This is equivalent to putting "recommended books" near other similar, popular books in a book store. Only, companies pay you to have you move your book towards the prime areas. No trademarks were infringed, nothing was misleading, its the digital equivalent to rearranging stock in a store.
...Because its a lot easier to convict them and a whole lot easier to find out what they are doing wrong and how to fix it. With a do not call list, its possible that they accidentally dialed the wrong number, didn't have an up to date version, etc. Then the mess that is the do not call list adds to the problem.
A simple string would take all excuses away and make it simpler for the FTC to do its job.
How about making it so all telemarketers have to register a certain caller ID that say would be (C)*insert name of company here*, then it would be trivial to block all corporate calls. Thus making it easy to have a caller ID filter to purchase to block all telemarketer calls. This would be a lot easier than the do not call list, more effective and wouldn't censor anyone.
Because he thinks that Atlantic Records is in the wrong. He wants other people to think that too. By withholding a song, he can have his many fans spread the outrage to Atlantic Records so hopefully it doesn't happen again.
But that would lose MS even more marketshare, something they can not afford to do. Lets say this gets put on a netbook, and lets say they make this thing seamless, it loads part of the system from the BIOS and part from the SSD, you have an insanely fast booting Linux distro. Because Windows can't be legally put on there, hardware vendors can still sell it because of its incredibly quick boot time, good battery life, etc. And Windows can't be put on there. It seems like an epic fail for MS in an area it has historically done poorly in.
But in a textbook, on technology 10 years is an eternity. 10 years ago just think of the software we were using, Windows XP hadn't even been released, etc. Linux on the desktop was a distant dream, etc.
Whenever I see a tech book that isn't the newest version, I won't buy it. For example, A Learn Linux, Ubuntu 6.06 Included! book wouldn't even be picked up in a bookstore, and that was less than 3 years ago when it came out. Sure, its a textbook, don't change everything each year, but 10 years? Thats an eternity. Update it with a major update every 5 years at the very least.
Re:Here's what the giant in Redmond should do
on
Phoenix BIOSOS?
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· Score: 1
...Change the license to what? Which license by the way? Make Windows unbootable on Phoenix BIOSes? Well then MS just screwed themselves out of over 25% of their potential marketshare, require more BIOS checks? Then MS is screwing themselves out of the (quite profitable) Mac with its Open Firmware BIOS replacement more than likely.
The problem isn't that it can break, the problem is it can return bad readings. For example, a dentist's X Ray machine isn't suddenly going to show cavities everywhere because there is no code in the X-ray. Worst thing with a credit card machine is that it doesn't work, most of the time it doesn't overcharge you or something like that, or if it does a few phone calls will sort it out. Again, the worst thing that happens with fuel injectors is they break, your car doesn't run, you pay a few hundred and get it fixed. Worst thing with stoplights is they break, there is always a human driver who can figure out if all the lights are on red or green and call the police to manage traffic.
Breathalyzers are basically black boxes, there is no human to really check them out. With the code more apt to return false readings then simply break, it is dangerous code, when those readings can be the difference between a crime and a non-crime.
3 year old? I'm sorry but I expect all programs that aren't games (and some CPU intensive programs) to run perfectly well on an early P4 with 512 MB of RAM. I currently use a 4-5 year old computer for most day-to-day work.
All programs/OSes should work perfectly on hardware made in ~2003, many people still have these (or older) computers, especially if they live outside of high speed internet access, or aren't very computer literate.
...By practically claiming it as your own? How many people think that The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Snow White and Pinocchio were thought up by Disney? I would imagine that most kids, and a good amount of adults think that, at least for some of them.
Sure, its not wrong because public domain works are meant to be copied. But it kinda kills part of the experience to know that the movies you thought Disney did a great job doing, had been around for centuries before Walt was born.
There is a rather large difference between letting market forces have their way with oil prices, and actively banning marijuana or profanity
But the poster clearly stated that he would rather the increase be because of taxes, something that the government does, rather then natural market forces.
A) Expensive to build and secure
B) Few locations for it, even though it is going to create a lot of new jobs, no one wants another Chernobyl, so no town is going to want a nuclear power plant close to it
C) No safe place to store waste.
D) Waste must be secured, this involves more manpower in contrast to coal power plants that need comparatively less security
The thing is, coal is cheap, reliable, and pretty decent overall, especially for a temporary solution. Nuclear energy just is too hazardous/expensive to be building many of them.
