Some URL's to X15 and Cheetha would've been good....
... and what about Zeus?
Always found it amusing that Zeus is never included in any speed tests - just for the pure reason it'd blow anything else away.
E.g. Windows95 had almost zero security features but it sold pretty well. The important thing is that it fulfils a niche - speed. If people want a more secure version, then, sure, release TuxNT!
is this the first public spotting of a console crashing in the public eye?
i've yet to play a console game that has crashed on me but on the other hand i'm not a die-hard console gamer. it would be interesting to know if anyone has had such a console experience.
would be great, though, if MS replaced the BSOD with something a little more entertaining like a customisable BSOD.
Fair enough - it'll still be another 7 months (if not longer) before the XBox is available. You've got the chance of getting a cool piece of gaming hardware now - or waiting till late 2001/early 2002.
Hey - this would be a cool poll!
Will the XBox be available:
a) before November 8th?
b) on November 8th?
c) after November 8th?
Unlikely... MS are unlikely to allow MP3's to be easily played - it goes against their corporate nature. They'll probably promote some stripped down version of WMA.
The PS2, on the other hand, doesplay MP3's (as does the PS1).
But if it doesn't do the job (or does it poorly), then why use it?
As far as i see it, both Sun and Microsoft are trying to force employees down a these-are-the-skills/tools-you-must-use approach. not good for the company, not good for the employees.
In the case of Microsoft refusing to allow their employee the option of using a Mac, they lose out on cross-technology pollenation.
The employee loses out because they have to use a GUI that they don't feel comfortable using and that doesn't work the way their mind does.
crawler technology looks cool. i.e. why search site unless you know it's been updated.
Summary of Microsoft Conclusions ...
on
Microsoft Loses
·
· Score: 1
The official conclusions are 896 lines long. This is a 126 line summary of that transcript. Done extremely quickly but I've tried to get as many of the main points in along with quotes.
Hope it helps. Cy.
------------------------------------------------ - Judge Jackson's Ruling 2:00 p.m. Apr. 3, 2000 PDT [ unofficial summary taken from http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,35391,00.ht ml ]
Conclusions of Law MS defended its monopoly unlawfully - i.e it violated the Sherman Act by performing 'exclusionary, anticompetitive, and predatory acts' and attempted 'to monopolize the Web browser market' (Section Two) and by 'tying its browser to its operating system' (Section One).
I. SECTION TWO OF THE SHERMAN ACT A. Maintenance of Monopoly Power by Anticompetitive Means 'Section 2 of the Sherman Act declares that it is unlawful for a person or firm to "monopolize . . . any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations . . .."'
1. Monopoly Power '"Monopoly power is the power to control prices or exclude competition."' Based on all evidence, such as MS's share of the world PC OS market which 'exceeds ninety-five percent' it is taken as fact that 'Microsoft enjoys monopoly power'.
2. Maintenance of Monopoly Power by Anticompetitive Means 'Microsoft sought to convince developers to concentrate on Windows-specificAPIs and ignore interfaces exposed by the two incarnations of middleware that posed the greatest threat, namely, Netscape's Navigator Web browser and Sun's implementation of the Java technology. Microsoft's campaign succeeded in preventing - for several years, and perhaps permanently - Navigator and Java from fulfilling their potential to open the market' Because this was acheived by 'exclusionary acts that lacked procompetitive justification', it was deemed that MS maintained 'monopoly power by anticompetitive means'.
a. Combating the Browser Threat Court deemed that MS prevented Netscape's access to both major distribution channels 'pre-installation by OEMs' and 'bundling with the proprietary software of IAPs' (Internet access providers).
i. The OEM Channel MS's campaign had 3 fronts. First, it bound IE to Windows to ensure 'presence of Internet Explorer on every Windows user's PC system'. Second, it prevented OEM's from reconfiguring Windows to 'generate usage for Navigator'. Finally, it used incentives and threats on OEMs to 'favor Internet Explorer to the exclusion of Navigator'. By performing this campaign, MS ' increased the likelihood that pre-installation of Navigator onto Windows would cause user confusion and system degradation, and therefore lead to higher support costs and reduced sales for the OEMs'.
