It seems to me that the name PlaysForSure is an attempt to apply the old Windows monopolist playbook to a field where they don't have a monopoly. To say that a song 'plays for sure' on a particular box is to say everyone has this kind of box, so you know the software to play the song is there.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, everyone does *not* have this kind of box, and PlaysForSure files won't play on the boxes most people have. It's a complete sham.
We're not talking about playing WMA's on your desktop computer any more. Everyone that has an iPod has AAC support on their iPod and their desktop machine. In fact PlaysForSure files won't play on an iPod, and won't play on a PlaysForSure player owner's Macintosh if they happen to have one.
None of this is to say that Microsoft's market share isn't large enough to lure away some users that don't even want to have to load iTunes on their desktops - though the OEM's have started installing iTunes, so that approach may not work either. Still, iPods can't talk to Outlook or display Word docs, so someday if the PocketPC model wins out as the portable device of choice, then Apple's in trouble. MS's monopoly magic would then take over.
The only *real* lock-in Apple has is all the FairPlay songs that iPodders have paid to download. That's a pretty big incentive for an iPod owner to make their next mp3 player an iPod too - if they've been paying for iTunes downloads. So whoever mentioned MS converting FairPlay songs may have a point. Good thing there's the DMCA;-)
Let's face it, the real problem with software patents is patent-encumbered standards.
The single-click patent is just plain stupid, but it doesn't allow Amazon to lock up the entire web.
The vfat long-names patent is just plain stupid, and it alows Microsoft to limit the ability of other company's products to interoperate with Windows.
These days, IBM does not have the market power to create de-facto standards and then use patents to exclude others from developing to those standards. Unfortunately for us all, Microsoft does (Sun, probably not). Now maybe antitrust law should prevent that, but I would get my hopes up.
>How about you just take the Gnome source code and release it as GPL?
No thanks.
I actually *do* buy the GNOME argument that LGPL is a more flexible (and possibly more appropriate) license to use for a library that's as basic to writing (GUI) apps as QT.
I also understand TrollTech's rationalle for dual-licensing their product.
For you to suggest GNOME making their license *more* restrictive is nonsense. It's the kind of silly thing that KDE'ers (and I consider myself one) tend to say to rationalize the one 'problem' with their chosen platform. Just admit that it'd be nicer if QT were LGPL. After all, the KDE libs are LGPL, it's not as if the developers aren't aware of this issue.
I just think it would be *great* news if somebody who didn't need to make (lots of) money off of QT would buy it, continue to develop it, and provide support (for a fee) to those willing to pay in order to continue to fund it. And Apple fits the bill. They could buy and support QT on a break-even basis in order to insure a healthy selection of applications for the Mac. Just like Sun did with StarOffice (except QT is probably cleaner code and easier to support).
I've been wondering for years why some deep-pocketed company with an agenda other than 'selling software' doesn't buy TrollTec and LGPL QT. Would that end this controversy once and for all? Probably not, but at least KDE and GNOME could compete on the merits rather than on their licenses.
Always thought IBM would be the natural choice, but doesn't seem to be in the cards - especially now that they've sold off their PC division. Traditional desktop-based GUI software doesn't seem to be a priority for them.
Now I think Apple ought to do it. I know Apple has their own development toolkit(s), but what they really need is application portability, not Mac-specific apps. Nobody but Apple themselves and the top tier shrink-wrappers do native Mac apps. Win/Lin/Mac QT apps with a toolkit supported (for a fee) by Apple and free for the rest of the world would be a huge boon for portable software (if.NET hype hasn't lured too many to the ultimate Windows-only lock-in).
Seriously, the software model of the future's gonna be cheap or free software in support of hardware sales. And for sellers of non-windows hardware, that means availability of portable software is the key. As far as I can see, Apple's still a hardware company, and unlike IBM, their hardware's oriented toward desktop computing.
The only fly in the ointment would be a Microsoft threat to pull the plug on Office for the Mac. Now, I don't see how they could legitimately do that based on Apple giving away a software development toolkit. But you never know...
The justices may be too busy to hear every case, but it *is* interesting that both this case and the Blackberry patent case both came up before them within a week, and they refused to hear both.
