I'll skip the "were consumers harmed" since others have already pointed out instances.
Did government antitrust prosecutors actually prove that Microsoft prevented
Netscape, or any other
rival, from bringing new products to the marketplace?
No. Any company could have brought any product they wanted to market, but it would have failed if it competed with MS since MS had everything tied to their OS.
Is it true that these users were not free to choose Netscape?
Sure, they could have chosen Netscape, but what percentage of computer users go out of their way to get a better product if a similar one is provided with the OS? Microsoft should have been required to provide IE for download from the MS site only (not on the Windows 9x CD). Tieing IE to Windows 98 was unnecessary, anti-competitive, hand illegal.
Why wasn't Microsoft justified in integrating Windows with its much-hyped OS?
Because IE was and is a seperate product unrelated to the OS. Regardless of what MS claims, IE is not a necessary part of Windows. See Win98Lite (a program that will let you remove IE) if you think it is).
Microsoft has been a predatory monopoly which needed legal intervention since the days of Windows 3.1. Anybody else remember when Lotus and Excel were first being put on Windows? MS "accidentally" neglected to notify Lotus of a minor, but fundamental, change which caused early versions of Lotus on Windows to not work (and significantly harm Lotus business). Since that time, there have been many similar instances ("oops, did we delete those files that that application needs?", etc).
IMNSHO, Microsoft needs to be broken up into at least 3 companies (one OS, one Office, and one Internet) and these companies need to be closely monitored to make sure that they don't keep pulling typical MS tricks.
Alternately, I would be satisfied if MS was forced to adhere to published standards (HTTP, Kerberos, etc) and other remedies so as to prevent abusing their monopolistic power to force users into MS-specific products (which seems to be what.net is intending).
I would like people to remember the time period of Motif 1.0: 1989. If you had access to a Unix box in 1989, you had a commerical Unix system. Period. End of discussion. You had SunOS, Ultrix, AIX, DGX, Irix, HPUX, SCO or some other System V variant. MAYBE if you were a university you might have a pure BSD box, but those were getting rarer even then. There was no PC capable of handling unix (yes, a 286 could swag Minix, but those were still expensive, and SCO was already pushing their product around for those boxes as a supported solution).
I hate to disagree, but you could get a complete 386DX system (incl. monitor and printer) for under $3000 in 1989. There were several varieties of Unix that would run on them (Xenix, SCO, and at least one other) -- admittedly, I don't know how much any of them cost at that time.
The unix hacking community centered on SunOS at the time. That was it. Since OpenLook sucked (to some hackers), most open source X apps were strictly Athena, or like XV, based on a toolkit written specifically for that application.
True. At that time, the universities I attended all had Suns running SunOS 4.1.3.x and most hacking seemed to come from the university crowds.
Elsa has already announced a PCI version of the GeForce II. I would expect Creative to offer one as well (although they haven't announced anything other than AGP).
However, AFAIK, they've never tried going after anyone based on the patent (threatening to, yes). They have also trademarked most of their game mechanic terms. Nobody else can use the term "tap" in a card game to indicate turning the card sideways (crank, turn, twist, etc get used instead).
There are still a large number of non-WOTC CCGs out there (mostly from Precedence).
2) The Credit card companies are the ones who bear the brunt of the financial burden for fraudulent use of cards. If their merchants are irresponsible, and cause them to lose money, it is up to them to deal with it. They are fairly lax about it, though, as if it was difficult to get a merchant account, then nobody would accept credit cards, and they would be out of business.
Actually, this is incorrect. The merchants almost always get stuck with the loss for fraudulent charges. I've worked at several different places that have taken credit cards (retail stores and hotels mostly) and all of them have had to eat fraudulent charges. There is a slight chance this has changed as it has been a while (7+ years), but I doubt it. After all, why should the credit card company take the loss when they can pass it on?
For more info, check out Blizzard's press release at http://www.blizzard.com/PRESS/991111.sht ml. It looks like they are having a 1000 person closed beta followed by an open beta for testing Battle.Net.
Slashdot Mirror
Did government antitrust prosecutors actually prove that Microsoft prevented Netscape, or any other rival, from bringing new products to the marketplace?
