Be a bad person and shop at DealPilot. This site scans a bunch of online booksores for the lowest price. As a side benifit, Amazon is almost always more expensive, in addition to evil.
The thing is, the DOJ has already forced MS to retract it's claws a bit. Do you think nVidia would be talking to the XFree people if they thought MS would lock them out of the Win market? How many MS pattents do you suppose all the other OS's violate? Why have they not bothered to break Samba? Dell ships Linux systems now, without so much as a nasty email from Bill. A few years ago when MS told them not to use the latest Intel chips because they were going to support NSI(?), basically WinModems without the Win requirement, Dell bent over real quick.
Somehow software development flourished without patents for years, even building silicon valley. Still if you really want to have software pattents don't you think they should at least resemble patents in other areas? If you patent an invention you must provide blueprints. If my invention works better there is no infringment.
Provide source, if I can find a case that runs in fewer steps for my algorithm than yours then we have no infringement.
But I guess in the Free Market I should have to cut your lazy butt a check if I want to send an.au file over the Internet.
Can you truly not tell the difference between an ad in a magazine and sending 200,000+ emails? This is a case of a bar that offers free peanuts throwing out someone who brings an elephant.
Email is a medium for personal communication that occasionally gets used by _SUBSCRIBERS_ for discussion lists. It's not there to feed elephants. This does not mean I hate elephants or advertising.
Spammers steal not just a little bandwidth, they kill servers dead. It's a major pain in the ass to recover from a relay-rape, folks who had the misfortune to use an open server don't get ANY email, sometimes for days. The additional inconvenience is not just sending the spam to/dev/null but the fact that I have to go to the trouble to use a different server depending on the particular connection. Never used to have to do that, why would you? Sendmail is sendmail running on just about every computer on the net. Spammers killed that. There used to be email phone books all over the place (on them gopher servers, where's gopher.slashdot.org:)) real convenient to look someone up. Spammers killed that too. You could have your email address unmunged in your usenet posts.
This is not a small price to pay for the Internet this is the price that is paid for trusting people. There were 30 million people on the Net before there was spam. Spam _COSTS_, Ad's on tv pay for the tv show, Ad's on/. buy Rob some tacos to commander(well Andover gets the tacos now). Spam in my inbox pays for what exactly?
If there is nothing wrong with spam, why don't they use their own names?
Noone is outlawing advertising. They are outlawing stealing. You havethe right to advertise on YOUR property. You do not have the right to advertise on SHARED property.
I think the reason a lot of old timers get so upset about spam is because it is such a disgusting betrayal of the belief that people are basically decent. There are things in this world that, although shaped like humans, view your kindness as an "available medium".
The problem with lawsuits is that you lose a great deal of money defending against them. Lose time while you cannot sell any of your software. At best, if you are lucky and stick the whole thing out to the very bitter end, you may get most of your own money back.
By the way, it is the job of all branches of government to obey the constitution. Everyone swears an oath to that effect. The SC is just the airbag system of our govenment. A last desperate hope when Congress steers us off the road, and the Excecutive guns the gas.
>excuse me, dumbass, but you seem to imply that We >the People do not "decide who is a *valid* >candidate"...and YOU THINK THAT WE SHOULDN'T!!! >so, the rich decide what our choices are, and >that's the way it should be? you either an idiot, >or a fascist.
Then you are either a diseased goat scrotum or a bowl of turnips. Doesn't add much to the debate does it? Let's try the only act of civil disobedience guaranteed to truly anger the rich and powerful, THINK!
If all campaigns are strictly government run affairs, then the _only_ people in the entire world who decide who gets to run for office are the people who already hold office. People who are also under the control of the rich. So the rich get to pick the candidate, and therefore the laws, and even get you to pay for their bribes.
If you want to try a stupid idea to reform campaign contributions, the only one that might work is requiring a blind trust. Not that it would take long for our honorable congress critters to figure out where the gravy is coming from, but at least it's not a list of demands with a check stapled to it.