In the Blackberry case, RIM wasn't even able to get a stay pending appeal. Microsoft has been granted every stay they ever asked for.
So what's going on here. Do the Supremes just think bad patents are not their responsibility?
Does prefetch help OOo too? If not, why not?
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OpenOffice Bloated?
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I just took a look at the Prefecth folder on my WinXP box. It looks like there are links there for Acrobat and Firefox stuff along with a whole lot of other stuff.
Does this mean that prefetch happens automatically for frequently run apps? If so, why wouldn't OOo benefit from this as well? Is it not structured in a way that Prefetch can help it?
While Microsoft probably has OEM's tied up in exclusive contracts through co-advertising or whatever loophole they need to get around whatever antitrust enforcement there is, hardware vendors still do have a chicken and egg problem. Until the 'market' exists, they can't justify support. If device manufacturers are willing to release the specs, you get a driver. If they are afraid to do that, you don't.
The only solution is for customers to demand support or take their business elsewhere. Problem today is that the big OEM's can sell you a system with XP for less than the white-box guys can sell you a naked system. Of course, the OEM's could sell you a naked system even cheaper, but that's where the MS contracts come in.
You're not going to get end-user handholding any time soon, but it should be reasonable to demand naked systems without paying for XP. Somehow, the remaining MS tax loophole has to be closed. Hell, even a system with XP and a recover disk that doesn't trash your Linux co-install would be a step in the right direction. Is there a profitable class-action suit in any of this? I'd join.
It's not what they *look* like that matters
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Pepping Up Windows
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· Score: 1
When people complain about apps all looking different under Linux, they're not really talking about what they look like. They're talking about how they *work*. And in Windows, the apps, regardless of how they look all share common behaviors - at least in the places where it counts.
It's (mildly) annoying to switch between Gnome and KDE apps, for example, because the File Open dialogs work so differently.
Likewise for different apps using different MIME lists.
For things like this, GNOME and KDE should use the current desktop's component in some kind of a pass-thru mode. It's not good enough to say that 'choice is good', when they make it impossible to make a consistent 'choice'. People are going to use a combination of apps based on different toolkits, and the toolkits should do their best to mitigate the problems that are caused by that reality.
And then there's the silly issue of button ordering...
After years and years of Linux use, I was burned recently by Firefox. I just got a new computer that's fast enough to use Linux as my primary system. Having been a Firefox-only user for years, I set up Firefox on Mandriva to look the way I like and logged on to my online banking app. Of course, everything worked fine, but when it came time to OK my payment, I apparently clicked the Cancel button, because the payment didn't get made. Only then did I notice that FF had the Gnome 'Cancel/OK' button order under Linux. I don't know whether Firefox picked this button order or the 'brushed' theme did it. Brushed is, I guess, a Mac theme - so not all *that* surprising. Except that it doesn't do that under Windows, and I've come to expect FF to work exactly the same regardless of platform. Oh well...
Maybe the OSDL should say, "sure, we'll participate in a TCO study that excludes the costs of interoperating with existing Windows apps and infrastructure". In other words, a study based strictly on the inherent quality of the two systems.
And if you want to do a study that doesn't exclude that stuff, give us the info we need to implement interoperability, and we'll participate in that too.
I don't think anyone's suggesting that after switching to X86, Apple will switch *again* to Intanium.
So, yes, Intel's got talent (or has stolen some great ideas from DEC). But what's this got to do with Apple preferring X86 over PowerPC.
The main thing Intel's got going for it is the mass market and volume production, though I guess there may be something to the problem of getting G5's into laptops, but I'll bet that the G4's in there perform as well as Centrinos. Maybe Apple wants to be able to 'justify' the price of their high-end laptops by using the same 'high-end' chips as their competitors. Or maybe the X86 'standard' was compelling in its own right.
What I'm wondering is how will they build the equivalent of the Mac mini at that price point? Does Intel have a chip cool enough to run in a tiny fanless box at the price point of the mini?
How about the iMac. Or even the eMac. Are these machines fanless? Or cool 'enough' to be able to use quiet fans? Can they do that with cheap Intel chips?
