He came to hate them too. And went too far as a result. MS turned that to their advantage, just as they did Jackson's missteps. Neither Jackson's or Sporkin's humiliations will be lost on this judge. She will be as careful as she can possibly be.
I think the first two came to hate MS because they could see clearly the utter contempt MS has for the justice system, or anyone else that might get in their way. MS is still at it in this new courtroom. Lies, half truths, FUD, remorselessness, arrogance, self-serving "compliance" and disrespect for the intellegence of the bench are usually not part of a winning formula in court. Eventually, MS will find a judge that does not get provoked, but simply hammers them with the law. Hopefully, this judge will be the one.
Bang on. Its worth adding that from the skimpy info in the article, it appears the judge did not rule on the overall validity of EULAs. Blacksnow, after all, was not a party to the EULA. The EULA governs the relationship between Mystic and their users. What it does or does not mean is irrelevant to the issue. Its mere existence defines Blacksnow as a third party, and so without legal standing to alter the contractual relationship.
Think of it this way. I buy a burger from Wendy's. If I don't like it, I can bring it back. But I can't sell the right to bring it back to someone else for use on a different burger. The "contract" is between Wendy's and me, and applies to that burger. I can still dispute with Wendy's about replace vs. refund, or if there is really something wrong with the burger, so the existence of the contract and its validity are two separate issues.
Re:Time to switch yet again...
on
KaZaA Collapses
·
· Score: 2
Two years ago, you were right. But the RIAA et. al. are not as dumb as they seem. They are using the "nothing they can do about P2P' in a so-far successful attempt to gain far more control over the use of their "products". Call it a counter-revolution.
If they can gain control over when and how their products are used by the mass market, then the existence of marginal P2P networks will become nothing more than a bother. A cost of doing business. Meanwhile, Disney and WB will be collecting $10 a month from millions of households for access to their content. Plus the pay-per-use fees.
If the RIAA and MPAA handle this right, and get some lucky breaks, this could be the best thing that ever happened to the entertainment business. In that light, their present spin/lobby/litigate strategy makes perfect sense.
Let me get this straight. The product that Microsoft's monopoly rests upon, the monopoly that they illegally maintained and expanded, is so flawed that it threatens US national security. Did someone from Microsoft REALLY say this? If so, it is clear they have gone mad in Redmond. What do they expect the millions of companies and government agencies to do? Wait until Longhorn, or whatever is ready? And hope all the holes are fixed by then?
"Uhh, sorry Mr. President, the NSA can no longer monitor international communications. Our systems are just too vunerable to hacking to be used. Jim Allchin assured us that a comprehensive fix would be available within 18 months."
"In other news, the US Navy has ordered all AGEIS cruisers into port indefinatley. The AGEIS computer systems were deemed too risky for combat use. The Pentagon would not comment on reports the entire US fleet would require software overhauls before any offensive combat operations could be contemplated."
"World stock markets are today in freefall as most major international corporations raced to secure information systems based on Microsoft's Windows operating system. Some experts estimate that the expense of fixing or replacing mission critical software to provide an adequate level of security would dampen the World economy for a decade."
This goes so far beyond a computer industry issue. Its a staggering admission of guilt. What CIO would be caught dead installing an MS system unless they have absolutly no alternative?
There is also the legal issue. If someone has sustained an economic loss due to "flawed code", that they are using because MS illegally supressed competitive alternatives, then they have a really good case for compensation. And the hardest part, proving that MS illegally manipulated the market, is already done. And they have some tens of billions just sitting around, waiting for the right lawyer to just take away.
This is so bang on, but there are wider implications. In the computer business, we have come to believe that MS is invulnerable. Well, people outside the computer industry said MS would have their hands full in the console market. That it wasn't as easy as it looked. That MS had never dealt with competitors like Sony and Nintendo. Companies that had long ago figured out how to get rich in the razor sharp consumer electronics market. Some said that MS had no understanding of retail, where Sony rules supreme. I think many of us wanted to believe these things, but we were not hopeful, because MS was invulnerable.
Guess what? MS is taking a corporate drubbing the likes of which happen once or twice in a generation. Everything the nay sayers said proved correct, and more. This week, for example, they have been thourougly humiliated by both Sony and EA. The impending price cut for the Xbox has been in the computer industry news for several weeks. The Register predicted a North American price drop when MS started discounting in Europe. In typical MS fashion, they failed to see a downside to this chatter, and sort of pre-announced the announcement for next week's E3. Sony trumped them with an impressive speed and boldness. The mass media picked up the Sony price cut as a leading item, and covered the MS price cut as a me-too move. Ouch.
Now, we have EA going public with an announcement that seems to have humiliation as its sole purpose. MS looks arrogant, underhanded (like we didn't know), but most importantly, inept. Inept,Ineffective, incompetent, inferior. Maybe EA is not the first company to publicly tell MS to fuck off, but I can't remember anyone else doing it. So it can be done.
The last six weeks have been a total disaster for MS. Dropping Hailstorm, because nobody wanted to play ball with them. Gates admitting in the trial that a modular windows was possible. Jones admitting in the trial that MS intended to make sure competitor's desktop icons would be nothing more than desktop icons. The anemic Japanese Xbox launch. The Xbox price cut in Europe. The widespread media coverage of Sun's StarOffice launch. David Villanueva Nuñez' brilliant Anti-FUD letter. The publicising of the Softimage piracy conviction. The pay-up-or-else dictats to the schools. The desperate demand that educational institutions have to licesnse Windows for people that don't even use computers. The donated PCs "gotta have windows" debacle. The pointed questions about MS' CIFS license, and the recent assertion that at least one of their two patents is unenforceble. The hapless witnesses at the trial, like Jerry "with friends like this" Sanders. Gateway's willingness to testify against them. The revelation that 1/3 of MS customers have taken no action on the new licensing scheme. The continuing, embarrasing security and virus problems (weekly MSIE uber-patch available now). The Lindows case and the possible loss of the Windows trademark. The delightful (well for me anyway) realization that MS can't afford to drop Apple support. Oh, and Apple's creation of the first sexy server.