A better solution might be to have lists of several moderators, each with a particular focus. No single score is really going to make many people happy. MEEPT might always be low but there are certainly people who might like a good "Why the QT people are JUST LIKE HITLER" rant, but don't care for the blatant spam flavored website plugs, or spellin flames. This will also move the handling of Moderator abuse from the single-point-of-Rob to the distributed "if you don't like it, don't subscribe or fork"
I figure the best way to implement this would be by having each list simply contain the article/comment id. Each list would be the work of a single moderator, working with a single theme. You would also have lists that are in turn aggregates of other lists. Each user could then apply a weight to each list of interest and sum to from a score. You could also have public symbolic scores that might get some optimization.
Each group of moderators would have a page with their charter/goals, a public bitch-fest area and a private backstabbing area. To save time it will be taken as a given that Bruce Perens will have already joined each group, and then left in bitter flurry of accusations.
Adam Lang Said... >Tim Moore Said... >>No they don't.
>If you want me to take this statement right here seriously you'll >have to present some argument to the contrary. I have come up >with two patents for the company I work for (and recieved a significant >amount of recognition (and money) for them.) They were both new ways of >applying really old mathematical constructs in a very narrow context.
Then it really isn't your idea is it? It's an idea that you stole from some old mathematicians but lemme guess, they don't see dime one.
>If I'd desired, when I came up with these two patents I could have instead >quit my job here and filed for both, then offered to sell them to my former >employer. I considered it at the time, and went to talk to my boss. He told >me what I could expect if I did that, and I weighed my options, and decided >not to.
Actually, you couldn't. Your employer owns your ideas. They aren't paying you because you`re a snappy dresser. You can no more take ideas from your company and sell them to others than you could take the shoes you made in a factory and sell them.
[snip]
>Try selling a great idea that's not patented to IBM? They'll ask for details >and then tell you they'll get back to you. Nobody buys a pig in a poke, and >once you've told them what it is, why, they don't need to license it any more, >do they?
This is what contract law is for. Idea's for movie scripts cannot be patented (yet). However Art Buchwald (or someone with a correctly spelled name) managed to win a dumptruck full of money from a big movie studio for telling them that they should make a movie about Eddie Murphy as a prince who must go to New York and "get down with the brothers".
>>I'm fairly certain that if patent laws were to be repealed tomorrow, IBM >> would still be standing and you and I would be much better off.
>I'll believe the bit about IBM standing. In fact, I suspect IBM might be one > of the few that was better off. I don't buy the bit about me being better off.
The people who would be better off are those who not only come up with their own ideas, but also implement them. In addition the people who like to see good ideas actually used to improve their lives would be better off. On the other hand if you feel that people who include video in a video game, or transport music on the Internet owe you a living then patents are great.
>You make some good points, though. It *is* damned difficult to build something >great if what you're building requires a lot of patent/license hoopla. And that >*is* bad.
>However, it is also bad that if a company wants to reprint a picture of a work >of art, they have to contact the piece's owner (or creator, depending on the >contracts signed) for permission, and possibly a royalty fee, first.
>Why? Because it limits the proliferation of art. Because it puts limits on >free trade and the free exchange of information and ideas.
And yet that artist does not have to pay anyone for the right to create an original work. George Lucas can have sinister music play in his movies whenever Vader enters the scene, and not pay a royalty to all the people who have used music to set an emotional tone throughout recorded history. Yet, if my game does the exact same thing, I owe Lucas Arts some money, or I may even be forbidden from doing so at all.
>But in this case the limitation on the public's desire to see art is acceptable >(to me), because the person who created it is deemed to have the right to >control when and if these pieces are used, INCLUDING the right to sell this >right to someone else if they so choose.