>a) MS do NOT have a monopoly in server systems, even though they do on the desktop.
Yeah, but they're using the desktop monopoly to gain a server monopoly (or at least an media-format monopoly), and that's illegal.
The parent was talking about the effectiveness of making a version of the desktop without the client at the same price. Of course, nobody's going to buy that. The damage has already been done. There are sites all over that require the client to be there.
We're talking about a remedy to an illegal act, and since we don't want to hurt end users, the only remedy is to render Microsoft's behavior ineffective. That's why they need to target the server.
Microsoft should never have been allowed to bundle a media player into their monopoly desktop without releasing the full specs so ANYONE could create media files that work with it, and others could be free to provide an equivalent player for other desktops. Anything short of that rewards the illegal act of monopoly bundling.
> b) They do NOT have a monopoly on on-line music, if anybody does it is probably Apple with iTunes.
And if and when that becomes an established fact, something should be done about that too. Especially if Apple were to try to leverage an iTunes monopoly into other areas.
>c) Media Player is available for free on at least two different platforms, not just on an MS platform.
So what. We're at the mercy of Microsoft's 'good intentions', which in this case are really a smokescreen to keep WMA off of other platforms that might make for stronger competition down the line.
>d) At the moment many/most of the free/competing players (including Real) are capable of playing files and streams in Windows Media format.
Further insuring that WMA will ultimately take over as the de-facto standard. For no other reason than "it's there on every Windows desktop". That's the crux of the problem in the first place.
Where they *really* should have made them charge less is on the server side.
Bundling a windows media streamer with their servers is a direct move to undercut Real and anybody else that sells a server product and gives away the client.
MS's plan for media domination is, thus, 2-pronged. Bundle the free client with the Windows desktop, so it's 'guaranteed' to be there, and then include the streamer with the server OS, so the choice is a no brainer.
Somebody wanting, say, to deploy Real streams from a Linux box, which adds cost to the 'free' Linux OS may end up spending about the same as the Windows Media deployment, but still would have to deal with the 'missing client' problem. And anybody wanting to deploy Real streams from a Windows server, has to 'pay' for the free WMA server *plus* the Real server.
That, my friends, is illegal bundling squared.
What the EU should have done is require a cheaper server without WMA streams.
Or they could've tried opening up the WMA format so anyone could develop products based on the MS Monopoly-dictated 'standard' audio format.
I just remember an Exchange client being on my basic Windows 95 desktop. Maybe it came with Office, maybe not.
It was just labeled (in true MS fashion) 'email', as though it it were the one and only email program. It sure wasn't called 'Microsoft Office Outlook' like it is now.
Whether it was part of Office at the time or not, our company switched from the email system we were using at the time to Exchange. And the reason given was the same one that was given when we were forced to change from WordPerfect to Word/Office. "Because it comes with every new PC we buy".
So OEM bundling deals 'encouraged' management to switch word processors. And whether or not MS bundled Outlook into Windows or Office, they used the windows monopoly to get the Office monopoly and then used one or the other of those monopolies to take over the email server business.
The problem is if they give it away (or for next to nothing) for long enough to kill Adobe.
Then the benefits of 'competition' are gone. Expect the price to go way up or for it to be folded into Office so you need to buy an Office upgrade to get the latest version.
Look what they did with Outlook. I believe the original one came bundled with Win95. Once they used that to make Exchange ubiquitous, Outlook became part of Office. Not free at all.
Would it be possible to implement a fast 3D X server using the extra processors? In software, so that 2D graphics cards could be used for 3D with a standard framebuffer-based driver that does all the 3D stuff in these cell thingys?
Hell, I'd settle for a vendor that'd sell me a box with XP and a rescue CD that gave me the option to not wipe out my Linux partition once I've got a dual-boot set up.
Way back when, when OS/2 was a potential threat and the Windows 95 wave hadn't hit yet, Microsoft had a product like this.
Of course Linux was still in its infancy at the time, but Microsoft sold (and even promoted) their 'Win32 for Mac' package as a way to get portability between Windows 95 and whatever MacOS was around in those days.