So let me get this right, you don't want people driving a lot which has very very very little short term effect on your health, and most likely you won't be alive for the long term effects of it. Its about the same stupidity as "I think marijuana is bad, so therefore we should ban it for private use because I don't like it", or "Profanity is terrible, I don't like hearing it, so lets make all TV shows profanity free, even though I can choose not to watch TV or change the channel".
Effectively tactics like this destroy economic freedom, much as how over-zealous right wingers destroy some civil liberties with censorship.
Ok, but how many people really pirate e-books? Heck, how many people have a device such as a Kindle that reading e-books isn't painful to do, I've only seen a few in the wild. There might come a day in which e-books are as widely pirated as music, but that day will also coincide with the rise of being able to publish your own book for free or little money and getting all the profit.
Most people don't pirate lesser known works, because they are lesser known. Because not everyone pirates, and those who pirate will pirate the better known works, piracy doesn't really harm the independent writer. It might affect them in a minor way, but if they A) Have official E-books B) Distribute those E-books in all available channels C) Have physical books distributed widely, piracy won't be that much of a problem.
Right, because the most pirated artists are the poorest. I don't know how Metallica can pay the rent if another person torrents Death Magnetic. Most of the poor artists that actually can suffer from piracy are obscure so people don't pirate them.
Looking at The Pirate Bay's top 100 of audiobooks (because the e-books seem to be geek-only and aren't respective of the entire population, unless a crapload of people are annoyed with Vista and enjoy building the perfect PC) you find:
Harry Potter, self help books or language learning books from popular authors, dead authors (some recently deceased like Robert Jordan, others dead for years such as George Orwell), the Twilight Saga, etc. In other words mostly well-known books, or books in which pirating is not harming the authors (unless you get royalties in the afterlife).
Um, you do realize most artists make money off of concerts don't you? And as of 2009 theres no real way to emulate a concert, sure, you can have recordings of the show, but thats nowhere near the same as live.
And you do realize that even the most pirated songs are *gasp* purchased by a lot of people? There are quite a few people who buy music. Even the people who torrent the most music buy the music from bands that they like.
FFmpeg is LGPL'd, its doing the same thing as handing out CDs and going into Wal-Mart and pricing all the CDs as free. Theres no way to really "buy" a copy of FFmpeg. On the other hand, I can easily walk into Wal-Mart or music specialty stores and for the most part support the artist (though most of the proceeds go to the labels) by buying a CD (with the exception of some obscure music that you can't buy in most stores in the USA such as some j-pop).
You make the mistake of thinking that everyone pirates everything. That is simply not the case.
Why do artists always keep complaining? Write good books, make good music, make interesting movies, and the money will flow in, piracy or no piracy. Write crappy books, make more crappy pop songs, and make boring as heck movies and your income will dry up. Piracy or no piracy.
Call me when I can get unlimited beef for free using hardware costing no more than ~$200, until then, your analogy fails.
Your analogy fails further when you figure that there has always been music, art, literature, etc. ever since humans have been around. Did Rafael have copyright? No. Did Homer have to negotiate rights? No.
Sure, we might see less Hannah Montana and other purely commercial music, but music and quality music will always continue.
But I need to know that in order to get part 2443 of the torrent that I connect to IP XXX.XXX.XXXX, encrypting that would not work because my torrent client still needs to get to the real IP and from there its trivial to figure out which IP that was.
About the only way this would work is if there was a server that scrambled the IPs and assigned random numbers such as IP 12322 and you get part 2323 of the torrent from 12322 but that would require A) A server thus killing the P2P functionality B) The server would be not very efficient as it would have to download them from the peer then you would redownload them. C) This would put them in illegal grounds because any illegal content would pass through their servers because they were the ones downloading and redistributing them D) This would lead to a central point of failure that defeats the point of P2P E) It requires trust which by nature can compromise security
Um, no. The government should use open source for a few reasons A) Its not supporting any company, they can do all patches, security, upgrades, etc, in-house, this increases security because they are the only ones doing it so they can audit their own code. B) Throughout many studies, OSS has been found to be more secure C) Open source is cheaper, less tax dollars wasted D) Open source allows for smoother upgrades when the time comes because the code is there to compare different versions
I should be allowed to return any bundled software that cost the OEM money for little to no hassle and receive a refund if the OEM does not make it an option to have no operating system on the computer. This is common sense and prevents people who do not want to support a company from inadvertently lining their pockets. Plus, if you aren't going to use it, why pay for it?