'The response of OEMs to Microsoft's efforts had a dramatic, negative impact on Navigator's usage share'. 'Internet Explorer is not demonstrably the current "best of breed" Web browser, nor is it likely to be so at any time in the immediate future'.
ii. The IAP Channel Using associations with the top ten Internet Access Providers MS aimed 'to diminish Navigator's share of browser usage'.
iii. ICPs, ISVs and Apple 'By extracting from Apple terms that significantly diminished the usage of Navigator on the Mac OS, Microsoft helped to ensure that developers would not view Navigator as truly cross-platform middleware'.
b. Combating the Java Threat 'Microsoft employed an array of tactics designed to maximize the difficulty with which applications written in Java could be ported from Windows to other platforms, and vice versa' by 'the creation of a Java implementation for Windows that undermined portability', for example, 'Microsoft also deliberately designed its Java development tools so that developers who were opting for portability over performance would nevertheless unwittingly write Java applications that would run only on Windows'.
c. Microsoft's Conduct Taken As a Whole 'only when the separate categories of conduct are viewed' as a whole 'does the full extent of the violence that Microsoft has done to the competitive process reveal itself'.
B. Attempting to Obtain Monopoly Power in a Second Market by Anticompetitive Means ' The Court is nonetheless compelled to express its further conclusion that the predatory course of conduct Microsoft has pursued since June of 1995 has revived the dangerous probability that Microsoft will attain monopoly power in a second market. Internet Explorer's share of browser usage has already risen above fifty percent, will exceed sixty percent by January 2001, and the trend continues unabated.'
II. SECTION ONE OF THE SHERMAN ACT 'Section 1 of the Sherman Act prohibits "every contract, combination . . . , or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce . . .."'
A. Tying Liability for tying exist where all four of the following four elements exist. (1) 2 separate products are involved (2) customers are offered no choice but to take the tied product(IE) to obtain the tying product(Windows). (3) substantial interstate commerce is affected (4) the defendant has market power in the tying product market (Windows).
'This Court concludes that Microsoft's decision to offer only the bundled - "integrated" - version of Windows and Internet Explorer derived not from technical necessity or business efficiencies; rather, it was the result of a deliberate and purposeful choice to quell incipient competition before it reached truly minatory proportions'
B. Exclusive Dealing Arrangements 'each of these agreements with Microsoft required the other party' (Compaq, Apple, and others) 'to promote and distribute Internet Explorer to the partial or complete exclusion of Navigator'.
III. THE STATE LAW CLAIMS 'It is equally clear that certain companies that have been adversely affected by Microsoft's anticompetitive campaign - a list that includes IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Netscape, Sun, and many others'.
'Microsoft's anticompetitive conduct has significantly hampered competition'
'Microsoft argues that the attorneys general are seeking relief on the basis of state laws, repeats its assertion that the imposition of this relief would deprive it of rights granted to it by the Copyright Act'... 'the Court rejects Microsoft's counterclaim'
What's the status of the project putting GNOME on educational desktops in Mexico? I can't remember the exact number but it was something awesome like a million or so. It'd be great to know a little more about this seeing as you were involved in/initiated it.
Unfortunately, satellite traffic is expensive compared to land line traffic when both alternatives are available. And it has a high latency rate of around 350ms which makes voice rather delayed. Although I agree it makes a lot of sense in areas unreachable by land lines it also reduces the local infrastructure. i.e less effort is made to connect areas that should really be connected by land lines. An example would be the UK if it had not had chance to deploy its land line infrastructure - we would now see Manchester, Birmingham and London connected by satellite links rather than the much more sensible (for the situation) land line links.
The simple answer is that they don't intend making any money on this. Not until Nintendo, Sega and Sony are dead ducks. This is exactly the same strategy they used with Netscape. Kill the company by using their monopoly (which has given them these vast resources) and then reap the benefits of owning the market.
Hmm... looks like adios to Nintendo,Sega and even, eventually, Sony. Shame if that did happen.
Can people/organisations outside of the US have an impact on this? Are there organisations in Latin America or the EU that are working on this? Seems to me that once again we've got US political bodies attempting to control the rest of the world to the advantage of the US.
I'd like to see how reverse engineering would be made tougher. Is there a summary of the advantages/disadvantages (and why) of this bill floating about?
There ought to be as all I've seen so far has been a load of waffle.
Am I missing something? Doesn't this apply just to closed source software? I've had a look at the various sites, read the comments and it just looks like people will get even more annoyed with closed source software. People will think these are just more bugs in the software when it suddenly stops functioning.
On the other hand I can't see organisations like Apache, Sendmail, KDE, RedHat, etc retracting the rights to use their software. Hmmm...
I have no doubts that this was not a Microsoft orchestrated affair. However, I am certain that certain extremely pro-Microsoft people were involved in the chain that made up the reporting of this article.
FUD is a strong tool when you control the media - and Linux lacks both the media power and the suing power to combat this other than through companies such as RedHat and VA.