Of course, it didn't quite work, and once the real threat (OS/2) went away, it was taken off the market, but there was a time when Microsoft saw a reason to sell a portablility library.
I think they also licensed their API's to somebody else to build a Win32 for Unix product, but that was never promoted (that I know of) by Microsoft.
Anyway, since portability seems only to be of importance to Microsoft when they perceive a threat, all it'd take to get a Microsoft WINE (or whatever it takes to get.NET stuff to work on linux) would be a sign that companies are targeting QT or some other non-MS-controlled method of achieving portability.
For that to happen, we'd need to see corporate deployments of desktop Linux take off. So, if the chicken can get off (or on) the egg anytime soon, this may not be beyond the range of possibility...
What does Apple stand to gain from having a better HTML renderer than Linux (or even Windows for that matter)?
Either HTML is portable or it's not, and Apple does not have the market power to succeed with a non-portable version.
The larger the pool of standards-compliant web browsers (whether on Macs, Linux or Windows boxes), the better chance Apple has to complete on a level playing field. As it is, Apple's still in a position to be screwed by websitest supporting non-standard ie-only extension.
So when it comes to KHTML, I ask, why *not* give back.
I thought the big problem (for the record labels, at least) with P2P was the way they make it possible to find any file you want to download. Napster maintained a central DB, but I thought its successors also had a way to search for files.
Anyway, Bittorent doesn't work that way, does it? Don't you have to have a base URL to start the download? If so, then Bittorrent is no more of a 'piracy tool' than ftp.
For most users' purposes, native Linux desktop apps are perfectly good. But some companies have Win32 code developed in-house that they can't afford to convert.
They could switch to OpenOffice, Firefox, Evolution, etc., and still need to run their custom stuff. That's where WINE comes in really handy. Rather than needing to rewrite these apps, they just need to tweak them to make sure they work well under WINE.
I've recently used WINE to deliver one such app to Mac OS/X users via X-windows. These users would have no other way to run that app. This is really cool stuff. I'd prefer to be able to build a native OS/X version uxing winelib, but getting winelib to work for the PowerPC is beyond me. This would be nice, even if I still had to use XDarwin, because remote X-Windows can't see the Mac's local drives (or launch Mac helper apps).
A prior post noted that Google and Microsoft are both corporations interested, ultimately, in making money. Somehow, that made them equivalent.
Interesting to note, however, that Google, in its supposed attempt to leverage whatever it's leveraging here is forced by Microsoft's monopoly to target it at the IE browser. Not because they want to, undoubtedly, but because their 'brother in evil' has created such a distorted marketplace.
It'd be hard to imagine Google gaining enough market power that they could force their competitors to embrace their products in such a way. No, Google has to compete by being the best, and so far, they've done it. Whereas Microsoft still has the potential (and the war chest) to 'suck the air' out of Google's main cash-making business and restore mediocrity to its 'rightful place'.
Slightly off topic, but it seems to me that not enough attention gets paid to one of the biggest 'bang-for-the-buck' features of X, the much-derided remote access capability.
Of course X has always had that, but compared to Citrix, it's plenty hard to use. What would really get businesses interested is the ability to easily set up a box that served up a single application to desktops. I think NX does something like this, but there's some confusion about whether that's really free (as in beer).
In my case, I have a WIN32 app that I provide to OS/X users by running it under Linux and WINE. Works nicely, but when it comes time to print, they can only print on printers the Linux box can see. When it comes time to download a file, they can't save it on their local box - or launch a local application (e.g. email) to process it.
I think Citrix allows all of that, and there's no reason X couldn't support it too. Probably some of these capabilities aren't strictly the job of X, but they're only useful in an X environment, so...
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It seems to me that the name PlaysForSure is an attempt to apply the old Windows monopolist playbook to a field where they don't have a monopoly. To say that a song 'plays for sure' on a particular box is to say everyone has this kind of box, so you know the software to play the song is there.
;-)
Unfortunately for Microsoft, everyone does *not* have this kind of box, and PlaysForSure files won't play on the boxes most people have. It's a complete sham.
