They were threatened with being torn to shreds, but as you say, it never happened.
I wonder if Microsoft would not have been better off if they had been broken up. The parts might have become more nimble and innovative in order to compete. Instead they continue to degenerate in their complacency. Too bad for everyone.
And that's what happens when you become a monopoly. Some previously permissible behaviors are no longer. If Microsoft wasn't a monopoly they'd not have had a legal problem. Besides, they didn't get torn to shreds by the DOJ. Their wrists were slapped.
Really. There will always be some number of viable devices competing. Each will appeal to some group that values its strengths over what the others have to offer. The only way iPhone can fail is to lose to several competitors, not just one. The iPhone isn't the market leader now. So how can one phone or O/S kill the iPhone or anything else?
Roads and transportation infrastructure provide a general benefit to every participant in the economy. Its how your food gets to you. It's how parts and labor get to repair sites to keep the electricity flowing. It's how goods get to market. It's also how the ambulance gets you to the hospital. Everyone who eats, has shelter, consumes power, works or is any way dependent on someone who does benefits from it. Most of what government does is like this. We subsidize public transportation to get cars off the road (reducing congestion) and reduce pollution. That benefits drivers and everyone else. In fact your gas taxes don't begin to cover the costs of private automobiles in terms of air and water quality, space for parking, roads, etc. Your property taxes are based on assessments that include road frontage because you are expected to benefit from road and the location of the road increases the value of your property.
And what about roads to rural areas - where the farms are the people who support their activities? We give the a break because we all need to eat. Does any farm pay in taxes the cost of extending a road to it?
In the topic post for this thread the local monopoly refused to provide a service to the town so the town proceeded to provide it on its own. So the market failed. The market generally has problems with infrastructure. You can compete on electricity supplies, but not the delivery (wires etc.) and the same is true for communications, i.e. telephone, cable etc. That's why we have common carrier laws and regulated utility monopolies. Its even worse with health care. How elastic is demand when it is your life or the life of a loved one at stake?
I agree that government should be limited and should not be in engaging in commerce or other activities that could be better accomplished by private enterprise. I just think that you have a simplistic view especially when it comes to infrastructure. The direct user is not the only beneficiary. I also think that you aren't being realistic in that the markets don't always work well and for somethings we haven't yet found a really good market based solution.
Right and if your are not a victim of crime then you shouldn't pay for the police, courts or jails. If the polluted water or air isn't passing through your sources then you shouldn't have to clean it up or pay to enforce environmental laws to make the guilty parties pay - assuming they are still in business, that you can find them and that they have the means to pay for the damage. If thugs go after some ethnic group that isn't yours you should not have to pay for their protection. If some indigent gets sick or insured you shouldn't have to pay for their care. Let them die if they don't have the money. Children too. If children are stupid enough to have poor or dysfunctional parents, screw em. Let them all suffer and die. Maybe they can get jobs in the child porn industry. Yeah. My birth and education were paid for by the citizens of my parents generation but now that I'm an adult I can just walk away from it all. Who needs government to force us to help people. We can rely on the charity of all the suckers who are willing to pay and if that doesn't work then too bad - unless it's me that needs the help.
I do and not just with Windows XP. Mac OS/X (10.4) had occasional issues restoring connections after wake up too. In fact with XP on our Thinkpads at work, freeze ups related to docking/undocking and hibernation are a daily occurrence.
Whether it is a problem with drivers, background apps or the ACPI or any other problems, it is something that needs to be fixed. If hibernation and/or sleep are seen to be reliable they will be used more often instead of shutdown so the need for something like the solution Acer's tried will be unnecessary.
None. The whole point of this exercise is to address shortcomings in the main O/S and how its configured with the hardware. A more reliable implementation of hibernate or sleep will make this moot. Instead of shutting down and then waiting several minutes to boot the next time you want to use the computer, you'll just put it in hibernate or sleep mode and wake it up when needed. Windows hasn't been very reliable about doing this in the past, Once fixed, you won't need a secondary O/S for fast access.
Bad idea. Won't happen. First, Steve is too filthy rich to care about money. It's all about the game. Secondly, Steve is taking down Microsoft as fast as he can. Soon they will be just another mediocre software giant with no relevant monopolies. Let's not slow that down by arresting him.
I love it that someone who is criticizing certain folks for being incapable of engaging productively with their fellow human beings or tolerating dissent being mod'd down as flamebait by one of those very people thereby proving his point.
The IBM OS effectively defines the mainframe market. There are no viable alternatives for mainframes any longer. There haven't been for years. That's what the earlier DOJ actions were about and what they are looking at today. In PCs Microsoft has been declared to have a monopoly based on the dominance of the Windows O/S, not because of any hardware. The Windows O/S effectively defines the "PC market".