Cross platform teaching just makes sense in today's world. The student who knows only OS X will be possibly lost if they end up in a job that is Windows only. The student who knows only Windows will be lost if they have to work with OS X or Linux. By supporting cross-platform or mixed-platform technologies, students have a much better knowledge of computers not Windows, or OS X or even just Linux. Similarly all programming languages should be done in a platform independent language such as Python, Java, etc. Not a language or psudo-language that is locked into a certain platform.
I don't think anyone can rationally say that the DMCA is a good thing. All it has done is increase monopolies, lawsuits, and made businesses hesitant to develop any "intellectual" property in the USA. Modchips, Flash Cartridges and other industries that thrive in other countries can't be legally made in the USA because in order to make them you must subvert the copyright protection.
while I wish that the license used by a company could preclude them from monopolistic policies, there may be an alternate dimension where the GPL is used by a monopoly and is preventing closed source software is unable to compete. Simply being open source or favoring open source does not matter one whit in the eyes of an anti-trust hearing. Its all about what you do with massive market share. AT&T could have open sourced their phones and switches, but they would have still been broken up for preventing competition.
With open source though, you are not the sole provider of the software, so an abusive monopoly is impossible to create unless no one cares, if no one cares you obviously aren't abusive enough.
Being a monopoly means that you use the weight of an existing consumer base to prevent competition. Microsoft could say that because apple has such control over the portable mp3 market, their linking of itunes is preventing other stores from accessing that customer base. (like linking IE to windows)
That really doesn't work because A) There are loads of MP3 players available, Apple's really isn't that unique, they aren't the cheapest, etc. B) iTunes isn't on most computers by default, it has to be manually installed C) Other stores can easily compete by being cheaper/better, if iTunes is such a monopoly then where does all this pirated music that the RIAA complains about that shows up in iPods come from?
While some of you may say that its apple's product and they can do whatever they want, bundling a browser with the most popular (95%+ market share) OS was once grounds for anti-monopoly proceedings.
It wasn't the fact that it was just a browser, it was also a browser that managed to be annoyingly incompatible with standards. Not to mention was created specifically to stop Netscape. The iPod was not made to stop the Zune, it didn't have price cuts to try to reduce the Zune marketshare, etc.
Apple may have to open up their devices to DRM'd WMA's purchased through the Zune store.
If it was a patent-free, royalty free codec they might have to, but since it is not and you have to pay MS for it, it is no more than glorified extortion.
But really the Xbox has been a good thing for the video game market as a whole. Sega was doomed from the start with every single console save for the Master System and the Genesis (Mega Drive for those not in the US), and almost ruined the Genesis with all the add-ons (Sega CD, 32X, etc). So past the Dreamcast era even with no Xbox, Sega would have failed. What would have happened would be the Gamecube having all the non-hardcore games and all the Nintendo franchises, while Sony would have most of the market to itself and end up with lots of contracts with developers. Unless IBM (or Apple if they did it right, though they might have not had the capital for an initial loss-leader at the time) stepped in with console it would be SNES vs. Genesis part II. With the Xbox, Sony had to compete for better games (Nintendo having mostly first-party games really didn't care).
Sure, the Xbox was an extension of a monopoly, but game consoles always have been competing with less than 4 other systems, with Sega dropping out, it needed competition.
But would we be using a browser that was just as bad? A browser is essential for the average person to download newer, better browsers. OEMs, while they could bundle a decent browser, would just as easily buy a crap browser to put on the systems. We would have yet another proprietary browser war, with people having to buy browsers on disk and no Web 2.0 revolution.
An OS is not complete without a browser, if Apple couldn't bundle Safari with OS X then I don't think we would have WebKit nor would we have (by extension) Chrome.
And yes I do mean Laissez-faire capitalism because its really the only form of real capitalism unless by capitalism you simply mean that people have capital (cash).
I don't really get why Apple, Google or IBM would get any anti-trust charges. Apple now has made iTunes DRM free, uses open (if not patented) standards for audio codecs, etc. Apple isn't trying to be abusive in the market unlike MS. The iPhone, while closed, could use a bit of opening but I still don't see it being a monopoly, sure, the restrictions are bad, but its not like you can't get an Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile or Blackberry device and get about the same applications/experience.
Google isn't abusive either, sure they have expanded rapidly, but they haven't been destroying the competition. Now if they redirected all searches of Yahoo to "Did you mean Google?" sure, but not presently.
IBM has also opened up in recent years to fully embracing OSS. Sure, soem things are proprietary, but in 2009 IBM isn't a monopoly like back in the '70s and '80s.