These are all stories covered here or at the Reg. Even for MS, which has reliably averaged one PR disaster per week for the last year at least, this is bad. I think the mortal blow is ironically going to be none of Microsoft's fault. The California/Oracle deal will have massive ramifications for all public software contracts. Got Open?
All these posts about how Embedded XP doesn't make sense on the desktop, or that a modularized windows "would be bad for consumers" are laughably beside the point. MS broke the law and fucked up the computer market. Now, they want to continue those practices because the market is so fucked up that any change will be "bad for..(the market, the technology, the industry, the consumer, the customers, whatever)".
The nicest comparison I can think of is the guy that murdered his parents and pleaded for mercy because he was an orphan. Come on.
If MS refuse to help develop reasonable changes to stop these criminal practices, then what choice does the court have but to impose the best remedy they can under the circumstances? And if that remedy is really bad, who is at fault? The court? The refusnik states? The DOJ?
It is not the business of the Federal Court to understand the computer industry. Or to find the perfect forward-looking, past-wrong addressing remedy. Judge CKK can only look at what she has been presented in court, formulate the best remedy possibly based on that material, and ensure MS complies with that remedy. If she can do that and not be overturned on appeal, you can expect law students to study her decision for generations.
200 meg? You haven't been using windows in the last two years. The smallest install I can get out of XP Pro is about 700mb. And if I am not vigilant, it will quickly grow above 1gb. Security updates, etc. Hell, after using it for six weeks, the dll cache alone is more than 200 mb.
Don't take it the wrong way. Not knowing the extent of current windows bloat is a sign of purity, not ignorance (he said optimistically).
This is an outrage! You have posted a link to a NYT article without saying (free registration blah, blah, blah). This is near criminal negligence. How many will suffer this morning, hungering for their daily dose of corporate/institutional war on our rights, when they click on the link innocently, thinking they will soon be in righteous indignation heaven, only to be confronted by, by, by...... a LOGIN?
Oh the humanity! For shame.
I think that all hardware and software used on such a mission should have open specs or be open source. That way, we can claim Mars as an Open Source Planet.
We can set up our own Anti-DMCA stuff and make Windows illegal there. And Bill Gates, and Steve Ballmer and Hillary Rosen and Jack Valenti and Fritz Hollings and anyone else I don't like. ohhhh, what a sweet thought.
And we can write our own drivers which would be far superior because there's less gravity.
And everyone there would have a 19" LCD and get 500 FPS on Doom 4 at 1900x1600 at 64 bit colour with 64x anti aliasing and no latency at all. It would be paradise.
Let me add that I have seen surveys and studies like this as far back as I can remember. Americans can't find the US on a map, American's can't read, Americans can't add, American public schools are cespools of ignorance and incompetence. America is fucked and it is going down the drain.
That's why Americans have a substantially lower standard of living than they did in 1965. Why the US has never taken the lead in fields like Space exploration, computers, software, telecommunications, cultural exports, robotics, high tech manufacturing, military technology, aerospace, etc. Why the US economy has become the less dominant, and why the US dollar is no longer the de facto world currency. That's why countries with excellent and exacting education systems have done so well. Like Japan and Switzerland.
What these surveys measure are not "facts", they measure cultural norms. US culture has a streak of anti-intellectualism. American culture is more can-do than think-it-through. This is true even in movies about intellectuals, like "Good Will Hunting" and "A Beautiful Mind". This is neither good nor bad, it just is.
On an individual basis, Americans prize education and knowledge. They are generally happy to talk about intricate ideas. Put them in a group and all they will talk about is football. That is what these surveys show again and again.
This survey, and the/. response is typical of the kind of chauvinism that many "ordinary" people reject. And rightly so. The survey is not reflective of any useful "truth", it was designed to make a point. Fund more science. A worthy goal, but these are unworthy scare tactics. And the response here smacks of technocratic elitism. Clearly, many do not understand that some of the respondents are in open rebellion against an orthodoxy that is being shoved down their throats. The orthodoxy of the technocrats (that's us). This orthodoxy is as pernicious and intolerant as any it replaced.
A good example of this orthodoxy is evolution. For many, the idea that we evolved from amoeba is no more fantastic than the idea we were created whole by a superior being. If you understand the time scales, and the mechanisms, evolution is self evident. But that level of understanding is utterly useless to most people, and so they don't bother to learn it. Even many well educated people who accept evolution. AND WHY SHOULD THEY? They file the conclusion and a few facts and forget the rest. What then are they left with? Try an interesting experiment. Take a devils advocate position and argue against evolution with some of your well-educated friends, preferably not engineers. When they run out of logical arguments, the fun starts. See how much faith underlies their "rational" beliefs, and how panicky they get when their faith is challenged.