No its not. IBM has a monopoly which is not illegal. However, it may be abusing its monopoly position by denying others entry into the market. This market is distinctly different from distributed computing. The preponderance of high value (meaning money and profits) computing by large enterprises is still done on mainframes and they are all at IBM's mercy. It's difficult and very expensive to get off the mainframe. Much more so than it is to dump Windows.
Very little; however, as W3C says, HTML5 and W3C will never be able to keep the same pace of advancement with a well funded and determined vendor. The decision processes in the open standards world take a lot longer. So as W3C says, it is likely that there will always be some things on the edges that are supported by proprietary standards but not open ones like theirs. To me that means that products like Flash will die out on the public web and only continue to live in some corporate environments. If you can get 95 or 98% or more of the capabilities you need and reach everyone, would you sacrifice a significant share of your audience for that last 5 or 2%?
What I like about Apple's process is their requirement for digital signing and a review of the application to insure it causes no harm to the network, the device or the user. What I don't like is their insistence on restricting applications for purposes of protecting their business model. I understand it, but that's what probably irritates most developers. Palm should require digital signing and a review of the application to protect against intentional or accidental damage and they could do this without going as far as Apple has in limiting legitimate uses of the device. I believe that would both protect consumers and provide developers with sufficient freedom.
Exactly which is what confuses me about this survey. I bought my first Mac 3 years ago when I had a Windows PC. Eventually the Windows PC died and I bought a second Mac. One one Mac I run Windows in a VM. So, does that count me as as being a Mac user with a Windows PC or just a Mac user?
I prefer ads that are relevant to my interests so targeted ads are a good thing in that respect. On the other hand, I generally don't want companies doing what it takes to understand me personally well enough to target ads for me. If Amazon uses my past browsing and purchasing patterns on their site to make recommendations that's o.k. by me. What I don't want is a third party using my interactions with a company in order to target ads. It feels creepy and I resent the intrusion.
I also disagree about the 1xxx. I replaced my TI laser printer which died after 11 years with an HP 1200. I run OS/X and Windows and it works great with both. For the Mac it's just plug in play. In my case the HP is plugged into an Apple Airport Express. Linux support shouldn't be a problem either because it's such a common printer.
Jobs and Woz weren't small time developers. They engineered and marketed a computer. They didn't develop applications for CP/M. Linus developed an O/S kernel, not an application. Both are platforms that needed developers to provide a killer app or its equivalent in order so their platform would survive and prosper.
If you look at the killer apps, they rarely come from small time developers anymore. Visicalc - which made the microcomputer and Lotus and all started out small, but that was over 25 years ago. These days you need to get venture capital and layout millions. Google started out small, but with millions in venture capital.
With new devices the killer app is sometimes supplied by the manufacturer itself.
The iPhone and its ilk are the platforms. In the case of the iPhone, Apple's killer apps are probably the App store and the internet. Gaming is furthering its edge. RIM's killer app has been its messaging infrastructure.
I agree that Palm has to find an edge in order to compete successfully, but they are likely looking to bigger companies to partner with or to supply that edge. The odds that some working nights in his basement will write an app for the Pre that will turn things around is very small. If that guy was smart and really had a great app, he'd write it for the iPhone instead and make a killing.
Microsoft and Intel are monopolies. Nvidia is not. You also can't designate a company as a monopoly by narrowly defining some market niche either. Barriers to entry for the market in question are also a consideration. It's not an issue here. If you are not a monopoly than you can engage in a broader set of behaviors. What got Microsoft in trouble is that they continued their anti-competitive behavior after they gained their monopoly and attempted to leverage their existing monopoly to gain unfair advantages in other markets, i.e. web browsers. If Apple had done that it would have been perfectly legal because they don't have a monopoly. If Microsoft had not had a monopoly what they did to Netscape would have been legal.
From what I've been reading about web sites and malware trends its gotten more dangerous to go to on-line game (like 180?) and celebrity scandal sites than porn sites. Hell, Facebook is dangerous if you use the applications. If safety is paramount then maybe the NSF should host its own porn site for the sake of its employees.
For you perhaps, but you represent a tiny minority. I can't imagine Nokia selling millions of N95's because of putty port and an xmpp client. How many people in the world even know what that is? "Can it help me find a good restaurant in my vicinity?"
Look at the millions of iPhones and Blackberrys that have been sold. Blackberry has one killer app (messaging) and the iPhone has a combination that reaches the critical mass of a killer app.
Wake up geeks! The world thinks we're weird. Our influence on it has several degrees of separation.
Small part time developers are not that important in the scheme of things. People who want to make money will invest their time or money (e.g. venture capital) in things that will make them money. If the potential ROI is great enough, they will jump through whatever hoops it takes. Small time part time developers don't drive the market. They just nibble the crumbs.
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They were threatened with being torn to shreds, but as you say, it never happened.