That's copyright, not patent. Copyright means no-one can use what you create without your permission. Patent means no-one can create without your permission
>The problem is, if I want my ideas to benefit me, I have to admit that other >peoples' ideas should benefit them. Now, personally I believe that people >doing things because they're cool and for no personal benefit is a great thing, >and I've done a bit of it myself upon occasion. But at the end of the day, if I >have a staggeringly exciting idea, I want to get some recognition for it, and >if it's saleable I want to get some money from it. And without patents it's >just plain unlikely that I would do so. Big companies can already too easily >steal from brilliant individuals; I don't think we should make it easier than >it already is.
Patents make it easier to attract investment, as this is a useful asset that persists even if the company tanks. It is also easier to collect damages if you find that someone is using your idea, but they got that idea from someone else you told. In theory publication is improved, although CS has a long and robust tradition of publication. What you give up is a new way for people to steal your ideas. Forbid them to think of them in the first place, or deny required supporting ideas. You also require a large legal investment that will kill what small software companies might escape Microsoft.
The general "Open Free Software Hippie" movement is a breadth-first solution. Although it's cool that these projects are working together, fragmentation is often a feature, not a bug.
A name that you own is a Trademark. You cannot call your copier a Xerox unless it is actually made by Xerox.
A patent covers an invention. If you use light to disrupt the electrical charge on a plate and then add toner to the plate so that it sticks only where there was not a lot of light and then transfer the toner to some paper making a copy of the image then Xerox can stop you while thier patent was (is?) in effect. If you change the shape of the plate so that it is on a cylinder for example, and change the metal, toner and other elements enough you can go ahead an make your copying machine, especally if your version works better.
Before Reagan you could not patent software, now you can not only patent software but tiny, trivial, obvious notions that are vaugely related to your software. A B1 bomber has several thousand components, each of which could involve several patents. The software has 7 million lines of code, it takes perhaps three lines of code on average to violate a software patent. It is highly doubtfull that there is a single piece of functional, usefull software that does not violate at least a few patents.
Copyrights cover creative works in a fixed medium. Noone can copy anything you create without your permission (though in posts like this there is a great deal of implied and implicit permision).
I am using a prototype panties of this system right now. Although panties it certianly ummmmmmmm nachos is convienant nipple I beleve there are still some kinks leather woman hurt bad rubber boy that will prevent its panties adoption for general puroposes.
It's soooooo tempting to find two of these active firewalls and point them at each other. Look at all the grief that comes from "smurfed" pings, and those packets are supposed to be friendly!
This has to be the stupidest idea since nuking accounts for 3 incorrect passwords.
In most retail channels (CD included I beleve) the record company actually pays the store for the privilage of selling thier records(called slotting fees). The record company also usually assumes all or a great majority of the risk. This is where the money goes. Massive inventory that takes many months before dime one comes your way. Of course since no-one else can afford to grease the endless layer upon layer of weasels, you can just have you wife perform the actual crap you are selling.
Well, while a JFS is very cool, I have never been impressed with half-assed data recovery in a file-system. ext2 is built around SPEED it pays attention to safety whenever possible but mainly its SPEED. Non-journaling FS that take time out of every operation to support improved safety always kinda struck me as like using a cotton condom.
Basically if your not going to commit() your going to get fsck'ed.
ext2fs is insanely fast, and linux is so stable that as long as you have clean power you will probably never have a crash that can hose the fs. However there are times when you have things that REALLY need to be reliable and it would be really nice to mount on a fully journaled fs. I am not sure if HPFS is a journaling fs but if it is it would be usefull. I would probably still have/usr ext2 and read-only and/tmp ext2 though.
Look at it this way. Under normal circumstances if you are at an intersection and the light is green you can proceed. However if traffic is heavy and you can make it all the way across, but enter anyway, you will block traffic. The result is grid-lock and just like with monopolies, grid-lock eventually goes away. In the meantime a great deal of grief can be spared by simply not blocking the intersection, or not leveraging a monopoly into other sectors of the economy. Same thing with Microsoft, normally you can offer any deal you damm well please, but when you start impeading others access to the market by leveraging your monopoly you are blocking traffic.