So asking a question on an allegedly scientific survey like "do you believe in psychic powers?" is ridiculous. Its a dumb question. Can I prove psychic powers exist? No, not at all. But I believe my wife is faithful to me and I have no evidence for that either. (Readers insert witty comment here). Actually, based on my own experience, I have better evidence of psychic powers than I do of the big bang or relativity. You can do a scientifical experiment yerself. Can you tell if someone is looking at you? Many people can. They don't actually think about it, but if you look at someone intently, they will frequently snap their head around and look back. This is anecdotal, but consistent. Consistent enough that there should be an explanation. The technocratic explanation is that either A) the phenomenon does not exit, or B) there is a straightforward explanation, but I am ignorant of it. But the phenomenon does exist, and there is no known explanation for it (at least in physics). I am not A) delusional, or B) ignorant, so the orthodoxy and its minions (us) must be wrong. What else is it wrong about?
In the middle ages, they believed that bleeding poisons from the body would help people get over illness. In the early 1970s, the Cambodian Army used the modern weapons they received from the US to shoot at the dragon that was devouring the sun (a solar eclipse). And it worked! Ask yourself, what do we believe today that is so stupid our great grandchildren will laugh at our folly? Unless you have an answer to that, stop sneering at the "ignorant" 60% out there. They may understand the world better than you do.
I love this guy's comments. IMHO, this was the worst week MS has had in the whole trial, including the week of Allchin's video.
After testifying under oath that Windows XP could not be modular, Gates confirmed under cross examination that it could be modular. That a modular version works, exists and is shipping. And that the only reason PC OEM's don't use it is because MS won't let them.
He also admitted that several of the actions the appeals court found illegal would not have been prevented by the MS/DOJ settlement, but would have been by the State's proposal.
Gates tops it off by threatening the court. Issue an order we don't like, and we will take Windows off the market. Thereby initiating a new dark age.
Then, this VP gets on the stand and says in effect that OEM's can put whatever icons they like on the desktop, but MS will still decide what programs carry out what functions. MS, in other words, would be compelled by the DOJ settlement only to appear to obey the law.
Don't think for a second that all this was lost on the judge. The one place MS' government allies cannot protect it is in open court. If she were so inclined, the judge could dismiss the State's case and rubber stamp the DOJ settlement and be done with it. Unless the MS boys made that impossible. Last week, they did.
I admit to being a download slut. I have downloaded most days for the last ten years. And I am not too particular about where I download from either. But I never get viruses. Well, I got one on the mac once in 1991. And another on a word document about 1997. But that's it. When people ask me about viruses, I always tell them to use something besides Outlook and they will be fine. And they are. For 98% of the people out there, the damn anti-virus software is more of a hassle than the viruses they can't catch. The bloat in security software puts MS to shame. All you need is Norton anti virus to show the kids what a 386 was like. Slooooowwwww. The only way you can get a virus nowadays, is to start up Outlook. I do not understand why the corporate IT guys, for whom these high-profile worms are a genuine headache, do not sue MS. By pretty well insisting on having scripting 24/7 in all their apps, they have created a royal road into anyone's box. The patches they offer are laughable. The house is on fire, and when a bit of flame shows in the front window, MS generously rushes up with a glass of water.
From the business point of view, this is as stupid a move as a consumer oriented company could make. Anyone with an MBA and a brain in their head would come to the same conclusion.
The potential gain (avoid lost sales) is so far below the potential loss (lawsuits, internal Sony politics, losses to other Sony divisions, lost sales to pissed off consumers, lost sales due to geeks cracking the cd as a point of honor, angry artists, inter-territory grey marketing, spread of hardware workarounds, etc.) that nobody in their right mind would implement such a scheme. Which is why most companies aren't rushing to try out the technology. There is no business incentive to be a pioneer.
Also, from a strategic business point of view, when a consumer company treats its customers as criminals, then there is something far more basic than technology at work. This is the classic case of a technology that allows the expression of a nacient desire. BUT IT IS NOT A TECHNOLOGICAL PROBLEM! Its the nacient desire that is the issue. So there can be no technological solution. They do actually teach this stuff in business schools. Sony is now about to re-teach the lesson to a generation of music executives. Remember to not get too pissed off and enjoy the fun.
Huh? Rather than 100 stations paying $n to show a movie to y households, they would pay $n*x to show the movie to y*x households. They could therefore charge $z*x more for ad space. Market efficiencies would make the x value proportionate to the economic value of broadcasting the show. The aforementioned station is Ass End AK would simply not pay the $n*x for a movie if y*x = total US households. So the movie owner would need to drop the price to the point where all three factors were in balance, otherwise, they would lose revenue from showing their movies.
And another thing! What could be interesting is that local channels might develop national niches. Like a channel that just showed sci-fi movies. Could be the end of cable channels!
Sorry to piss on the parade, but this has nothing to do with remitting money to the RIAA or MPAA. You might first remember what the last A in both those acronyms stands for. It ain't Canada.
Second, these are proposed levies. If I recall correctly, the proposed levy on tapes was going to be $1.50 on each tape. It was implemented at $0.29. All these figures are $C, not $US. The first proposed levy on Audio CD-Rs was going to be per megabyte and add up to $2.50 per disk or something similar.
Third, this initiative is from Heritage Canada, the ministry charged with promoting and protecting Canadian culture. The levies are supposed to compensate CANADIAN artists for "lost sales" due to copying. I do not know if the situation has changed, but at the time the first stage of the levy came into effect, no US artists or companies would be paid a dime from the fund. However, other artists from Europe and elsewhere would share in the fund. This was because the US had failed to sign a trade treaty that allowed for international copyright compensation, among other things.
Lastly, the minister in charge here is Sheila Copps. Her ambitions to take over the leadership of the party (and thus become Prime Minister) are well known. She hinted last week that she would be running when the time came. As the present PM is almost clinically dead, the contest to replace him is already starting. The one thing that no Canadian politician can never be accused of is being to vigilant in protecting and promoting our culture. This is a no-brainer for Ms. Copps. Even if some of the money were going to US artists, it would make no difference politically. The only way she can lose on this is to let the opportunity to vigorously defend Canadian culture slip by.