I wonder if Microsoft would not have been better off if they had been broken up. The parts might have become more nimble and innovative in order to compete. Instead they continue to degenerate in their complacency. Too bad for everyone.
And that's what happens when you become a monopoly. Some previously permissible behaviors are no longer. If Microsoft wasn't a monopoly they'd not have had a legal problem. Besides, they didn't get torn to shreds by the DOJ. Their wrists were slapped.
Really. There will always be some number of viable devices competing. Each will appeal to some group that values its strengths over what the others have to offer. The only way iPhone can fail is to lose to several competitors, not just one. The iPhone isn't the market leader now. So how can one phone or O/S kill the iPhone or anything else?
Roads and transportation infrastructure provide a general benefit to every participant in the economy. Its how your food gets to you. It's how parts and labor get to repair sites to keep the electricity flowing. It's how goods get to market. It's also how the ambulance gets you to the hospital. Everyone who eats, has shelter, consumes power, works or is any way dependent on someone who does benefits from it. Most of what government does is like this. We subsidize public transportation to get cars off the road (reducing congestion) and reduce pollution. That benefits drivers and everyone else. In fact your gas taxes don't begin to cover the costs of private automobiles in terms of air and water quality, space for parking, roads, etc. Your property taxes are based on assessments that include road frontage because you are expected to benefit from road and the location of the road increases the value of your property. And what about roads to rural areas - where the farms are the people who support their activities? We give the a break because we all need to eat. Does any farm pay in taxes the cost of extending a road to it?
In the topic post for this thread the local monopoly refused to provide a service to the town so the town proceeded to provide it on its own. So the market failed. The market generally has problems with infrastructure. You can compete on electricity supplies, but not the delivery (wires etc.) and the same is true for communications, i.e. telephone, cable etc. That's why we have common carrier laws and regulated utility monopolies. Its even worse with health care. How elastic is demand when it is your life or the life of a loved one at stake?
I agree that government should be limited and should not be in engaging in commerce or other activities that could be better accomplished by private enterprise. I just think that you have a simplistic view especially when it comes to infrastructure. The direct user is not the only beneficiary. I also think that you aren't being realistic in that the markets don't always work well and for somethings we haven't yet found a really good market based solution.
Right and if your are not a victim of crime then you shouldn't pay for the police, courts or jails. If the polluted water or air isn't passing through your sources then you shouldn't have to clean it up or pay to enforce environmental laws to make the guilty parties pay - assuming they are still in business, that you can find them and that they have the means to pay for the damage. If thugs go after some ethnic group that isn't yours you should not have to pay for their protection. If some indigent gets sick or insured you shouldn't have to pay for their care. Let them die if they don't have the money. Children too. If children are stupid enough to have poor or dysfunctional parents, screw em. Let them all suffer and die. Maybe they can get jobs in the child porn industry. Yeah. My birth and education were paid for by the citizens of my parents generation but now that I'm an adult I can just walk away from it all. Who needs government to force us to help people. We can rely on the charity of all the suckers who are willing to pay and if that doesn't work then too bad - unless it's me that needs the help.
The seat trays aren't very fire retardant either.
I do and not just with Windows XP. Mac OS/X (10.4) had occasional issues restoring connections after wake up too. In fact with XP on our Thinkpads at work, freeze ups related to docking/undocking and hibernation are a daily occurrence.
Whether it is a problem with drivers, background apps or the ACPI or any other problems, it is something that needs to be fixed. If hibernation and/or sleep are seen to be reliable they will be used more often instead of shutdown so the need for something like the solution Acer's tried will be unnecessary.
None. The whole point of this exercise is to address shortcomings in the main O/S and how its configured with the hardware. A more reliable implementation of hibernate or sleep will make this moot. Instead of shutting down and then waiting several minutes to boot the next time you want to use the computer, you'll just put it in hibernate or sleep mode and wake it up when needed. Windows hasn't been very reliable about doing this in the past, Once fixed, you won't need a secondary O/S for fast access.
You are ruining the fun and squelching the drama by introducing facts. Stop it! Now!
Bad idea. Won't happen. First, Steve is too filthy rich to care about money. It's all about the game. Secondly, Steve is taking down Microsoft as fast as he can. Soon they will be just another mediocre software giant with no relevant monopolies. Let's not slow that down by arresting him.
I love it that someone who is criticizing certain folks for being incapable of engaging productively with their fellow human beings or tolerating dissent being mod'd down as flamebait by one of those very people thereby proving his point.
The IBM OS effectively defines the mainframe market. There are no viable alternatives for mainframes any longer. There haven't been for years. That's what the earlier DOJ actions were about and what they are looking at today. In PCs Microsoft has been declared to have a monopoly based on the dominance of the Windows O/S, not because of any hardware. The Windows O/S effectively defines the "PC market".
The U.S. Congress should ban the use of Slashdot to propose unconstitutional laws.