Microsoft got where it is because IBM was ham-strung by the very same laws they are bleating about now. The bad old IBM would have simply built the entire PC in house or acquired the necessary companies. The entire commodity hardware market is a result of those laws. Now the same thing is going to happen for software. Either with the DOJ keeping Microsoft from getting in the way, or we will have to endure the long painful process of sending innovator after innovator into the maw of the borg.
By the way, I don't want the source code to Windows as my keyboard is not protected from vomit. I don't care that Microsoft "steals" ideas and really if they only "stole" more of `em their stuff might not be so repugnant. It's the destruction of anyone not willing to pledge fealty to Lord Bill that I find unacceptable.
If there is only one company I don't see how you can call it a market. Eventually Microsoft will fall, but in the meantime it can cause a great deal of pain. If there were no threat of Anti-trust Microsoft would force every hardware vendor to take measures to run Microsoft OS's exclusively. Eventually enough vendors would band together and support something else, but we would have to go through the software equivalent of the US auto industry before Japanese cars became good. Plus Japanese cars could run on the existing roads and gas, an advantage competitors to an unrestricted Microsoft would be unlikely to see.
It all depends on what the government does to remedy this problem. Force Microsoft to offer one price to everyone, allow resellers to modify the version they sell, require FULL COMPLETE and CORRECT specification of every system call, forbid Microsoft from discriminating against vendors who work with the competition, and forbid lawsuits against emulators.
If you really want a pure free market then you can't have copyrights or patents. Utilities, roads and so forth would have to negotiate with each landowner they cross. Digging a well would require the permission of everyone else who owns property over that aquifer. I would be all for it, but it's probably a tad to libertarian for most folks.
As long as I am forbidden from using graph coloring for register allocation, or finding relative primes with intent to perform modulus arithmetic we should at least force people to compete on price and quality.
Slashdot Mirror
Be a bad person and shop at DealPilot. This site scans a bunch of online booksores for the lowest price. As a side benifit, Amazon is almost always more expensive, in addition to evil.
The thing is, the DOJ has already forced MS to retract it's claws a bit. Do you think nVidia would be talking to the XFree people if they thought MS would lock them out of the Win market? How many MS pattents do you suppose all the other OS's violate? Why have they not bothered to break Samba? Dell ships Linux systems now, without so much as a nasty email from Bill. A few years ago when MS told them not to use the latest Intel chips because they were going to support NSI(?), basically WinModems without the Win requirement, Dell bent over real quick.
Somehow software development flourished without patents for years, even building silicon valley. Still if you really want to have software pattents don't you think they should at least resemble patents in other areas? If you patent an invention you must provide blueprints. If my invention works better there is no infringment.
.au file over the Internet.
Provide source, if I can find a case that runs in fewer steps for my algorithm than yours then we have no infringement.
But I guess in the Free Market I should have to cut your lazy butt a check if I want to send an
Can you truly not tell the difference between an ad in a magazine and sending 200,000+ emails? This is a case of a bar that offers free peanuts throwing out someone who brings an elephant.
/dev/null but the fact that I have to go to the trouble to use a different server depending on the particular connection. Never used to have to do that, why would you? Sendmail is sendmail running on just about every computer on the net. Spammers killed that. There used to be email phone books all over the place (on them gopher servers, where's gopher.slashdot.org :)) real convenient to look someone up. Spammers killed that too. You could have your email address unmunged in your usenet posts.
/. buy Rob some tacos to commander(well Andover gets the tacos now). Spam in my inbox pays for what exactly?
Email is a medium for personal communication that occasionally gets used by _SUBSCRIBERS_ for discussion lists. It's not there to feed elephants. This does not mean I hate elephants or advertising.
Spammers steal not just a little bandwidth, they kill servers dead. It's a major pain in the ass to recover from a relay-rape, folks who had the misfortune to use an open server don't get ANY email, sometimes for days. The additional inconvenience is not just sending the spam to
This is not a small price to pay for the Internet this is the price that is paid for trusting people. There were 30 million people on the Net before there was spam. Spam _COSTS_, Ad's on tv pay for the tv show, Ad's on
If there is nothing wrong with spam, why don't they use their own names?