So the levy will come to pass, it will be a fraction of the proposition stated here, and no US artist or cartel (how does the RIAA get away with it?) will see any money from it. Oh, and the good part is that Ms. Copps hasn't got a chance of succeeding the Rt. Hon. Mr. Cretin no matter what she does or doesn't do. Thank God.
The funny thing is that this would be as successful as Prohibition or the war on drugs. That is to say, not at all.
Even more interesting is that this legislation would make many, if not most, geeks into outlaws. The people who would be supposed to implement these systems. How can any law succeed in its purpose if the majority of those supposed to observe and implement that law believe it to be fundamentally wrong? Simple, it can't. The difficulty of getting SSSCA standards created and implemented in hardware would mean that they would be effectively set in stone. Uh huh. How long would it be before software cracks were widely available? The kind of creativity and sheer bloody mindedness that goes into all those emulators we know and love would find a new center of gravity. But, it would be illegal! Yes, and the FBI will drop the War on Terrorism to crack down on people watching illegal copies of The Little Mermaid. I seriously doubt that even people as craven as Fritz Hollings would compromise the credibility of the US Congress in such a fashion. Even if Fritz is craven enough, there are cooler heads around. They won't let him spoil the whole game just to satisfy his corporate patrons.
Exactly, if it is unconstitutional to make them create 50 different versions, then it is unconstitional to make them create 2 different versions.
If it is constitutional to make them create different versions, then the test of how many should be compliance with the law, not how convenient or inconvenient it is for Microsoft.
Nobody is, after all, requiring them to make and sell Windows at all. Just as there is no law requiring GM to sell cars in North Dakota or Delaware.
Your friend is totally incorrect, so incorrect that I would question his or her fitness to practice law in the United States.
If the states tried to try MS in their state judicial systems and then apply any settlement country-wide, THEN your friend would be correct. The whole point here is that the states are in FEDERAL court. Which is where any party can go to seek the Federal Governement's involvement in matters that can't be handled at the state level.
Your friend seems to feel that states are not allowed to bring suit in Federal Court. Utter nonsense.
The problem all along has been the banner ad. It may be the single worst advertising medium ever invented. Banners are so bad that they themselves train people to ignore them. Click on a few banners and see what I mean, instant shit storm. Soon, you learn that clicking on banners is a drag. So the average user stops clicking.
Imagine that there is an interesting commercial on tv. When the TV decides you are interested in that commercial, it hits you with lots more and changes the channel to do it. Fuck that.
Online advertising quickly became a spam medium and nothing more. It killed itself through a gold-rush mentality, incompetence and a thorough misunderstanding of the Internet as a medium. Greed, stupidity and ignorance, if you will.
Someday, (hopefully soon) sombody will figure out how to do advertising properly and the game will change again. The HBO ads for Six Feet Under on Salon are an example that this may be happening already. Blue Mountain or Salon should be able to support themselves with advertising when advertising is done right. If advertising can support as bloated and inefficient an industry as the TV industry, there is no reason it can't support the Internet content industry.
I sent an email to Blizzard this morning suggesting that using the DMCA in this case was counter-productive to the company's interests. I received this response (from a bot, I think) a few minutes ago:
On 2/22/02 2:14 PM, "Sales" wrote:
Certain programs have been developed that allow users to bypass Battle.net's CD-key-authentication process. Although these programs might have been made with good intentions, they directly promote software piracy by allowing users who have illegitimately obtained our games to play them as if they'd been legitimately purchased. Furthermore, because these programs allow access without a CD key, they render malicious users unaccountable, thereby eliminating Blizzard's ability to protect legitimate consumers. Therefore, Blizzard has taken an aggressive stance opposing the use of these programs.
Please take a moment to read through our FAQ regarding these issues at http://www.battle.net/support/emulationfaq.shtml if you have any questions or concerns about Blizzard's stance on software piracy.
{WR655}
This response seems to me (IANAL), to render any action they might want to take under the DMCA utterly futile. They themselves seem to admit that BnetD does not even clear the first hurdle for infringement. And its a pretty low hurdle.
I sincerly hope that the BnetD people can pony up the money to fight this, as it appears they stand an excellent chance of winning.
They are talking about cheap broadband accounts for $23.95. That's Canadian. $15 in US dollars. Broadband, cheaper than dialup. Wow.
This is probably one good thing from the collapse of @home. Rogers et al. gets better control over their costs and can scale service in relation to those costs.
Wasn't the anti-trust trial launched because MS used illegal tactics to drive Netscape out of business? Didn't a federal judge and a federal appeals court hold that they were guilty of using illegal tactics to drive Netscape out of business? Remember the famous "cut off their air supply" quote? Are you an Microsoft publicist? The "Big Lie" is alive and well in Redmond.
Crying now will actually help a lot. TRIPLE damages will have an impact even on Microsoft. Since the Bush DOJ has decided to let MS off without any punishment, AOL-TW will just have to do.
one bit of advice for these guys, don't use an MS OS or the fabled screen of death could be literal.
I can see it now... "a platoon wiped out on Mindanao because the.Net servers in Redmond went down and their exoskeletons crashed, making the hapless troops sitting ducks. A survivor said, "we kept getting "Invalid License Key, contact your system administrator" when we tried to fire our weapons!"
Or... "an MS security hole was blamed today when a Marine guard's exoskeleton ran amok and killed five outside the US embassy in Islamabad. Middle Eastern hackers are suspected."