It's a natural evolution of software - if it's liked/used then it will get supported and developed. Inevitably this will happen to LinuxOne. Unless they manage to corner a large percentage of the Linux market their proprietary additional packages will die. The same would happen to Microsoft if another set of software came along that was equally as usable and free.
OO code is just so more maintainable. Linus has argued against OO in the kernel just to keep the performance up but Linux needs to face up to the advantages that OO has to offer. Just about everything else of note in OpenSource is OO (Qt,PHP,MySQL). The noticeable exception is Apache.
As an early promoter of fvwm, we came across many obstacles in the corporate world to it - the reason was, usually, that CDE was the standard to which the corporation had to adhere. However, the inception of KDE (and GNOME) has huge advantages of the archaic systems that were Motif/CDE. For example, something as simple as adding an application as a menu item into CDE used to have you looking up the reference manual (which was not clear on the matter).
KDE and GNOME are a breath of fresh air - they will undoubtedly become the new "standards" on the desktop for Unix platforms. Developers ignoring these desktop systems are going to find they've missed the boat - big style.
Having seen some of the developments going on with KDE2 such as the Neural network window placement policy I'd also stick my neck out and say that they have a good chance in the next 3 years of making inroads into the NT-on-the-desktop market.
First of all, media has changed a lot since Asimov, Vogt, et al. SF has expanded into movies and TV. Films like Star Wars are the new pulp comics. As for "ring around the sun" stories, it may sound rung to death but we haven't even started on the variations of this theme.
"Perhaps were just running out of stories to tell"... hmmm. This was a short story by someone - who was it now?
Go Transmeta for the half time ads at SuperBowl XXXV! $2M shouldn't be too much for a company that's made both Psion and Palm's stocks take a dive on its press release.
On the other hand, assembly isn't half bad. Some great insights into how a machine works and how to optimise code. This is one of the reasons that are given for not using C++ in the Linux kernel - optimising critical areas such as disk access is a lot easier when OO isn't interfering.
Slashdot Mirror
Some URL's to X15 and Cheetha would've been good....
... and what about Zeus?
Always found it amusing that Zeus is never included in any speed tests - just for the pure reason it'd blow anything else away.
Well, isn't security a user requirement?
E.g. Windows95 had almost zero security features but it sold pretty well. The important thing is that it fulfils a niche - speed. If people want a more secure version, then, sure, release TuxNT!
is this the first public spotting of a console crashing in the public eye?
i've yet to play a console game that has crashed on me but on the other hand i'm not a die-hard console gamer. it would be interesting to know if anyone has had such a console experience.
would be great, though, if MS replaced the BSOD with something a little more entertaining like a customisable BSOD.
Fair enough - it'll still be another 7 months (if not longer) before the XBox is available. You've got the chance of getting a cool piece of gaming hardware now - or waiting till late 2001/early 2002.
Hey - this would be a cool poll!
Will the XBox be available:
a) before November 8th?
b) on November 8th?
c) after November 8th?
any bets?
Unlikely... MS are unlikely to allow MP3's to be easily played - it goes against their corporate nature. They'll probably promote some stripped down version of WMA.
The PS2, on the other hand, does play MP3's (as does the PS1).
But if it doesn't do the job (or does it poorly), then why use it?
As far as i see it, both Sun and Microsoft are trying to force employees down a these-are-the-skills/tools-you-must-use approach. not good for the company, not good for the employees.
In the case of Microsoft refusing to allow their employee the option of using a Mac, they lose out on cross-technology pollenation.
The employee loses out because they have to use a GUI that they don't feel comfortable using and that doesn't work the way their mind does.
crawler technology looks cool.
i.e. why search site unless you know it's been updated.
The official conclusions are 896 lines long. This is a 126 line summary of that transcript.
- - t ml ]
."'
."'
Done extremely quickly but I've tried to get as many of the main points in along with quotes.
Hope it helps.
Cy.
-----------------------------------------------
Judge Jackson's Ruling
2:00 p.m. Apr. 3, 2000 PDT
[ unofficial summary taken from http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,35391,00.h
Conclusions of Law
MS defended its monopoly unlawfully - i.e it violated the Sherman Act by performing
'exclusionary, anticompetitive, and predatory acts' and attempted 'to monopolize
the Web browser market' (Section Two) and by 'tying its browser to its operating
system' (Section One).
I. SECTION TWO OF THE SHERMAN ACT
A. Maintenance of Monopoly Power by Anticompetitive Means
'Section 2 of the Sherman Act declares that it is unlawful for a person or firm to
"monopolize . . . any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or
with foreign nations . . .