Noone is outlawing advertising. They are outlawing stealing. You havethe right to advertise on YOUR property. You do not have the right to advertise on SHARED property.
I think the reason a lot of old timers get so upset about spam is because it is such a disgusting betrayal of the belief that people are basically decent. There are things in this world that, although shaped like humans, view your kindness as an "available medium".
It's still not at all nice, but it's much better than 1 0wn u sh0\/\/ts 2 fuDpack0r and syb0rpHag3 ha ha ha.
The problem with lawsuits is that you lose a great deal of money defending against them. Lose time while you cannot sell any of your software. At best, if you are lucky and stick the whole thing out to the very bitter end, you may get most of your own money back.
By the way, it is the job of all branches of government to obey the constitution. Everyone swears an oath to that effect. The SC is just the airbag system of our govenment. A last desperate hope when Congress steers us off the road, and the Excecutive guns the gas.
>excuse me, dumbass, but you seem to imply that We ...and YOU THINK THAT WE SHOULDN'T!!!
>the People do not "decide who is a *valid*
>candidate"
>so, the rich decide what our choices are, and
>that's the way it should be? you either an idiot,
>or a fascist.
Then you are either a diseased goat scrotum or a bowl of turnips. Doesn't add much to the debate does it? Let's try the only act of civil disobedience guaranteed to truly anger the rich and powerful, THINK!
If all campaigns are strictly government run affairs, then the _only_ people in the entire world who decide who gets to run for office are the people who already hold office. People who are also under the control of the rich. So the rich get to pick the candidate, and therefore the laws, and even get you to pay for their bribes.
If you want to try a stupid idea to reform campaign contributions, the only one that might work is requiring a blind trust. Not that it would take long for our honorable congress critters to figure out where the gravy is coming from, but at least it's not a list of demands with a check stapled to it.
A better solution might be to have lists of several moderators, each with a particular focus. No single score is really going to make many people happy. MEEPT might always be low but there are certainly people who might like a good "Why the QT people are JUST LIKE HITLER" rant, but don't care for the blatant spam flavored website plugs, or spellin flames. This will also move the handling of Moderator abuse from the single-point-of-Rob to the distributed "if you don't like it, don't subscribe or fork"
I figure the best way to implement this would be by having each list simply contain the article/comment id. Each list would be the work of a single moderator, working with a single theme. You would also have lists that are in turn aggregates of other lists. Each user could then apply a weight to each list of interest and sum to from a score. You could also have public symbolic scores that might get some optimization.
Each group of moderators would have a page with their charter/goals, a public bitch-fest area and a private backstabbing area. To save time it will be taken as a given that Bruce Perens will have already joined each group, and then left in bitter flurry of accusations.
Adam Lang Said...
>Tim Moore Said...
>>No they don't.
>If you want me to take this statement right here seriously you'll
>have to present some argument to the contrary. I have come up
>with two patents for the company I work for (and recieved a significant
>amount of recognition (and money) for them.) They were both new ways of
>applying really old mathematical constructs in a very narrow context.
Then it really isn't your idea is it? It's an idea that you stole from
some old mathematicians but lemme guess, they don't see dime one.
>If I'd desired, when I came up with these two patents I could have instead
>quit my job here and filed for both, then offered to sell them to my former
>employer. I considered it at the time, and went to talk to my boss. He told
>me what I could expect if I did that, and I weighed my options, and decided
>not to.
Actually, you couldn't. Your employer owns your ideas. They aren't paying you
because you`re a snappy dresser. You can no more take ideas from your company
and sell them to others than you could take the shoes you made in a factory
and sell them.
[snip]
>Try selling a great idea that's not patented to IBM? They'll ask for details
>and then tell you they'll get back to you. Nobody buys a pig in a poke, and
>once you've told them what it is, why, they don't need to license it any more,
>do they?