We're not talking about playing WMA's on your desktop computer any more. Everyone that has an iPod has AAC support on their iPod and their desktop machine. In fact PlaysForSure files won't play on an iPod, and won't play on a PlaysForSure player owner's Macintosh if they happen to have one.
None of this is to say that Microsoft's market share isn't large enough to lure away some users that don't even want to have to load iTunes on their desktops - though the OEM's have started installing iTunes, so that approach may not work either. Still, iPods can't talk to Outlook or display Word docs, so someday if the PocketPC model wins out as the portable device of choice, then Apple's in trouble. MS's monopoly magic would then take over.
The only *real* lock-in Apple has is all the FairPlay songs that iPodders have paid to download. That's a pretty big incentive for an iPod owner to make their next mp3 player an iPod too - if they've been paying for iTunes downloads. So whoever mentioned MS converting FairPlay songs may have a point. Good thing there's the DMCA
Let's face it, the real problem with software patents is patent-encumbered standards.
The single-click patent is just plain stupid, but it doesn't allow Amazon to lock up the entire web.
The vfat long-names patent is just plain stupid, and it alows Microsoft to limit the ability of other company's products to interoperate with Windows.
These days, IBM does not have the market power to create de-facto standards and then use patents to exclude others from developing to those standards. Unfortunately for us all, Microsoft does (Sun, probably not). Now maybe antitrust law should prevent that, but I would get my hopes up.
>How about you just take the Gnome source code and release it as GPL?
No thanks.
I actually *do* buy the GNOME argument that LGPL is a more flexible (and possibly more appropriate) license to use for a library that's as basic to writing (GUI) apps as QT.
I also understand TrollTech's rationalle for dual-licensing their product.
For you to suggest GNOME making their license *more* restrictive is nonsense. It's the kind of silly thing that KDE'ers (and I consider myself one) tend to say to rationalize the one 'problem' with their chosen platform. Just admit that it'd be nicer if QT were LGPL. After all, the KDE libs are LGPL, it's not as if the developers aren't aware of this issue.
I just think it would be *great* news if somebody who didn't need to make (lots of) money off of QT would buy it, continue to develop it, and provide support (for a fee) to those willing to pay in order to continue to fund it. And Apple fits the bill. They could buy and support QT on a break-even basis in order to insure a healthy selection of applications for the Mac. Just like Sun did with StarOffice (except QT is probably cleaner code and easier to support).
I've been wondering for years why some deep-pocketed company with an agenda other than 'selling software' doesn't buy TrollTec and LGPL QT. Would that end this controversy once and for all? Probably not, but at least KDE and GNOME could compete on the merits rather than on their licenses.
.NET hype hasn't lured too many to the ultimate Windows-only lock-in).
Always thought IBM would be the natural choice, but doesn't seem to be in the cards - especially now that they've sold off their PC division. Traditional desktop-based GUI software doesn't seem to be a priority for them.
Now I think Apple ought to do it. I know Apple has their own development toolkit(s), but what they really need is application portability, not Mac-specific apps. Nobody but Apple themselves and the top tier shrink-wrappers do native Mac apps. Win/Lin/Mac QT apps with a toolkit supported (for a fee) by Apple and free for the rest of the world would be a huge boon for portable software (if
Seriously, the software model of the future's gonna be cheap or free software in support of hardware sales. And for sellers of non-windows hardware, that means availability of portable software is the key. As far as I can see, Apple's still a hardware company, and unlike IBM, their hardware's oriented toward desktop computing.
The only fly in the ointment would be a Microsoft threat to pull the plug on Office for the Mac. Now, I don't see how they could legitimately do that based on Apple giving away a software development toolkit. But you never know...
The justices may be too busy to hear every case, but it *is* interesting that both this case and the Blackberry patent case both came up before them within a week, and they refused to hear both.
In the Blackberry case, RIM wasn't even able to get a stay pending appeal. Microsoft has been granted every stay they ever asked for.
So what's going on here. Do the Supremes just think bad patents are not their responsibility?
I just took a look at the Prefecth folder on my WinXP box. It looks like there are links there for Acrobat and Firefox stuff along with a whole lot of other stuff.