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This is equivalent to putting "recommended books" near other similar, popular books in a book store. Only, companies pay you to have you move your book towards the prime areas. No trademarks were infringed, nothing was misleading, its the digital equivalent to rearranging stock in a store.
...Because its a lot easier to convict them and a whole lot easier to find out what they are doing wrong and how to fix it. With a do not call list, its possible that they accidentally dialed the wrong number, didn't have an up to date version, etc. Then the mess that is the do not call list adds to the problem.
A simple string would take all excuses away and make it simpler for the FTC to do its job.
How about making it so all telemarketers have to register a certain caller ID that say would be (C)*insert name of company here*, then it would be trivial to block all corporate calls. Thus making it easy to have a caller ID filter to purchase to block all telemarketer calls. This would be a lot easier than the do not call list, more effective and wouldn't censor anyone.
Because he thinks that Atlantic Records is in the wrong. He wants other people to think that too. By withholding a song, he can have his many fans spread the outrage to Atlantic Records so hopefully it doesn't happen again.
But that would lose MS even more marketshare, something they can not afford to do. Lets say this gets put on a netbook, and lets say they make this thing seamless, it loads part of the system from the BIOS and part from the SSD, you have an insanely fast booting Linux distro. Because Windows can't be legally put on there, hardware vendors can still sell it because of its incredibly quick boot time, good battery life, etc. And Windows can't be put on there. It seems like an epic fail for MS in an area it has historically done poorly in.
But in a textbook, on technology 10 years is an eternity. 10 years ago just think of the software we were using, Windows XP hadn't even been released, etc. Linux on the desktop was a distant dream, etc.
Whenever I see a tech book that isn't the newest version, I won't buy it. For example, A Learn Linux, Ubuntu 6.06 Included! book wouldn't even be picked up in a bookstore, and that was less than 3 years ago when it came out. Sure, its a textbook, don't change everything each year, but 10 years? Thats an eternity. Update it with a major update every 5 years at the very least.
...Change the license to what? Which license by the way? Make Windows unbootable on Phoenix BIOSes? Well then MS just screwed themselves out of over 25% of their potential marketshare, require more BIOS checks? Then MS is screwing themselves out of the (quite profitable) Mac with its Open Firmware BIOS replacement more than likely.
MS is powerless to stop this.
The problem isn't that it can break, the problem is it can return bad readings. For example, a dentist's X Ray machine isn't suddenly going to show cavities everywhere because there is no code in the X-ray. Worst thing with a credit card machine is that it doesn't work, most of the time it doesn't overcharge you or something like that, or if it does a few phone calls will sort it out. Again, the worst thing that happens with fuel injectors is they break, your car doesn't run, you pay a few hundred and get it fixed. Worst thing with stoplights is they break, there is always a human driver who can figure out if all the lights are on red or green and call the police to manage traffic.
Breathalyzers are basically black boxes, there is no human to really check them out. With the code more apt to return false readings then simply break, it is dangerous code, when those readings can be the difference between a crime and a non-crime.
You do realize that most consoles are sold at a loss don't you?
3 year old? I'm sorry but I expect all programs that aren't games (and some CPU intensive programs) to run perfectly well on an early P4 with 512 MB of RAM. I currently use a 4-5 year old computer for most day-to-day work.
All programs/OSes should work perfectly on hardware made in ~2003, many people still have these (or older) computers, especially if they live outside of high speed internet access, or aren't very computer literate.
...By practically claiming it as your own? How many people think that The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Snow White and Pinocchio were thought up by Disney? I would imagine that most kids, and a good amount of adults think that, at least for some of them.
Sure, its not wrong because public domain works are meant to be copied. But it kinda kills part of the experience to know that the movies you thought Disney did a great job doing, had been around for centuries before Walt was born.
There is a rather large difference between letting market forces have their way with oil prices, and actively banning marijuana or profanity
But the poster clearly stated that he would rather the increase be because of taxes, something that the government does, rather then natural market forces.
Problems with nuclear power.
A) Expensive to build and secure
B) Few locations for it, even though it is going to create a lot of new jobs, no one wants another Chernobyl, so no town is going to want a nuclear power plant close to it
C) No safe place to store waste.
D) Waste must be secured, this involves more manpower in contrast to coal power plants that need comparatively less security
The thing is, coal is cheap, reliable, and pretty decent overall, especially for a temporary solution. Nuclear energy just is too hazardous/expensive to be building many of them.
