poor argument. Every OS distribution needs a browser enabled after installation, so that, if nothing else, the browser of choice may be downloaded easily. It's also good for making system upgrades and security patches available, and of course help resources. Whether the browser belongs in the OS, or in the file manager application, I don't much care as long as it's fully replaceable and easy to get working.
But I think Microsoft put it very well when they suggested we need a hall monitor here. Microsoft has bullied and bought out its competition in a fashion destructive to an entire industry. To the point in this case, they illegally leveraged their desktop monopoly in order to supress competition in applications, it doesn't get any clearer than that.
I wouldn't break MS up, I prefer a single large target, clumsy from it's own weight. Microsoft might be smart enough to break itself up if the DOJ doesn't do it for them. What I would do is insure that Microsoft ceases and desists from threatening to stop sales to distributors if they carry competing products. If possible, that should be made criminal, with Mr. Gates personally responsible for seeing it doesn't happen. We don't need to tolerate bullying in business. We can't if we expect free market to mean anything at all. We want to select for quality of product, not weight of gorilla.
call me optimistic, but i think the US government is going to do the right thing on this one.
As bad as some parts of the government have been to us, the judiciaries always seem to come through, and i'm looking forward to the break up of M$.
---
Disclaimer: I like GNU/Linux and the GPL. However, I'm /not/ trying to bait anyone. :)
Isn't the case supposed to be about the state of affairs when the trial first started? In that case, no OS you could possibly name would come even near qualifying as "competition" in the eyes of the average end-user (and no, most end-users are not hackers, for those with very odd perceptions indeed).
As far as *BSD competing for the.. desktop? The BSD brothers are direct descendants from the original UNIX. The first of those three projects began in what, 1991? I think if they were going to capture the desktop of all places, they'd have "caught fire" by now. In the very early 90's NetBSD was certainly more functional than GNU/Linux, if only for the fact that the kernel had just been written, while UNIX code has been around for quite some time.
GNU/Linux still isn't much of a threat to the desktop market. Most Linux "desktops" I know of that are made by a computer company that your average end-user would even know about (that is to say, VA and Penguin Computing do /not/ count) don't even have modems on the things thanks to silly "Winmodem" policies (just see Dell's site for an excellent example).
GNU/Linux and *BSD are making significant inroads on the server side, and GNU/Linux is shaping up to take on the desktop.. But it's not happening.. yet. The hardware companies will have to fall further into line first. And they're, quite honestly, being sissies right now for the most part. Afraid to get into the pool because the water might be too cold.
It's more like a jacuzzi, though, if you ask me. :)
~ Kish
Anyone with any rationality has to conclude that MS is innocent in this case. The DOJ picked the wrong case by focusing on browsers. A browser is a natural extension of an operating system, for the simple fact it is such a useful tool. If a manufacturer wants to, say, put all his help pages into HTML, how can he do it? He can't, unless there is a standard browser built into the operating system.
Of course, MS semi-screwed up too by even getting near the fact that the browser can't be removed from the OS. Of course it can. What they should have focused on (which they did for awhile, I believe) was that it's an essential part of the OS because they want to actual use the tool in other standard parts of the OS (heaven forbid!)
Of course, Slashdot is the wrong place to bring rational arguments regarding MS. :)
On a somewhat different subject there's also this article: Nasdaq hacked through MS security hole
Now the verdict here could make things very interesting indeed for the software world. For all of its evils (Windows included), Microsoft needs to have a verdict delivered against it. I do not mean this as a "down with MS cuz it sux" remark. Microsoft has done some really innovative things in the past. Without Microsoft, where would we be in the OS business today? They kinda were in it from the beginning....waaaay back with MS-Dos. I remember running MS-Dos on the PCJr. and it was cool back then to have a command prompt. No, for all of their faults, Microsoft has contributed in a major way to the advancement of computing. However, in the last 3-5 years or so, maybe longer, maybe shorter, they moved away from more of the pionering and development into the arm twisting business. The arm twisting business, unfortunately, is a bad business to be in. Microsoft got caught. I've worked in one of the larger electronics superstores, and it was no secret to us that MS had made certain deals with manufacturers and if the certain conditions werent met (IE latest edition of a certain browser bundled, or LACK of another browser bundled) then those companies would loose the right to either A) discounts on the MS stuff, or B) access to the MS stuff altogether. Using scare tactics, MS controlled certain manufacturers (before the products hit our stores, MS didnt bother with us except to make sure we obeyed licensing). For this Microsft must pay.
./ers!
But to what extent? The breakup of the company? I dont think so. Fines? Yes. Say, lost profits to certain companies, punative damages to make sure they dont do it again. Deep punative damages. Splitting the OS part of MS from the Apps? I just don't know. I think it would make for a worse picture in the future in that area, not a better one. I think that with a forced split, the company would end up still working together, although not a closely as it had been. And what could the government do then? More fines. I'm just not convinced on the splitting part. I'm interested to see how others think the verdict should go. Could spark up an interesting debate.