Does this mean that prefetch happens automatically for frequently run apps? If so, why wouldn't OOo benefit from this as well? Is it not structured in a way that Prefetch can help it?
While Microsoft probably has OEM's tied up in exclusive contracts through co-advertising or whatever loophole they need to get around whatever antitrust enforcement there is, hardware vendors still do have a chicken and egg problem. Until the 'market' exists, they can't justify support. If device manufacturers are willing to release the specs, you get a driver. If they are afraid to do that, you don't.
The only solution is for customers to demand support or take their business elsewhere. Problem today is that the big OEM's can sell you a system with XP for less than the white-box guys can sell you a naked system. Of course, the OEM's could sell you a naked system even cheaper, but that's where the MS contracts come in.
You're not going to get end-user handholding any time soon, but it should be reasonable to demand naked systems without paying for XP. Somehow, the remaining MS tax loophole has to be closed. Hell, even a system with XP and a recover disk that doesn't trash your Linux co-install would be a step in the right direction. Is there a profitable class-action suit in any of this? I'd join.
When people complain about apps all looking different under Linux, they're not really talking about what they look like. They're talking about how they *work*. And in Windows, the apps, regardless of how they look all share common behaviors - at least in the places where it counts.
It's (mildly) annoying to switch between Gnome and KDE apps, for example, because the File Open dialogs work so differently.
Likewise for different apps using different MIME lists.
For things like this, GNOME and KDE should use the current desktop's component in some kind of a pass-thru mode. It's not good enough to say that 'choice is good', when they make it impossible to make a consistent 'choice'. People are going to use a combination of apps based on different toolkits, and the toolkits should do their best to mitigate the problems that are caused by that reality.
And then there's the silly issue of button ordering...
After years and years of Linux use, I was burned recently by Firefox. I just got a new computer that's fast enough to use Linux as my primary system. Having been a Firefox-only user for years, I set up Firefox on Mandriva to look the way I like and logged on to my online banking app. Of course, everything worked fine, but when it came time to OK my payment, I apparently clicked the Cancel button, because the payment didn't get made. Only then did I notice that FF had the Gnome 'Cancel/OK' button order under Linux. I don't know whether Firefox picked this button order or the 'brushed' theme did it. Brushed is, I guess, a Mac theme - so not all *that* surprising. Except that it doesn't do that under Windows, and I've come to expect FF to work exactly the same regardless of platform. Oh well...
Is this a case of the 'technically superior' product battling against the 'good enough, cheaper and backward-compatible' alternative?
Itanium vs. Opteron anyone?
ext3 vs. jfs/xfs/reiser?
Maybe the OSDL should say, "sure, we'll participate in a TCO study that excludes the costs of interoperating with existing Windows apps and infrastructure". In other words, a study based strictly on the inherent quality of the two systems.
And if you want to do a study that doesn't exclude that stuff, give us the info we need to implement interoperability, and we'll participate in that too.
I don't think anyone's suggesting that after switching to X86, Apple will switch *again* to Intanium.
So, yes, Intel's got talent (or has stolen some great ideas from DEC). But what's this got to do with Apple preferring X86 over PowerPC.
The main thing Intel's got going for it is the mass market and volume production, though I guess there may be something to the problem of getting G5's into laptops, but I'll bet that the G4's in there perform as well as Centrinos. Maybe Apple wants to be able to 'justify' the price of their high-end laptops by using the same 'high-end' chips as their competitors. Or maybe the X86 'standard' was compelling in its own right.
What I'm wondering is how will they build the equivalent of the Mac mini at that price point? Does Intel have a chip cool enough to run in a tiny fanless box at the price point of the mini?
How about the iMac. Or even the eMac. Are these machines fanless? Or cool 'enough' to be able to use quiet fans? Can they do that with cheap Intel chips?
>a) MS do NOT have a monopoly in server systems, even though they do on the desktop.
Yeah, but they're using the desktop monopoly to gain a server monopoly (or at least an media-format monopoly), and that's illegal.
The parent was talking about the effectiveness of making a version of the desktop without the client at the same price. Of course, nobody's going to buy that. The damage has already been done. There are sites all over that require the client to be there.
