Valenti next addressed downloadable media, which he said, "poses a much greater threat to the creative community." He noted that this is the same type of piracy as the downloading of illegal software or illegal MP3 files, which has pillaged the music industry.
Damn, I almost forgot how many billions less they made this year!
...with this quantity of Legos available, what do people think the coolest thing to build would be?
What, a beowul... Hum, too easy.
What would be cool though would be to do a dinosaur out of these. Talk about huge (ok, a whale would be bigger, but it would begin to be quite astronomical).
Part of the problem is that the waste water effluent from these plants can harm the ecosystem.
Over here (in France) you get the water naturally cooled down on a long canal before it can go back in the river and the hot water is used to have exotic (for here) animals like crocodiles.
Will we soon have to worry about our rights online in a legal system outside of the United States?
Sorry but being European what worries me more is to have to worry about my rights online inside the United States given the recent court decisions trying to make the DMCA apply to foreign (read, not under US juridiction) websites.
"Torvalds is a "hacker" in the traditional and true sense of the word, which originally meant a programmer with imagination and elegance."
It is because one day Linux will be a fond memory spuerseded by a better OS but Hackers will still be around and we need little phrases like this in mainstream journals to be able to say "I am a Hacker" and not to have to explain that no, we are not criminals although try to imply that i am one of those pseudo hackers one more and I may become one, grumble mumble.
Slashdot posts transcripts computer-computer debates using different trees or tree views. For the first time, the majority of contributions on Slashdot are "insightful" because trolling a script that can logically thrash you to your skivvies in microseconds is simply no fun
This wouldn't stop hot grits and NP trolls because your script cannot respond resonably to something that hasn't any sense.
See, the way I heard it, Gates was using his newfound wealth from DOS & Windows 3 to steal treasures of the ancient world. He had managed to locate the exact position of the fabled Pandora's box, and after a hefty struggle, he managed to get his hands on it. Of course he couldnt resist opening it and upon doing so an evil demon was released and cast a shadow over Redmond, and thus, Win32 was born.
Shouldn't it be:
Bill Gates opened the Pandora box and then Win32 was released;).
I will simply takes the excellent idea that Kent Lundberg had in Technocrat to use the fact that fair use still exist for books and quote Good Omens (from Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, excellent book):
Along with the standard computer warranty agreement which said that if the machine 1) didn't work, 2) didn't do what the expensive advertisements said, 3) electrocuted the immediate neighborhood, 4) and in fact failed entirely to be inside the expensive box when you opened it, this was expressly, absolutely, implicitly and in no event the fault or responsibility of the manufacturer, that the purchaser should consider himself lucky to be allowed to give his money to the manufacturer, and that any attempt to treat what had just been paid for as the purchaser's own property would result in the attentions of serious men with menacing briefcases and very thin watches. Crowley had been extremely impressed with the warranties offered by the computer industry, and had in fact sent a bundle Below to the department that drew up the Immortal Soul agreements, with a yellow memo form attached just saying: "Learn, guys."
-- a footnote from Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett in "Good Omens" (Crowley is one of the main characters, and a servant of Hell).
So you agree that there are two markets to speak of here. I'll follow your lead and call one the "retail market"; the other I'll call the "installation market" (since in a sense they're both OS markets).
Traditionnaly there were two main markets, the server market and the desktop market. Now this line is indeed blurred with Linux being both, Win2000 being both too although MS put an artificial separation to make more money.
Now with the rise of Linux and Free Software in general we see another separation happening. And indeed this separation is between the retail market, what is sold in stores, and the installation market, what is indeed installed. Right now this separation sin't very visible due to the fact that Windows is still largely the leader both in sales and in installations. However, given that you can download Linux/FreeBSD/... and install it or buy a CD and install on many machines the number of machine running Linux is likely to be more important than what is reflected by the sales. Of course you must take in account the way you count the sales. Do you count a magazine putting Linux on their CD as a sale or not? You may have bought many distribution for the same computer given that unlike with Windows your old computer is likely to run newer versions of Linux.
All in all I think (and many other people do) that there ar efar more Linux installations than Linux sales.
If this phenomena continue and Linux continue to increase in sales and in installation we may indeed find ourselves in a situation where we have both "markets".