1. Monopoly Power
'"Monopoly power is the power to control prices or exclude competition."'
Based on all evidence, such as MS's share of the world PC OS market which 'exceeds
ninety-five percent' it is taken as fact that 'Microsoft enjoys monopoly power'.
2. Maintenance of Monopoly Power by Anticompetitive Means
'Microsoft sought to convince developers to concentrate on Windows-specificAPIs
and ignore interfaces exposed by the two incarnations of middleware that posed the
greatest threat, namely, Netscape's Navigator Web browser and Sun's implementation
of the Java technology. Microsoft's campaign succeeded in preventing - for several
years, and perhaps permanently - Navigator and Java from fulfilling their potential
to open the market'
Because this was acheived by 'exclusionary acts that lacked procompetitive
justification', it was deemed that MS maintained 'monopoly power by anticompetitive
means'.
a. Combating the Browser Threat
Court deemed that MS prevented Netscape's access to both major distribution channels
'pre-installation by OEMs' and 'bundling with the proprietary software of IAPs'
(Internet access providers).
i. The OEM Channel
MS's campaign had 3 fronts. First, it bound IE to Windows to ensure 'presence of
Internet Explorer on every Windows user's PC system'. Second, it prevented OEM's
from reconfiguring Windows to 'generate usage for Navigator'. Finally, it used
incentives and threats on OEMs to 'favor Internet Explorer to the exclusion of
Navigator'.
By performing this campaign, MS ' increased the likelihood that pre-installation of
Navigator onto Windows would cause user confusion and system degradation, and
therefore lead to higher support costs and reduced sales for the OEMs'.
'The response of OEMs to Microsoft's efforts had a dramatic, negative
impact on Navigator's usage share'.
'Internet Explorer is not demonstrably the current "best of breed" Web browser,
nor is it likely to be so at any time in the immediate future'.
ii. The IAP Channel
Using associations with the top ten Internet Access Providers MS aimed 'to
diminish Navigator's share of browser usage'.
iii. ICPs, ISVs and Apple
'By extracting from Apple terms that significantly diminished the usage of
Navigator on the Mac OS, Microsoft helped to ensure that developers would not view
Navigator as truly cross-platform middleware'.
b. Combating the Java Threat
'Microsoft employed an array of tactics designed to maximize the difficulty with
which applications written in Java could be ported from Windows to other platforms,
and vice versa' by 'the creation of a Java implementation for Windows that undermined
portability', for example, 'Microsoft also deliberately designed its Java
development tools so that developers who were opting for portability over
performance would nevertheless unwittingly write Java applications that would run
only on Windows'.
c. Microsoft's Conduct Taken As a Whole
'only when the separate categories of conduct are viewed' as a whole 'does the full
extent of the violence that Microsoft has done to the competitive process reveal
itself'.
B. Attempting to Obtain Monopoly Power in a Second Market by Anticompetitive Means
' The Court is nonetheless compelled to express its further conclusion that the
predatory course of conduct Microsoft has pursued since June of 1995 has revived the
dangerous probability that Microsoft will attain monopoly power in a second market.
Internet Explorer's share of browser usage has already risen above fifty percent,
will exceed sixty percent by January 2001, and the trend continues unabated.'
II. SECTION ONE OF THE SHERMAN ACT
'Section 1 of the Sherman Act prohibits "every contract, combination . . . , or
conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce . . .
A. Tying
Liability for tying exist where all four of the following four elements exist.
(1) 2 separate products are involved
(2) customers are offered no choice but to take the tied product(IE) to obtain the
tying product(Windows).
(3) substantial interstate commerce is affected
(4) the defendant has market power in the tying product market (Windows).
'This Court concludes that Microsoft's decision to offer only the bundled -
"integrated" - version of Windows and Internet Explorer derived not from technical
necessity or business efficiencies; rather, it was the result of a deliberate and
purposeful choice to quell incipient competition before it reached truly minatory
proportions'
B. Exclusive Dealing Arrangements
'each of these agreements with Microsoft required the other party' (Compaq, Apple,
and others) 'to promote and distribute Internet Explorer to the partial or
complete exclusion of Navigator'.
III. THE STATE LAW CLAIMS
'It is equally clear that certain companies that have been adversely affected by
Microsoft's anticompetitive campaign - a list that includes IBM, Hewlett-Packard,
Intel, Netscape, Sun, and many others'.