Slashdot Mirror
He came to hate them too. And went too far as a result. MS turned that to their advantage, just as they did Jackson's missteps. Neither Jackson's or Sporkin's humiliations will be lost on this judge. She will be as careful as she can possibly be.
I think the first two came to hate MS because they could see clearly the utter contempt MS has for the justice system, or anyone else that might get in their way. MS is still at it in this new courtroom. Lies, half truths, FUD, remorselessness, arrogance, self-serving "compliance" and disrespect for the intellegence of the bench are usually not part of a winning formula in court. Eventually, MS will find a judge that does not get provoked, but simply hammers them with the law. Hopefully, this judge will be the one.
Bang on. Its worth adding that from the skimpy info in the article, it appears the judge did not rule on the overall validity of EULAs. Blacksnow, after all, was not a party to the EULA. The EULA governs the relationship between Mystic and their users. What it does or does not mean is irrelevant to the issue. Its mere existence defines Blacksnow as a third party, and so without legal standing to alter the contractual relationship.
Think of it this way. I buy a burger from Wendy's. If I don't like it, I can bring it back. But I can't sell the right to bring it back to someone else for use on a different burger. The "contract" is between Wendy's and me, and applies to that burger. I can still dispute with Wendy's about replace vs. refund, or if there is really something wrong with the burger, so the existence of the contract and its validity are two separate issues.
Two years ago, you were right. But the RIAA et. al. are not as dumb as they seem. They are using the "nothing they can do about P2P' in a so-far successful attempt to gain far more control over the use of their "products". Call it a counter-revolution.
If they can gain control over when and how their products are used by the mass market, then the existence of marginal P2P networks will become nothing more than a bother. A cost of doing business. Meanwhile, Disney and WB will be collecting $10 a month from millions of households for access to their content. Plus the pay-per-use fees.
If the RIAA and MPAA handle this right, and get some lucky breaks, this could be the best thing that ever happened to the entertainment business. In that light, their present spin/lobby/litigate strategy makes perfect sense.
Let me get this straight. The product that Microsoft's monopoly rests upon, the monopoly that they illegally maintained and expanded, is so flawed that it threatens US national security. Did someone from Microsoft REALLY say this? If so, it is clear they have gone mad in Redmond. What do they expect the millions of companies and government agencies to do? Wait until Longhorn, or whatever is ready? And hope all the holes are fixed by then?
"Uhh, sorry Mr. President, the NSA can no longer monitor international communications. Our systems are just too vunerable to hacking to be used. Jim Allchin assured us that a comprehensive fix would be available within 18 months."
"In other news, the US Navy has ordered all AGEIS cruisers into port indefinatley. The AGEIS computer systems were deemed too risky for combat use. The Pentagon would not comment on reports the entire US fleet would require software overhauls before any offensive combat operations could be contemplated."
"World stock markets are today in freefall as most major international corporations raced to secure information systems based on Microsoft's Windows operating system. Some experts estimate that the expense of fixing or replacing mission critical software to provide an adequate level of security would dampen the World economy for a decade."
This goes so far beyond a computer industry issue. Its a staggering admission of guilt. What CIO would be caught dead installing an MS system unless they have absolutly no alternative?
There is also the legal issue. If someone has sustained an economic loss due to "flawed code", that they are using because MS illegally supressed competitive alternatives, then they have a really good case for compensation. And the hardest part, proving that MS illegally manipulated the market, is already done. And they have some tens of billions just sitting around, waiting for the right lawyer to just take away.
This is so bang on, but there are wider implications. In the computer business, we have come to believe that MS is invulnerable. Well, people outside the computer industry said MS would have their hands full in the console market. That it wasn't as easy as it looked. That MS had never dealt with competitors like Sony and Nintendo. Companies that had long ago figured out how to get rich in the razor sharp consumer electronics market. Some said that MS had no understanding of retail, where Sony rules supreme. I think many of us wanted to believe these things, but we were not hopeful, because MS was invulnerable.
Guess what? MS is taking a corporate drubbing the likes of which happen once or twice in a generation. Everything the nay sayers said proved correct, and more. This week, for example, they have been thourougly humiliated by both Sony and EA. The impending price cut for the Xbox has been in the computer industry news for several weeks. The Register predicted a North American price drop when MS started discounting in Europe. In typical MS fashion, they failed to see a downside to this chatter, and sort of pre-announced the announcement for next week's E3. Sony trumped them with an impressive speed and boldness. The mass media picked up the Sony price cut as a leading item, and covered the MS price cut as a me-too move. Ouch.
Now, we have EA going public with an announcement that seems to have humiliation as its sole purpose. MS looks arrogant, underhanded (like we didn't know), but most importantly, inept. Inept,Ineffective, incompetent, inferior. Maybe EA is not the first company to publicly tell MS to fuck off, but I can't remember anyone else doing it. So it can be done.
The last six weeks have been a total disaster for MS. Dropping Hailstorm, because nobody wanted to play ball with them. Gates admitting in the trial that a modular windows was possible. Jones admitting in the trial that MS intended to make sure competitor's desktop icons would be nothing more than desktop icons. The anemic Japanese Xbox launch. The Xbox price cut in Europe. The widespread media coverage of Sun's StarOffice launch. David Villanueva Nuñez' brilliant Anti-FUD letter. The publicising of the Softimage piracy conviction. The pay-up-or-else dictats to the schools. The desperate demand that educational institutions have to licesnse Windows for people that don't even use computers. The donated PCs "gotta have windows" debacle. The pointed questions about MS' CIFS license, and the recent assertion that at least one of their two patents is unenforceble. The hapless witnesses at the trial, like Jerry "with friends like this" Sanders. Gateway's willingness to testify against them. The revelation that 1/3 of MS customers have taken no action on the new licensing scheme. The continuing, embarrasing security and virus problems (weekly MSIE uber-patch available now). The Lindows case and the possible loss of the Windows trademark. The delightful (well for me anyway) realization that MS can't afford to drop Apple support. Oh, and Apple's creation of the first sexy server.