No. Any company could have brought any product they wanted to market, but it would have failed if it competed with MS since MS had everything tied to their OS.
Is it true that these users were not free to choose Netscape?
Sure, they could have chosen Netscape, but what percentage of computer users go out of their way to get a better product if a similar one is provided with the OS? Microsoft should have been required to provide IE for download from the MS site only (not on the Windows 9x CD). Tieing IE to Windows 98 was unnecessary, anti-competitive, hand illegal.
Why wasn't Microsoft justified in integrating Windows with its much-hyped OS?
Because IE was and is a seperate product unrelated to the OS. Regardless of what MS claims, IE is not a necessary part of Windows. See Win98Lite (a program that will let you remove IE) if you think it is).
Microsoft has been a predatory monopoly which needed legal intervention since the days of Windows 3.1. Anybody else remember when Lotus and Excel were first being put on Windows? MS "accidentally" neglected to notify Lotus of a minor, but fundamental, change which caused early versions of Lotus on Windows to not work (and significantly harm Lotus business). Since that time, there have been many similar instances ("oops, did we delete those files that that application needs?", etc).
IMNSHO, Microsoft needs to be broken up into at least 3 companies (one OS, one Office, and one Internet) and these companies need to be closely monitored to make sure that they don't keep pulling typical MS tricks.
Alternately, I would be satisfied if MS was forced to adhere to published standards (HTTP, Kerberos, etc) and other remedies so as to prevent abusing their monopolistic power to force users into MS-specific products (which seems to be what .net is intending).
Why does it seem as though all the early posts on any Jon Katz article are by ACs and say "you suck" or "what crap"?
Personally, I find Katz's articles interesting and thought-provoking (even if I disagree with a part/all of the article).
I would like people to remember the time period of Motif 1.0: 1989. If you had access to a Unix box in 1989, you had a commerical Unix system. Period. End of discussion. You had SunOS, Ultrix, AIX, DGX, Irix, HPUX, SCO or some other System V variant. MAYBE if you were a university you might have a pure BSD box, but those were getting rarer even then. There was no PC capable of handling unix (yes, a 286 could swag Minix, but those were still expensive, and SCO was already pushing their product around for those boxes as a supported solution).
I hate to disagree, but you could get a complete 386DX system (incl. monitor and printer) for under $3000 in 1989. There were several varieties of Unix that would run on them (Xenix, SCO, and at least one other) -- admittedly, I don't know how much any of them cost at that time.
The unix hacking community centered on SunOS at the time. That was it. Since OpenLook sucked (to some hackers), most open source X apps were strictly Athena, or like XV, based on a toolkit written specifically for that application.
True. At that time, the universities I attended all had Suns running SunOS 4.1.3.x and most hacking seemed to come from the university crowds.
Elsa has already announced a PCI version of the GeForce II. I would expect Creative to offer one as well (although they haven't announced anything other than AGP).
However, AFAIK, they've never tried going after anyone based on the patent (threatening to, yes). They have also trademarked most of their game mechanic terms. Nobody else can use the term "tap" in a card game to indicate turning the card sideways (crank, turn, twist, etc get used instead).
There are still a large number of non-WOTC CCGs out there (mostly from Precedence).
2) The Credit card companies are the ones who bear the brunt of the financial burden for fraudulent use of cards. If their merchants are irresponsible, and cause them to lose money, it is up to them to deal with it. They are fairly lax about it, though, as if it was difficult to get a merchant account, then nobody would accept credit cards, and they would be out of business.
Actually, this is incorrect. The merchants almost always get stuck with the loss for fraudulent charges. I've worked at several different places that have taken credit cards (retail stores and hotels mostly) and all of them have had to eat fraudulent charges. There is a slight chance this has changed as it has been a while (7+ years), but I doubt it.
After all, why should the credit card company take the loss when they can pass it on?
For more info, check out Blizzard's press release at http://www.blizzard.com/PRESS/991111.sht ml. It looks like they are having a 1000 person closed beta followed by an open beta for testing Battle.Net.