So let me get this right, you don't want people driving a lot which has very very very little short term effect on your health, and most likely you won't be alive for the long term effects of it. Its about the same stupidity as "I think marijuana is bad, so therefore we should ban it for private use because I don't like it", or "Profanity is terrible, I don't like hearing it, so lets make all TV shows profanity free, even though I can choose not to watch TV or change the channel".
Effectively tactics like this destroy economic freedom, much as how over-zealous right wingers destroy some civil liberties with censorship.
Ok, but how many people really pirate e-books? Heck, how many people have a device such as a Kindle that reading e-books isn't painful to do, I've only seen a few in the wild. There might come a day in which e-books are as widely pirated as music, but that day will also coincide with the rise of being able to publish your own book for free or little money and getting all the profit.
Most people don't pirate lesser known works, because they are lesser known. Because not everyone pirates, and those who pirate will pirate the better known works, piracy doesn't really harm the independent writer. It might affect them in a minor way, but if they A) Have official E-books B) Distribute those E-books in all available channels C) Have physical books distributed widely, piracy won't be that much of a problem.
Right, because the most pirated artists are the poorest. I don't know how Metallica can pay the rent if another person torrents Death Magnetic. Most of the poor artists that actually can suffer from piracy are obscure so people don't pirate them.
Looking at The Pirate Bay's top 100 of audiobooks (because the e-books seem to be geek-only and aren't respective of the entire population, unless a crapload of people are annoyed with Vista and enjoy building the perfect PC) you find:
Harry Potter, self help books or language learning books from popular authors, dead authors (some recently deceased like Robert Jordan, others dead for years such as George Orwell), the Twilight Saga, etc. In other words mostly well-known books, or books in which pirating is not harming the authors (unless you get royalties in the afterlife).
Um, you do realize most artists make money off of concerts don't you? And as of 2009 theres no real way to emulate a concert, sure, you can have recordings of the show, but thats nowhere near the same as live.
And you do realize that even the most pirated songs are *gasp* purchased by a lot of people? There are quite a few people who buy music. Even the people who torrent the most music buy the music from bands that they like.
FFmpeg is LGPL'd, its doing the same thing as handing out CDs and going into Wal-Mart and pricing all the CDs as free. Theres no way to really "buy" a copy of FFmpeg. On the other hand, I can easily walk into Wal-Mart or music specialty stores and for the most part support the artist (though most of the proceeds go to the labels) by buying a CD (with the exception of some obscure music that you can't buy in most stores in the USA such as some j-pop).
You make the mistake of thinking that everyone pirates everything. That is simply not the case.
Why do artists always keep complaining? Write good books, make good music, make interesting movies, and the money will flow in, piracy or no piracy. Write crappy books, make more crappy pop songs, and make boring as heck movies and your income will dry up. Piracy or no piracy.
Call me when I can get unlimited beef for free using hardware costing no more than ~$200, until then, your analogy fails.
Your analogy fails further when you figure that there has always been music, art, literature, etc. ever since humans have been around. Did Rafael have copyright? No. Did Homer have to negotiate rights? No.
Sure, we might see less Hannah Montana and other purely commercial music, but music and quality music will always continue.
But I need to know that in order to get part 2443 of the torrent that I connect to IP XXX.XXX.XXXX, encrypting that would not work because my torrent client still needs to get to the real IP and from there its trivial to figure out which IP that was.
About the only way this would work is if there was a server that scrambled the IPs and assigned random numbers such as IP 12322 and you get part 2323 of the torrent from 12322 but that would require A) A server thus killing the P2P functionality B) The server would be not very efficient as it would have to download them from the peer then you would redownload them. C) This would put them in illegal grounds because any illegal content would pass through their servers because they were the ones downloading and redistributing them D) This would lead to a central point of failure that defeats the point of P2P E) It requires trust which by nature can compromise security
Um, no. The government should use open source for a few reasons A) Its not supporting any company, they can do all patches, security, upgrades, etc, in-house, this increases security because they are the only ones doing it so they can audit their own code. B) Throughout many studies, OSS has been found to be more secure C) Open source is cheaper, less tax dollars wasted D) Open source allows for smoother upgrades when the time comes because the code is there to compare different versions
I should be allowed to return any bundled software that cost the OEM money for little to no hassle and receive a refund if the OEM does not make it an option to have no operating system on the computer. This is common sense and prevents people who do not want to support a company from inadvertently lining their pockets. Plus, if you aren't going to use it, why pay for it?