But I'm done rambling for now, I do still need to get that sleep, been up for too long. Later
-Captain Keen
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Sounds like you subscribe to the "good enemy" concept--you know, a good enemy is one you have to stretch to your limits to beat. The problem seems to be that Microsoft can't be beaten by playing fair, i.e. competing on the merits of the product. This is because Microsoft DOESN'T compete strictly on the merits of their product (how could they?), and the kinds of "cheating" they engage in really make the most of their company's other advantages: they have the resources to seriously influence buying patterns through FUD and "creative benchmarking", they have the bucks to acquire competing technologies so they can incorporate or eliminate them, and they have the market clout to set defacto standards or to "embrace and extend", i.e. subvert, negotiated standards, as the Halloween documents revealed.
Against these fairly awesome forces, the open-source community has what? Good sense (individually), good processes (generally), great code, and personal motivation. These are important things, but they noticeably don't include good marketing, solid representation in standards-creating bodies, and political clout. Yes, I said political clout: Microsoft would have been slapped down hard years ago if another organization with serious pull had gone after all the legal wrongs they've done.
I agree that the open source seems to need something to rally against, but I don't think the Evil Empire is exactly it: open source began because people wanted code that was good, and free. So what they're rallying against is code that is bad, and/or expensive (and closed-source). Microsoft is a putrid example of all these things, and as the largest such example is an easy target, but if Bill Gates had stayed at Harvard and become a lawyer or something there would still be bad expensive code out there, and I believe the open source community would be just as fervently creating alternatives to it. In fact, I think the open source community will be continually pushed to better things as long as they remain the underdogs: almost any individual company could fill the "good enemy" role. If open source "wins", and closed source becomes the anomaly instead of the rule, then I think the community would struggle to redefine itself. But I don't see that happening soon, and breaking up Microsoft won't bring this about all by itself.
Jenny
I think we'll all agree that the tech world evolves extremely rapid. For a company, keeping up-to-date costs heaps of money. Small wonder then that everyone is falling asleep over this trial. Strange that the DOJ doesn't seem to have taken this into account. Anyway, this could in theory have been settled quickly: 1) MS didn't have an internet policy to speak of, in fact, even tried to 'replace' it with their own MSN. (ridiculous as it sounds) 2) Netscape did have the correct amount of vision here and rose very fast among the hi-tech companies. 3) MS sees everything evolving, takes an existing product, puts on some fancy buttons and gives it away for free. (how's that for unprecedented) Now what would their motive have been here? The Netscape-AOL merger isn't proof of existing competition, it's a result of anti-competitive practices. The unethical business practices have been _here_, not afterwards... I mean, even installing an NT service pack gets you IE shoved down your throat nowadays...And which reasonable administrator puts a browser which has become so bloated on a critical server? (Although the time when Navigator fit on a single floppy is long behind us too now...)
Microsoft: "... We will concede that Mr. Gates is a deity of extraordinary power and has been very 'innovative' in the area of computers. But the economic loss would be immeasurable if we were to kill him. We recommend breaking up into four seperate units - four horsemen if you will, who will ride fourth bringing Office, NT, W2K, and The Road Ahead to everybody!"
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Many have written in that, in a way, Microsoft is not guilty of the crime of anticompetitive behavior against netscape by integrating their own browser into the operating system. I repsectfully disagree, and argue that their punishment, in this case, did fit the crime, and that the government, though it punished Microsoft harshly for its actions, is justified.
"Huh?" you say. They haven't been broken up, at least yet. They may even win the case.
Well duh, people, look at all the news about Linux, and ask yourself how well Red Hat would have done if it weren't for the trial. Would there be Calderra and I-toasters for general sale at Best Buy now? Would there be the emphasis on alternatives? Would Dell have the guts to sell and support Linux on their systems?
Yes, Microsoft has payed dearly for its crimes against the public-loved Netscape. And it's punishment isn't over yet. The trial IS microsoft's punishment, and they are guilty, guilty, guilty as the trial goes on. Don't be fools, this was the point. Breaking up microsoft, as the company often says, would make them just another player in the market like Sun or IBM. But they are already on the road there! They have lost their way, propelled by our legal system that punishes the guilty and innocent alike. Think twice before predicting the outcome next time.
As most of us know already:
The crime was arrogance.
The judge, jury, and executioner is the justice system.
And the punishment is a trial that will wreck you.
Only God can save them now.
-Ben
That's what I wonder... so the government wins. Microsoft has used unfair business practices and is a monopoly of sorts? What happens then. A telephone style break up where MS is broken up into a bunch of smaller division. The IE division the 9x division, the NT division?
As much as I am anti-microsoft... their dominance and accidental leadership seems to push the opensource commmunity to better things. Without the dominance of Windows, would a great Linux desktop environemnt like KDE or Gnome exist... I think not. The open-source community almost seems to need something to rally against...
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