We're talking about a remedy to an illegal act, and since we don't want to hurt end users, the only remedy is to render Microsoft's behavior ineffective. That's why they need to target the server.
Microsoft should never have been allowed to bundle a media player into their monopoly desktop without releasing the full specs so ANYONE could create media files that work with it, and others could be free to provide an equivalent player for other desktops. Anything short of that rewards the illegal act of monopoly bundling.
> b) They do NOT have a monopoly on on-line music, if anybody does it is probably Apple with iTunes.
And if and when that becomes an established fact, something should be done about that too. Especially if Apple were to try to leverage an iTunes monopoly into other areas.
>c) Media Player is available for free on at least two different platforms, not just on an MS platform.
So what. We're at the mercy of Microsoft's 'good intentions', which in this case are really a smokescreen to keep WMA off of other platforms that might make for stronger competition down the line.
>d) At the moment many/most of the free/competing players (including Real) are capable of playing files and streams in Windows Media format.
Further insuring that WMA will ultimately take over as the de-facto standard. For no other reason than "it's there on every Windows desktop". That's the crux of the problem in the first place.
Where they *really* should have made them charge less is on the server side.
Bundling a windows media streamer with their servers is a direct move to undercut Real and anybody else that sells a server product and gives away the client.
MS's plan for media domination is, thus, 2-pronged. Bundle the free client with the Windows desktop, so it's 'guaranteed' to be there, and then include the streamer with the server OS, so the choice is a no brainer.
Somebody wanting, say, to deploy Real streams from a Linux box, which adds cost to the 'free' Linux OS may end up spending about the same as the Windows Media deployment, but still would have to deal with the 'missing client' problem. And anybody wanting to deploy Real streams from a Windows server, has to 'pay' for the free WMA server *plus* the Real server.
That, my friends, is illegal bundling squared.
What the EU should have done is require a cheaper server without WMA streams.
Or they could've tried opening up the WMA format so anyone could develop products based on the MS Monopoly-dictated 'standard' audio format.
As it is, they essentially did nothing.
I just remember an Exchange client being on my basic Windows 95 desktop. Maybe it came with Office, maybe not.
It was just labeled (in true MS fashion) 'email', as though it it were the one and only email program. It sure wasn't called 'Microsoft Office Outlook' like it is now.
Whether it was part of Office at the time or not, our company switched from the email system we were using at the time to Exchange. And the reason given was the same one that was given when we were forced to change from WordPerfect to Word/Office. "Because it comes with every new PC we buy".
So OEM bundling deals 'encouraged' management to switch word processors. And whether or not MS bundled Outlook into Windows or Office, they used the windows monopoly to get the Office monopoly and then used one or the other of those monopolies to take over the email server business.
This is illegal. And I don't like it. So sue me.
The problem is if they give it away (or for next to nothing) for long enough to kill Adobe.
Then the benefits of 'competition' are gone. Expect the price to go way up or for it to be folded into Office so you need to buy an Office upgrade to get the latest version.
Look what they did with Outlook. I believe the original one came bundled with Win95. Once they used that to make Exchange ubiquitous, Outlook became part of Office. Not free at all.
Some nice things about these boxes:
They're actually cheaper with Xandros than with XP. Not by much, but I guess that means they're actually paying Xandros and not Microsoft.
They all come with OpenOffice. Even the versions with WinXP. And MS Office is clearly listed as a (very) pricey option.
This makes it very clear that, even for users not ready to adopt Linux, there are big cost savings to be had by adopting OOo.
Now if all vendors would start offering Firefox and OOo on their boxes (with or without WinXP), that might make a real splash.
Would it be possible to implement a fast 3D X server using the extra processors? In software, so that 2D graphics cards could be used for 3D with a standard framebuffer-based driver that does all the 3D stuff in these cell thingys?
Hell, I'd settle for a vendor that'd sell me a box with XP and a rescue CD that gave me the option to not wipe out my Linux partition once I've got a dual-boot set up.
How hard would that be?
Way back when, when OS/2 was a potential threat and the Windows 95 wave hadn't hit yet, Microsoft had a product like this.