Cross platform teaching just makes sense in today's world. The student who knows only OS X will be possibly lost if they end up in a job that is Windows only. The student who knows only Windows will be lost if they have to work with OS X or Linux. By supporting cross-platform or mixed-platform technologies, students have a much better knowledge of computers not Windows, or OS X or even just Linux. Similarly all programming languages should be done in a platform independent language such as Python, Java, etc. Not a language or psudo-language that is locked into a certain platform.
I don't think anyone can rationally say that the DMCA is a good thing. All it has done is increase monopolies, lawsuits, and made businesses hesitant to develop any "intellectual" property in the USA. Modchips, Flash Cartridges and other industries that thrive in other countries can't be legally made in the USA because in order to make them you must subvert the copyright protection.
while I wish that the license used by a company could preclude them from monopolistic policies, there may be an alternate dimension where the GPL is used by a monopoly and is preventing closed source software is unable to compete. Simply being open source or favoring open source does not matter one whit in the eyes of an anti-trust hearing. Its all about what you do with massive market share. AT&T could have open sourced their phones and switches, but they would have still been broken up for preventing competition.
With open source though, you are not the sole provider of the software, so an abusive monopoly is impossible to create unless no one cares, if no one cares you obviously aren't abusive enough.
Being a monopoly means that you use the weight of an existing consumer base to prevent competition. Microsoft could say that because apple has such control over the portable mp3 market, their linking of itunes is preventing other stores from accessing that customer base. (like linking IE to windows)
That really doesn't work because A) There are loads of MP3 players available, Apple's really isn't that unique, they aren't the cheapest, etc. B) iTunes isn't on most computers by default, it has to be manually installed C) Other stores can easily compete by being cheaper/better, if iTunes is such a monopoly then where does all this pirated music that the RIAA complains about that shows up in iPods come from?
While some of you may say that its apple's product and they can do whatever they want, bundling a browser with the most popular (95%+ market share) OS was once grounds for anti-monopoly proceedings.
It wasn't the fact that it was just a browser, it was also a browser that managed to be annoyingly incompatible with standards. Not to mention was created specifically to stop Netscape. The iPod was not made to stop the Zune, it didn't have price cuts to try to reduce the Zune marketshare, etc.
Apple may have to open up their devices to DRM'd WMA's purchased through the Zune store.
If it was a patent-free, royalty free codec they might have to, but since it is not and you have to pay MS for it, it is no more than glorified extortion.
But really the Xbox has been a good thing for the video game market as a whole. Sega was doomed from the start with every single console save for the Master System and the Genesis (Mega Drive for those not in the US), and almost ruined the Genesis with all the add-ons (Sega CD, 32X, etc). So past the Dreamcast era even with no Xbox, Sega would have failed. What would have happened would be the Gamecube having all the non-hardcore games and all the Nintendo franchises, while Sony would have most of the market to itself and end up with lots of contracts with developers. Unless IBM (or Apple if they did it right, though they might have not had the capital for an initial loss-leader at the time) stepped in with console it would be SNES vs. Genesis part II. With the Xbox, Sony had to compete for better games (Nintendo having mostly first-party games really didn't care).
Sure, the Xbox was an extension of a monopoly, but game consoles always have been competing with less than 4 other systems, with Sega dropping out, it needed competition.
But would we be using a browser that was just as bad? A browser is essential for the average person to download newer, better browsers. OEMs, while they could bundle a decent browser, would just as easily buy a crap browser to put on the systems. We would have yet another proprietary browser war, with people having to buy browsers on disk and no Web 2.0 revolution.
An OS is not complete without a browser, if Apple couldn't bundle Safari with OS X then I don't think we would have WebKit nor would we have (by extension) Chrome.
And yes I do mean Laissez-faire capitalism because its really the only form of real capitalism unless by capitalism you simply mean that people have capital (cash).
I don't really get why Apple, Google or IBM would get any anti-trust charges. Apple now has made iTunes DRM free, uses open (if not patented) standards for audio codecs, etc. Apple isn't trying to be abusive in the market unlike MS. The iPhone, while closed, could use a bit of opening but I still don't see it being a monopoly, sure, the restrictions are bad, but its not like you can't get an Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile or Blackberry device and get about the same applications/experience.
Google isn't abusive either, sure they have expanded rapidly, but they haven't been destroying the competition. Now if they redirected all searches of Yahoo to "Did you mean Google?" sure, but not presently.
IBM has also opened up in recent years to fully embracing OSS. Sure, soem things are proprietary, but in 2009 IBM isn't a monopoly like back in the '70s and '80s.