Now you agree that absolute control over the retail market, measured in sales, is insufficient for being a monopoly.
I agree but not inconditionaly. Remember that it is the situation where Debian has 90% of the installation market. Given that today the sales market and the installation market are highly correlated for Windows (that is, most versions of Windows sold are also installed and used) having a monopoly in one means having a monopoly in another.
Should the two market be loosely correlated, then having a monopoly in one would not imply having a monopoly in the other. But the only way I can think of right now to make it loosely correlated is through free (speech) software.
Neither, of course, can domination of the installation market be sufficient for having a monopoly... otherwise, in the example, Debain would be a monopoly.
In the scenario, Debian would indeed have a monopoly on the installation market. Therefore Debian would have the4 same kind of power Microsoft has. However, their power would be quite weak compared to Microsoft's one given of the nature of the GPL. I am not happy with the way Debian work? Just fork it in my own distro. There is absolutely nothing preventing me to do it.
The only way for Debian to have the same power as Microsoft in such a situation is if they bundled proprietary software that they control and that is a core part of the distro. I don't see this happening soon.
It would appear that to be a monopolist, one must dominate in both markets. Great. For the moment, let's call Microsoft a monopoly. Now in your words:
The most important in term of control is the installation market. If nobody buy your stuff but everybody use it and you are able to lock them in your stuff and then make them pay, Bingo, you've locked them so they can't go easily , so they must pay you.
OTOH, if everybody buy only your stuff but only because they don;t need to buy the competitor to use it, then you may have the control of the reatil market but you won'd have a lot of power because most peopel are not using your stuff anyway.
I think that I didn't make myself clear because I didn't split the two markets before given that they actually are highly correlated.
(or, of course, because people choose them for their own reasons...)
Care to elaborate? I sense a litle bit of sarcasm but I am not sure to interpret it correctly.
Now explain to me how Microsoft can use their monopoly power to sustain their domination of the installation market (and thus their monopoly). Any end user who wants Debian can install it on his PC, free of charge. If enough of them chose to do so, Microsoft would have no monopoly. What power has Microsoft to stop the laws of competition in the installation market?
All this has already be explained very well in the finding of fact.
Any end user who wants Debian can install it on his PC, free of charge.
True, but MS was not attacked because they were preventing users to install non-Microsoft software, they were attacked because they were preventing OEM's to install non-Microsoft software.
Now you may say, yeah, but some began to install Linux recently. Yeah, recently, but the trial was arlready begun then.
What power has Microsoft to stop the laws of competition in the installation market?
The power that if OEM's were trying to install (Netscape) or develop (IBM developing Lotus) other softwares competing with MS software they refused to sell them Windows. Given that it meant losing an awful lot of clients because nobody knew about Linux then (and even today he isn't strong in the desktop market yet) it would have mean "Either you install netscape and die or give up and survive".
Is that not enough power for a monopoly? The law says it is.
They raised the price of Windows, not of operating systems generally.
I nver claimed otherwise.
As well they can do; they own Windows.
Oh, yeah, but in a competitive market (i.e. if they didn't have a monopoly) they wouldn't have been able to because poeple would have been able to go to an alternative with a better cost/quality ratio. Given that here was no alternative they were able to keep the prices up.
Again, compare this with the hardware market where there is real competition and where the prices drop constantly.
The same way McDonald's can charge $100 a Big Mac if it pleases them... because while only they can sell Big Macs, they don't have a monopoly on hamburgers. If their price goes up too much, people will begin eating Whoppers, even if they don't think they're as tasty.
That's exactly the point, MacDo may have the right to increase the price but due to the competitive nature of their market they can't. Microsoft being a monopoly they can raise the price to more than the value it would have in a competitive market.
That's competition. Companies frequently do increase their prices in competitive environments, if they think they'll profit by it. And it's no different with Operating Systems. High quality alternatives are available. If Microsoft's price goes higher than the market will bear, people will switch.
That's wishful thinking. It is easier to move from MacDo to Burger King than from Window sto Linux. Micrsoft makes everything possible to make it harder. They don't publish all their API's; they extend open protocol in closed ways; they patent file formats;...