'Microsoft's anticompetitive conduct has significantly hampered competition'
'Microsoft argues that the attorneys general are seeking relief on the basis of
state laws, repeats its assertion that the imposition of this relief would deprive
it of rights granted to it by the Copyright Act'... 'the Court rejects Microsoft's
counterclaim'
What's the status of the project putting GNOME on educational desktops in Mexico? I can't
remember the exact number but it was something awesome like a million or so. It'd be great to
know a little more about this seeing as you were involved in/initiated it.
Unfortunately, satellite traffic is expensive compared to land line traffic when both
alternatives are available. And it has a high latency rate of around 350ms which makes voice
rather delayed. Although I agree it makes a lot of sense in areas unreachable by land lines it
also reduces the local infrastructure. i.e less effort is made to connect areas that should
really be connected by land lines. An example would be the UK if it had not had chance
to deploy its land line infrastructure - we would now see Manchester, Birmingham and London
connected by satellite links rather than the much more sensible (for the situation) land line links.
The simple answer is that they don't intend making any money on this. Not until Nintendo, Sega and
Sony are dead ducks. This is exactly the same strategy they used with Netscape. Kill the company
by using their monopoly (which has given them these vast resources) and then reap the benefits of
owning the market.
Hmm
Not!
So it turns out CNN has been interfering with their dishes.
Big deal.
Can people/organisations outside of the US have an impact on this? Are there organisations
in Latin America or the EU that are working on this? Seems to me that once again we've
got US political bodies attempting to control the rest of the world to the advantage of the US.
I'd like to see how reverse engineering would be made tougher. Is there a summary of
the advantages/disadvantages (and why) of this bill floating about?
There ought to be as all I've seen so far has been a load of waffle.
That should have read:
> We have NO choice. We must stop UCITA.
Why? What's the big deal?
> We have NO choice. We must stop UCITA. Why? What's the big deal?
Am I missing something?
Doesn't this apply just to closed source software? I've had a look at the various sites,
read the comments and it just looks like people will get even more annoyed with
closed source software. People will think these are just more bugs in the software
when it suddenly stops functioning.
On the other hand I can't see organisations like Apache, Sendmail, KDE, RedHat,
etc retracting the rights to use their software.
Hmmm
If this is true, then who cares about this bill.
I have no doubts that this was not a Microsoft orchestrated affair. However, I am
certain that certain extremely pro-Microsoft people were involved in the chain
that made up the reporting of this article.
FUD is a strong tool when you control the media - and Linux lacks both the
media power and the suing power to combat this other than through companies such as
RedHat and VA.
It's a natural evolution of software - if it's liked/used then it will get
supported and developed. Inevitably this will happen to LinuxOne. Unless
they manage to corner a large percentage of the Linux market their proprietary
additional packages will die. The same would happen to Microsoft if another
set of software came along that was equally as usable and free.
The company would just wither and die.
OO code is just so more maintainable. Linus has argued against OO in the kernel
just to keep the performance up but Linux needs to face up to the advantages that OO
has to offer. Just about everything else of note in OpenSource is OO (Qt,PHP,MySQL). The noticeable exception is Apache.
As an early promoter of fvwm, we came across many obstacles in the corporate world
to it - the reason was, usually, that CDE was the standard to which the corporation
had to adhere. However, the inception of KDE (and GNOME) has huge advantages
of the archaic systems that were Motif/CDE. For example, something as simple as
adding an application as a menu item into CDE used to have you looking up the
reference manual (which was not clear on the matter).
KDE and GNOME are a breath of fresh air - they will undoubtedly become the new
"standards" on the desktop for Unix platforms. Developers ignoring these
desktop systems are going to find they've missed the boat - big style.
Having seen some of the developments going on with KDE2 such as the
Neural network window placement policy I'd also stick my neck out and say that
they have a good chance in the next 3 years of making inroads into the NT-on-the-desktop market.
Wonder what the minimum spec will be?
I remember Altavista in 1995 was running on a machine with 4GB of memory.
First of all, media has changed a lot since Asimov, Vogt, et al.
... hmmm. This was a short story by someone - who was it now?
SF has expanded into movies and TV. Films like Star Wars are the new pulp comics.
As for "ring around the sun" stories, it may sound rung to death but we haven't even started on the variations of this theme.
"Perhaps were just running out of stories to tell"
Go Transmeta for the half time ads at SuperBowl XXXV! $2M shouldn't be too much for
a company that's made both Psion and Palm's stocks take a dive on its press release.
On the other hand, assembly isn't half bad. Some great insights into how a machine works
and how to optimise code. This is one of the reasons that are given for not using C++ in
the Linux kernel - optimising critical areas such as disk access is a lot easier when OO
isn't interfering.