These are all stories covered here or at the Reg. Even for MS, which has reliably averaged one PR disaster per week for the last year at least, this is bad. I think the mortal blow is ironically going to be none of Microsoft's fault. The California/Oracle deal will have massive ramifications for all public software contracts. Got Open?
All these posts about how Embedded XP doesn't make sense on the desktop, or that a modularized windows "would be bad for consumers" are laughably beside the point. MS broke the law and fucked up the computer market. Now, they want to continue those practices because the market is so fucked up that any change will be "bad for..(the market, the technology, the industry, the consumer, the customers, whatever)".
The nicest comparison I can think of is the guy that murdered his parents and pleaded for mercy because he was an orphan. Come on.
If MS refuse to help develop reasonable changes to stop these criminal practices, then what choice does the court have but to impose the best remedy they can under the circumstances? And if that remedy is really bad, who is at fault? The court? The refusnik states? The DOJ?
It is not the business of the Federal Court to understand the computer industry. Or to find the perfect forward-looking, past-wrong addressing remedy. Judge CKK can only look at what she has been presented in court, formulate the best remedy possibly based on that material, and ensure MS complies with that remedy. If she can do that and not be overturned on appeal, you can expect law students to study her decision for generations.
200 meg? You haven't been using windows in the last two years. The smallest install I can get out of XP Pro is about 700mb. And if I am not vigilant, it will quickly grow above 1gb. Security updates, etc. Hell, after using it for six weeks, the dll cache alone is more than 200 mb.
Don't take it the wrong way. Not knowing the extent of current windows bloat is a sign of purity, not ignorance (he said optimistically).
This is an outrage!
You have posted a link to a NYT article without saying (free registration blah, blah, blah). This is near criminal negligence. How many will suffer this morning, hungering for their daily dose of corporate/institutional war on our rights, when they click on the link innocently, thinking they will soon be in righteous indignation heaven, only to be confronted by, by, by...... a LOGIN?
Oh the humanity! For shame.
I think that all hardware and software used on such a mission should have open specs or be open source. That way, we can claim Mars as an Open Source Planet.
We can set up our own Anti-DMCA stuff and make Windows illegal there. And Bill Gates, and Steve Ballmer and Hillary Rosen and Jack Valenti and Fritz Hollings and anyone else I don't like. ohhhh, what a sweet thought.
And we can write our own drivers which would be far superior because there's less gravity.
And everyone there would have a 19" LCD and get 500 FPS on Doom 4 at 1900x1600 at 64 bit colour with 64x anti aliasing and no latency at all. It would be paradise.
Let me add that I have seen surveys and studies like this as far back as I can remember. Americans can't find the US on a map, American's can't read, Americans can't add, American public schools are cespools of ignorance and incompetence. America is fucked and it is going down the drain.
That's why Americans have a substantially lower standard of living than they did in 1965. Why the US has never taken the lead in fields like Space exploration, computers, software, telecommunications, cultural exports, robotics, high tech manufacturing, military technology, aerospace, etc. Why the US economy has become the less dominant, and why the US dollar is no longer the de facto world currency. That's why countries with excellent and exacting education systems have done so well. Like Japan and Switzerland.
What these surveys measure are not "facts", they measure cultural norms. US culture has a streak of anti-intellectualism. American culture is more can-do than think-it-through. This is true even in movies about intellectuals, like "Good Will Hunting" and "A Beautiful Mind". This is neither good nor bad, it just is.
On an individual basis, Americans prize education and knowledge. They are generally happy to talk about intricate ideas. Put them in a group and all they will talk about is football. That is what these surveys show again and again.
This survey, and the /. response is typical of the kind of chauvinism that many "ordinary" people reject. And rightly so. The survey is not reflective of any useful "truth", it was designed to make a point. Fund more science. A worthy goal, but these are unworthy scare tactics. And the response here smacks of technocratic elitism. Clearly, many do not understand that some of the respondents are in open rebellion against an orthodoxy that is being shoved down their throats. The orthodoxy of the technocrats (that's us). This orthodoxy is as pernicious and intolerant as any it replaced.
A good example of this orthodoxy is evolution. For many, the idea that we evolved from amoeba is no more fantastic than the idea we were created whole by a superior being. If you understand the time scales, and the mechanisms, evolution is self evident. But that level of understanding is utterly useless to most people, and so they don't bother to learn it. Even many well educated people who accept evolution. AND WHY SHOULD THEY? They file the conclusion and a few facts and forget the rest. What then are they left with? Try an interesting experiment. Take a devils advocate position and argue against evolution with some of your well-educated friends, preferably not engineers. When they run out of logical arguments, the fun starts. See how much faith underlies their "rational" beliefs, and how panicky they get when their faith is challenged.
So asking a question on an allegedly scientific survey like "do you believe in psychic powers?" is ridiculous. Its a dumb question. Can I prove psychic powers exist? No, not at all. But I believe my wife is faithful to me and I have no evidence for that either. (Readers insert witty comment here). Actually, based on my own experience, I have better evidence of psychic powers than I do of the big bang or relativity. You can do a scientifical experiment yerself. Can you tell if someone is looking at you? Many people can. They don't actually think about it, but if you look at someone intently, they will frequently snap their head around and look back. This is anecdotal, but consistent. Consistent enough that there should be an explanation. The technocratic explanation is that either A) the phenomenon does not exit, or B) there is a straightforward explanation, but I am ignorant of it. But the phenomenon does exist, and there is no known explanation for it (at least in physics). I am not A) delusional, or B) ignorant, so the orthodoxy and its minions (us) must be wrong. What else is it wrong about?