No its not. IBM has a monopoly which is not illegal. However, it may be abusing its monopoly position by denying others entry into the market. This market is distinctly different from distributed computing. The preponderance of high value (meaning money and profits) computing by large enterprises is still done on mainframes and they are all at IBM's mercy. It's difficult and very expensive to get off the mainframe. Much more so than it is to dump Windows.
Very little; however, as W3C says, HTML5 and W3C will never be able to keep the same pace of advancement with a well funded and determined vendor. The decision processes in the open standards world take a lot longer. So as W3C says, it is likely that there will always be some things on the edges that are supported by proprietary standards but not open ones like theirs. To me that means that products like Flash will die out on the public web and only continue to live in some corporate environments. If you can get 95 or 98% or more of the capabilities you need and reach everyone, would you sacrifice a significant share of your audience for that last 5 or 2%?
What I like about Apple's process is their requirement for digital signing and a review of the application to insure it causes no harm to the network, the device or the user. What I don't like is their insistence on restricting applications for purposes of protecting their business model. I understand it, but that's what probably irritates most developers. Palm should require digital signing and a review of the application to protect against intentional or accidental damage and they could do this without going as far as Apple has in limiting legitimate uses of the device. I believe that would both protect consumers and provide developers with sufficient freedom.
Exactly which is what confuses me about this survey. I bought my first Mac 3 years ago when I had a Windows PC. Eventually the Windows PC died and I bought a second Mac. One one Mac I run Windows in a VM. So, does that count me as as being a Mac user with a Windows PC or just a Mac user?
If you're in Europe, my map says you are to the right of us.
I prefer ads that are relevant to my interests so targeted ads are a good thing in that respect. On the other hand, I generally don't want companies doing what it takes to understand me personally well enough to target ads for me. If Amazon uses my past browsing and purchasing patterns on their site to make recommendations that's o.k. by me. What I don't want is a third party using my interactions with a company in order to target ads. It feels creepy and I resent the intrusion.
I also disagree about the 1xxx. I replaced my TI laser printer which died after 11 years with an HP 1200. I run OS/X and Windows and it works great with both. For the Mac it's just plug in play. In my case the HP is plugged into an Apple Airport Express. Linux support shouldn't be a problem either because it's such a common printer.
Jobs and Woz weren't small time developers. They engineered and marketed a computer. They didn't develop applications for CP/M. Linus developed an O/S kernel, not an application. Both are platforms that needed developers to provide a killer app or its equivalent in order so their platform would survive and prosper.
If you look at the killer apps, they rarely come from small time developers anymore. Visicalc - which made the microcomputer and Lotus and all started out small, but that was over 25 years ago. These days you need to get venture capital and layout millions. Google started out small, but with millions in venture capital.
With new devices the killer app is sometimes supplied by the manufacturer itself. The iPhone and its ilk are the platforms. In the case of the iPhone, Apple's killer apps are probably the App store and the internet. Gaming is furthering its edge. RIM's killer app has been its messaging infrastructure.
I agree that Palm has to find an edge in order to compete successfully, but they are likely looking to bigger companies to partner with or to supply that edge. The odds that some working nights in his basement will write an app for the Pre that will turn things around is very small. If that guy was smart and really had a great app, he'd write it for the iPhone instead and make a killing.
Microsoft and Intel are monopolies. Nvidia is not. You also can't designate a company as a monopoly by narrowly defining some market niche either. Barriers to entry for the market in question are also a consideration. It's not an issue here. If you are not a monopoly than you can engage in a broader set of behaviors. What got Microsoft in trouble is that they continued their anti-competitive behavior after they gained their monopoly and attempted to leverage their existing monopoly to gain unfair advantages in other markets, i.e. web browsers. If Apple had done that it would have been perfectly legal because they don't have a monopoly. If Microsoft had not had a monopoly what they did to Netscape would have been legal.
From what I've been reading about web sites and malware trends its gotten more dangerous to go to on-line game (like 180?) and celebrity scandal sites than porn sites. Hell, Facebook is dangerous if you use the applications. If safety is paramount then maybe the NSF should host its own porn site for the sake of its employees.
For you perhaps, but you represent a tiny minority. I can't imagine Nokia selling millions of N95's because of putty port and an xmpp client. How many people in the world even know what that is? "Can it help me find a good restaurant in my vicinity?" Look at the millions of iPhones and Blackberrys that have been sold. Blackberry has one killer app (messaging) and the iPhone has a combination that reaches the critical mass of a killer app.
Wake up geeks! The world thinks we're weird. Our influence on it has several degrees of separation.
Small part time developers are not that important in the scheme of things. People who want to make money will invest their time or money (e.g. venture capital) in things that will make them money. If the potential ROI is great enough, they will jump through whatever hoops it takes. Small time part time developers don't drive the market. They just nibble the crumbs.