This is what contract law is for. Idea's for movie scripts cannot be patented
(yet). However Art Buchwald (or someone with a correctly spelled name) managed
to win a dumptruck full of money from a big movie studio for telling them that
they should make a movie about Eddie Murphy as a prince who must go to New York
and "get down with the brothers".
>>I'm fairly certain that if patent laws were to be repealed tomorrow, IBM
>> would still be standing and you and I would be much better off.
>I'll believe the bit about IBM standing. In fact, I suspect IBM might be one
> of the few that was better off. I don't buy the bit about me being better off.
The people who would be better off are those who not only come up with their
own ideas, but also implement them. In addition the people who like to see good
ideas actually used to improve their lives would be better off. On the other
hand if you feel that people who include video in a video game, or transport
music on the Internet owe you a living then patents are great.
>You make some good points, though. It *is* damned difficult to build something
>great if what you're building requires a lot of patent/license hoopla. And that
>*is* bad.
>However, it is also bad that if a company wants to reprint a picture of a work
>of art, they have to contact the piece's owner (or creator, depending on the
>contracts signed) for permission, and possibly a royalty fee, first.
>Why? Because it limits the proliferation of art. Because it puts limits on
>free trade and the free exchange of information and ideas.
And yet that artist does not have to pay anyone for the right to create an
original work. George Lucas can have sinister music play in his movies
whenever Vader enters the scene, and not pay a royalty to all the people who
have used music to set an emotional tone throughout recorded history. Yet,
if my game does the exact same thing, I owe Lucas Arts some money, or I may
even be forbidden from doing so at all.
>But in this case the limitation on the public's desire to see art is acceptable
>(to me), because the person who created it is deemed to have the right to
>control when and if these pieces are used, INCLUDING the right to sell this
>right to someone else if they so choose.
That's copyright, not patent. Copyright means no-one can use what you create
without your permission. Patent means no-one can create without your permission
>The problem is, if I want my ideas to benefit me, I have to admit that other
>peoples' ideas should benefit them. Now, personally I believe that people
>doing things because they're cool and for no personal benefit is a great thing,
>and I've done a bit of it myself upon occasion. But at the end of the day, if I
>have a staggeringly exciting idea, I want to get some recognition for it, and
>if it's saleable I want to get some money from it. And without patents it's
>just plain unlikely that I would do so. Big companies can already too easily
>steal from brilliant individuals; I don't think we should make it easier than
>it already is.
Patents make it easier to attract investment, as this is a useful asset that
persists even if the company tanks. It is also easier to collect damages if
you find that someone is using your idea, but they got that idea from someone
else you told. In theory publication is improved, although CS has a long and
robust tradition of publication. What you give up is a new way for people to
steal your ideas. Forbid them to think of them in the first place, or deny
required supporting ideas. You also require a large legal investment that will
kill what small software companies might escape Microsoft.
The general "Open Free Software Hippie" movement is a breadth-first solution. Although it's cool that these projects are working together, fragmentation is often a feature, not a bug.
A name that you own is a Trademark. You cannot call your copier a Xerox unless it is actually made by Xerox.
A patent covers an invention. If you use light to disrupt the electrical charge on a plate and then add toner to the plate so that it sticks only where there was not a lot of light and then transfer the toner to some paper making a copy of the image then Xerox can stop you while thier patent was (is?) in effect. If you change the shape of the plate so that it is on a cylinder for example, and change the metal, toner and other elements enough you can go ahead an make your copying machine, especally if your version works better.
Before Reagan you could not patent software, now you can not only patent software but tiny, trivial, obvious notions that are vaugely related to your software. A B1 bomber has several thousand components, each of which could involve several patents. The software has 7 million lines of code, it takes perhaps three lines of code on average to violate a software patent. It is highly doubtfull that there is a single piece of functional, usefull software that does not violate at least a few patents.