In the middle ages, they believed that bleeding poisons from the body would help people get over illness. In the early 1970s, the Cambodian Army used the modern weapons they received from the US to shoot at the dragon that was devouring the sun (a solar eclipse). And it worked! Ask yourself, what do we believe today that is so stupid our great grandchildren will laugh at our folly? Unless you have an answer to that, stop sneering at the "ignorant" 60% out there. They may understand the world better than you do.
I love this guy's comments. IMHO, this was the worst week MS has had in the whole trial, including the week of Allchin's video.
After testifying under oath that Windows XP could not be modular, Gates confirmed under cross examination that it could be modular. That a modular version works, exists and is shipping. And that the only reason PC OEM's don't use it is because MS won't let them.
He also admitted that several of the actions the appeals court found illegal would not have been prevented by the MS/DOJ settlement, but would have been by the State's proposal.
Gates tops it off by threatening the court. Issue an order we don't like, and we will take Windows off the market. Thereby initiating a new dark age.
Then, this VP gets on the stand and says in effect that OEM's can put whatever icons they like on the desktop, but MS will still decide what programs carry out what functions. MS, in other words, would be compelled by the DOJ settlement only to appear to obey the law.
Don't think for a second that all this was lost on the judge. The one place MS' government allies cannot protect it is in open court. If she were so inclined, the judge could dismiss the State's case and rubber stamp the DOJ settlement and be done with it. Unless the MS boys made that impossible. Last week, they did.
I admit to being a download slut. I have downloaded most days for the last ten years. And I am not too particular about where I download from either. But I never get viruses. Well, I got one on the mac once in 1991. And another on a word document about 1997. But that's it.
When people ask me about viruses, I always tell them to use something besides Outlook and they will be fine. And they are.
For 98% of the people out there, the damn anti-virus software is more of a hassle than the viruses they can't catch. The bloat in security software puts MS to shame. All you need is Norton anti virus to show the kids what a 386 was like. Slooooowwwww.
The only way you can get a virus nowadays, is to start up Outlook. I do not understand why the corporate IT guys, for whom these high-profile worms are a genuine headache, do not sue MS. By pretty well insisting on having scripting 24/7 in all their apps, they have created a royal road into anyone's box. The patches they offer are laughable. The house is on fire, and when a bit of flame shows in the front window, MS generously rushes up with a glass of water.
so sorry SNOPES I hate it when these guys wreck a good story.
From the business point of view, this is as stupid a move as a consumer oriented company could make. Anyone with an MBA and a brain in their head would come to the same conclusion.
The potential gain (avoid lost sales) is so far below the potential loss (lawsuits, internal Sony politics, losses to other Sony divisions, lost sales to pissed off consumers, lost sales due to geeks cracking the cd as a point of honor, angry artists, inter-territory grey marketing, spread of hardware workarounds, etc.) that nobody in their right mind would implement such a scheme. Which is why most companies aren't rushing to try out the technology. There is no business incentive to be a pioneer.
Also, from a strategic business point of view, when a consumer company treats its customers as criminals, then there is something far more basic than technology at work. This is the classic case of a technology that allows the expression of a nacient desire. BUT IT IS NOT A TECHNOLOGICAL PROBLEM! Its the nacient desire that is the issue. So there can be no technological solution. They do actually teach this stuff in business schools. Sony is now about to re-teach the lesson to a generation of music executives. Remember to not get too pissed off and enjoy the fun.
Huh? Rather than 100 stations paying $n to show a movie to y households, they would pay $n*x to show the movie to y*x households. They could therefore charge $z*x more for ad space. Market efficiencies would make the x value proportionate to the economic value of broadcasting the show. The aforementioned station is Ass End AK would simply not pay the $n*x for a movie if y*x = total US households. So the movie owner would need to drop the price to the point where all three factors were in balance, otherwise, they would lose revenue from showing their movies.
And another thing! What could be interesting is that local channels might develop national niches. Like a channel that just showed sci-fi movies. Could be the end of cable channels!
Sorry to piss on the parade, but this has nothing to do with remitting money to the RIAA or MPAA. You might first remember what the last A in both those acronyms stands for. It ain't Canada.
Second, these are proposed levies. If I recall correctly, the proposed levy on tapes was going to be $1.50 on each tape. It was implemented at $0.29. All these figures are $C, not $US. The first proposed levy on Audio CD-Rs was going to be per megabyte and add up to $2.50 per disk or something similar.
Third, this initiative is from Heritage Canada, the ministry charged with promoting and protecting Canadian culture. The levies are supposed to compensate CANADIAN artists for "lost sales" due to copying. I do not know if the situation has changed, but at the time the first stage of the levy came into effect, no US artists or companies would be paid a dime from the fund. However, other artists from Europe and elsewhere would share in the fund. This was because the US had failed to sign a trade treaty that allowed for international copyright compensation, among other things.
Lastly, the minister in charge here is Sheila Copps. Her ambitions to take over the leadership of the party (and thus become Prime Minister) are well known. She hinted last week that she would be running when the time came. As the present PM is almost clinically dead, the contest to replace him is already starting. The one thing that no Canadian politician can never be accused of is being to vigilant in protecting and promoting our culture. This is a no-brainer for Ms. Copps. Even if some of the money were going to US artists, it would make no difference politically. The only way she can lose on this is to let the opportunity to vigorously defend Canadian culture slip by.