.NET stuff to work on linux) would be a sign that companies are targeting QT or some other non-MS-controlled method of achieving portability.
Of course Linux was still in its infancy at the time, but Microsoft sold (and even promoted) their 'Win32 for Mac' package as a way to get portability between Windows 95 and whatever MacOS was around in those days.
Of course, it didn't quite work, and once the real threat (OS/2) went away, it was taken off the market, but there was a time when Microsoft saw a reason to sell a portablility library.
I think they also licensed their API's to somebody else to build a Win32 for Unix product, but that was never promoted (that I know of) by Microsoft.
Anyway, since portability seems only to be of importance to Microsoft when they perceive a threat, all it'd take to get a Microsoft WINE (or whatever it takes to get
For that to happen, we'd need to see corporate deployments of desktop Linux take off. So, if the chicken can get off (or on) the egg anytime soon, this may not be beyond the range of possibility...
What does Apple stand to gain from having a better HTML renderer than Linux (or even Windows for that matter)?
Either HTML is portable or it's not, and Apple does not have the market power to succeed with a non-portable version.
The larger the pool of standards-compliant web browsers (whether on Macs, Linux or Windows boxes), the better chance Apple has to complete on a level playing field. As it is, Apple's still in a position to be screwed by websitest supporting non-standard ie-only extension.
So when it comes to KHTML, I ask, why *not* give back.
I thought the big problem (for the record labels, at least) with P2P was the way they make it possible to find any file you want to download. Napster maintained a central DB, but I thought its successors also had a way to search for files.
Anyway, Bittorent doesn't work that way, does it? Don't you have to have a base URL to start the download? If so, then Bittorrent is no more of a 'piracy tool' than ftp.
More like the Justice Department saw that they couldn't pretend to still battle Microsoft in their courts...
So they use WordPerfect and say, "see, our settlement was a good thing. No monopoly here."
WINE isn't only for running Office.
For most users' purposes, native Linux desktop apps are perfectly good. But some companies have Win32 code developed in-house that they can't afford to convert.
They could switch to OpenOffice, Firefox, Evolution, etc., and still need to run their custom stuff. That's where WINE comes in really handy. Rather than needing to rewrite these apps, they just need to tweak them to make sure they work well under WINE.
I've recently used WINE to deliver one such app to Mac OS/X users via X-windows. These users would have no other way to run that app. This is really cool stuff. I'd prefer to be able to build a native OS/X version uxing winelib, but getting winelib to work for the PowerPC is beyond me. This would be nice, even if I still had to use XDarwin, because remote X-Windows can't see the Mac's local drives (or launch Mac helper apps).
A prior post noted that Google and Microsoft are both corporations interested, ultimately, in making money. Somehow, that made them equivalent.
Interesting to note, however, that Google, in its supposed attempt to leverage whatever it's leveraging here is forced by Microsoft's monopoly to target it at the IE browser. Not because they want to, undoubtedly, but because their 'brother in evil' has created such a distorted marketplace.
It'd be hard to imagine Google gaining enough market power that they could force their competitors to embrace their products in such a way. No, Google has to compete by being the best, and so far, they've done it. Whereas Microsoft still has the potential (and the war chest) to 'suck the air' out of Google's main cash-making business and restore mediocrity to its 'rightful place'.
Slightly off topic, but it seems to me that not enough attention gets paid to one of the biggest 'bang-for-the-buck' features of X, the much-derided remote access capability.
Of course X has always had that, but compared to Citrix, it's plenty hard to use. What would really get businesses interested is the ability to easily set up a box that served up a single application to desktops. I think NX does something like this, but there's some confusion about whether that's really free (as in beer).
In my case, I have a WIN32 app that I provide to OS/X users by running it under Linux and WINE. Works nicely, but when it comes time to print, they can only print on printers the Linux box can see. When it comes time to download a file, they can't save it on their local box - or launch a local application (e.g. email) to process it.
I think Citrix allows all of that, and there's no reason X couldn't support it too. Probably some of these capabilities aren't strictly the job of X, but they're only useful in an X environment, so...