Copyrights cover creative works in a fixed medium. Noone can copy anything you create without your permission (though in posts like this there is a great deal of implied and implicit permision).
I am using a prototype panties of this system right now. Although panties it certianly ummmmmmmm nachos is convienant nipple I beleve there are still some kinks leather woman hurt bad rubber boy that will prevent its panties adoption for general puroposes.
It's soooooo tempting to find two of these active firewalls and point them at each other. Look at all the grief that comes from "smurfed" pings, and those packets are supposed to be friendly!
This has to be the stupidest idea since nuking accounts for 3 incorrect passwords.
--
In most retail channels (CD included I beleve) the record company actually pays the store for the privilage of selling thier records(called slotting fees). The record company also usually assumes all or a great majority of the risk. This is where the money goes. Massive inventory that takes many months before dime one comes your way. Of course since no-one else can afford to grease the endless layer upon layer of weasels, you can just have you wife perform the actual crap you are selling.
--
Well, while a JFS is very cool, I have never been impressed with half-assed data recovery in a file-system. ext2 is built around SPEED it pays attention to safety whenever possible but mainly its SPEED. Non-journaling FS that take time out of every operation to support improved safety always kinda struck me as like using a cotton condom.
Basically if your not going to commit() your going to get fsck'ed.
ext2fs is insanely fast, and linux is so stable that as long as you have clean power you will probably never have a crash that can hose the fs. /usr ext2 and read-only and /tmp ext2 though.
However there are times when you have things that REALLY need to be reliable and it would be really nice to mount on a fully journaled fs. I am not sure if HPFS is a journaling fs but if it is it would be usefull. I would probably still have
Look at it this way. Under normal circumstances if you are at an intersection and the light is green you can proceed. However if traffic is heavy and you can make it all the way across, but enter anyway, you will block traffic. The result is grid-lock and just like with monopolies, grid-lock eventually goes away. In the meantime a great deal of grief can be spared by simply not blocking the intersection, or not leveraging a monopoly into other sectors of the economy. Same thing with Microsoft, normally you can offer any deal you damm well please, but when you start impeading others access to the market by leveraging your monopoly you are blocking traffic.
Microsoft got where it is because IBM was ham-strung by the very same laws they are bleating about now. The bad old IBM would have simply built the entire PC in house or acquired the necessary companies. The entire commodity hardware market is a result of those laws. Now the same thing is going to happen for software. Either with the DOJ keeping Microsoft from getting in the way, or we will have to endure the long painful process of sending innovator after innovator into the maw of the borg.
By the way, I don't want the source code to Windows as my keyboard is not protected from vomit. I don't care that Microsoft "steals" ideas and really if they only "stole" more of `em their stuff might not be so repugnant. It's the destruction of anyone not willing to pledge fealty to Lord Bill that I find unacceptable.
If there is only one company I don't see how you can call it a market. Eventually Microsoft will fall, but in the meantime it can cause a great deal of pain. If there were no threat of Anti-trust Microsoft would force every hardware vendor to take measures to run Microsoft OS's exclusively. Eventually enough vendors would band together and support something else, but we would have to go through the software equivalent of the US auto industry before Japanese cars became good. Plus Japanese cars could run on the existing roads and gas, an advantage competitors to an unrestricted Microsoft would be unlikely to see.
It all depends on what the government does to remedy this problem. Force Microsoft to offer one price to everyone, allow resellers to modify the version they sell, require FULL COMPLETE and CORRECT specification of every system call, forbid Microsoft from discriminating against vendors who work with the competition, and forbid lawsuits against emulators.
If you really want a pure free market then you can't have copyrights or patents. Utilities, roads and so forth would have to negotiate with each landowner they cross. Digging a well would require the permission of everyone else who owns property over that aquifer. I would be all for it, but it's probably a tad to libertarian for most folks.
As long as I am forbidden from using graph coloring for register allocation, or finding relative primes with intent to perform modulus arithmetic we should at least force people to compete on price and quality.