So the levy will come to pass, it will be a fraction of the proposition stated here, and no US artist or cartel (how does the RIAA get away with it?) will see any money from it. Oh, and the good part is that Ms. Copps hasn't got a chance of succeeding the Rt. Hon. Mr. Cretin no matter what she does or doesn't do. Thank God.
The funny thing is that this would be as successful as Prohibition or the war on drugs. That is to say, not at all.
Even more interesting is that this legislation would make many, if not most, geeks into outlaws. The people who would be supposed to implement these systems. How can any law succeed in its purpose if the majority of those supposed to observe and implement that law believe it to be fundamentally wrong? Simple, it can't.
The difficulty of getting SSSCA standards created and implemented in hardware would mean that they would be effectively set in stone. Uh huh. How long would it be before software cracks were widely available? The kind of creativity and sheer bloody mindedness that goes into all those emulators we know and love would find a new center of gravity.
But, it would be illegal! Yes, and the FBI will drop the War on Terrorism to crack down on people watching illegal copies of The Little Mermaid.
I seriously doubt that even people as craven as Fritz Hollings would compromise the credibility of the US Congress in such a fashion. Even if Fritz is craven enough, there are cooler heads around. They won't let him spoil the whole game just to satisfy his corporate patrons.
Exactly, if it is unconstitutional to make them create 50 different versions, then it is unconstitional to make them create 2 different versions.
If it is constitutional to make them create different versions, then the test of how many should be compliance with the law, not how convenient or inconvenient it is for Microsoft.
Nobody is, after all, requiring them to make and sell Windows at all. Just as there is no law requiring GM to sell cars in North Dakota or Delaware.
Your friend is totally incorrect, so incorrect that I would question his or her fitness to practice law in the United States.
If the states tried to try MS in their state judicial systems and then apply any settlement country-wide, THEN your friend would be correct. The whole point here is that the states are in FEDERAL court. Which is where any party can go to seek the Federal Governement's involvement in matters that can't be handled at the state level.
Your friend seems to feel that states are not allowed to bring suit in Federal Court. Utter nonsense.
The problem all along has been the banner ad. It may be the single worst advertising medium ever invented. Banners are so bad that they themselves train people to ignore them. Click on a few banners and see what I mean, instant shit storm. Soon, you learn that clicking on banners is a drag. So the average user stops clicking.
Imagine that there is an interesting commercial on tv. When the TV decides you are interested in that commercial, it hits you with lots more and changes the channel to do it. Fuck that.
Online advertising quickly became a spam medium and nothing more. It killed itself through a gold-rush mentality, incompetence and a thorough misunderstanding of the Internet as a medium. Greed, stupidity and ignorance, if you will.
Someday, (hopefully soon) sombody will figure out how to do advertising properly and the game will change again. The HBO ads for Six Feet Under on Salon are an example that this may be happening already. Blue Mountain or Salon should be able to support themselves with advertising when advertising is done right. If advertising can support as bloated and inefficient an industry as the TV industry, there is no reason it can't support the Internet content industry.
I sent an email to Blizzard this morning suggesting that using the DMCA in this case was counter-productive to the company's interests. I received this response (from a bot, I think) a few minutes ago:
On 2/22/02 2:14 PM, "Sales" wrote:
Certain programs have been developed that allow users to bypass Battle.net's CD-key-authentication process. Although these programs might have been made with good intentions, they directly promote software piracy by allowing users who have illegitimately obtained our games to play them as if they'd been legitimately purchased. Furthermore, because these programs allow access without a CD key, they render malicious users unaccountable, thereby eliminating Blizzard's ability to protect legitimate consumers. Therefore, Blizzard has taken an aggressive stance opposing the use of these programs.
Please take a moment to read through our FAQ regarding these issues at http://www.battle.net/support/emulationfaq.shtml if you have any questions or concerns about Blizzard's stance on software piracy.
{WR655}
This response seems to me (IANAL), to render any action they might want to take under the DMCA utterly futile. They themselves seem to admit that BnetD does not even clear the first hurdle for infringement. And its a pretty low hurdle.
I sincerly hope that the BnetD people can pony up the money to fight this, as it appears they stand an excellent chance of winning.
They are talking about cheap broadband accounts for $23.95. That's Canadian. $15 in US dollars. Broadband, cheaper than dialup. Wow. This is probably one good thing from the collapse of @home. Rogers et al. gets better control over their costs and can scale service in relation to those costs.
Wasn't the anti-trust trial launched because MS used illegal tactics to drive Netscape out of business? Didn't a federal judge and a federal appeals court hold that they were guilty of using illegal tactics to drive Netscape out of business? Remember the famous "cut off their air supply" quote? Are you an Microsoft publicist? The "Big Lie" is alive and well in Redmond.
Crying now will actually help a lot. TRIPLE damages will have an impact even on Microsoft. Since the Bush DOJ has decided to let MS off without any punishment, AOL-TW will just have to do.
one bit of advice for these guys, don't use an MS OS or the fabled screen of death could be literal.
.Net servers in Redmond went down and their exoskeletons crashed, making the hapless troops sitting ducks. A survivor said, "we kept getting "Invalid License Key, contact your system administrator" when we tried to fire our weapons!"
... "an MS security hole was blamed today when a Marine guard's exoskeleton ran amok and killed five outside the US embassy in Islamabad. Middle Eastern hackers are suspected."
I can see it now... "a platoon wiped out on Mindanao because the
Or