When I go to burger king instead of MacDo their is just the price and the taste that change, when I try to move away from Microsoft I have the risk of losing part or all of my data.
I, and many other Slashdotters, are living proof they can't.
Nope, up to now we where the exception that confirmed the rule. And don't forget that they are judged for things that happened between 1995 and 1997. Did you already use Linux at the time? Me I didn't and barely heard of it either.
Sure. No law against being obnoxious.
You don't seem to believe they are a monopoly, so I am trying to explain to you why they are (in my and Jackson's mind) a monopoly. This has nothing to do with why they broke the law. After, there are thing that they did to keep their monopoly and to extand it in another market that did borke the law, but it is useless to speak about it if you don't even think they are a monopoly.
Recapitulation:
1. I think they are a monopoly. Although I don't love the way they got it I am not arguing whether they gained it legally.
2. In order to keep their monopoly and extand it to another market they did things that are unlawful.
We are currently discussing 1., not two (yet) although it crept up in the conversation.
I don't like what Microsoft does. But they're entitled to change their protocols and data formats every day, as far as I am (or the law is) concerned. It certainly hasn't kept me from using Linux.
I agree with you and again, I don't say that it is illegal (although I find it unethical), just that it justify my view that they are a monopoly and some of the ways they use to keep it.
I'm claiming that the free market produced a better result than timely government interference would have... as is almost always the case. The laws are bad.
Except that it is not the free market that produced it. It is merely a side effect of Ms using their monopoly. In a free market, you probably would not pay for Netscape but much more people would still use it, because they wouldn't have been driven out of the market by MS forcing OEM's to install IE.
a) In what world is 65% of a market a monopoly? Ok, listen. YOU FUCKING DON'T NEED 100% TO HAVE A MONOPOLY.
What you need is enough control of the market to be able to manipulate it. I know that it is not the pure mathematical definiiton but it is the one that count.
b) FUD is not, nor should it ever be, illegal
Again, this is one tactic to help keeping a monopoly and i am not discussing its legality given that MS wasn't sued about it, just explaining why they are a monopoly and some of their tactics to keep it. It happen that some are legal (but not ethical IMHO) adn some were deemed illegal by Judge Jackson.
c) Personal Computers, with standardized, interchangable parts, changed the market, and there was nothing IBM could have done to stop that.
Yes, but why did they change the market? Because the DOJ was on IBM's back back then. Remember that we are talking about a different beast from today's IBM. At the time IBM was doing everything in house, the chips, the hard drive, the OS...
If the DOJ wasn't on their back and if IBM wasn't so damn pressed to get the PC out they probably would not have used Intel and MS or would have bought either or both of them.
Also, remember that it was because of a similar action (don't remember if it is the same) that IBM was forced to publish the code of the BIOS, which then helped Compaq to reverse engineer it using the clean room methodology to produce clones.
Without a series fo events concurring the IBM PC may well have been a proprietary system just like the Macintosh, the Atari ST or the Amiga 1000. And one of these events was the DOJ suit.
I don't mean to; Microsoft is neither idealistic nor, IMHO, admirable. But their motives aren't at issue. MS is, I believe, breaking an unjust law, which is why the comparision is appropriate. I chose very sympathetic examples merely to make my point, not to flatter MS.
That's what I thought, just the way you expressed yourself was funny.
However I disagree as to say that antitrust laws are unjust.
They know they broke laws (of course... thus the coverup); they don't believe they did anything wrong. Big difference.
Good point.
Personnaly I believe they did both, and i am not gonna cry for them.
Let's say Debian winds up on 90% of the computers world-wide (oh, please, God, pleeease!), and nobody buys Debian disks, they just download it. If Windows is installed on the remaining 10%, Microsoft has 100% control over the market for operating systems. I would find it difficult to say, under such a circumstance, however, that MS had a monopoly from which the public needed protected.
This would be a funny case in which MS would indeed have the monopoly of the retail market, but they wouldn't have monopoly power on the OS market because most OS are shipped in another way.
You are right that MS sholdn't be punished in this case, but this is because they don't have monopoly power on it and thus can't abuse it.
Anti-trust legislation isn't about keeping one company from dominating a market, it's about protecting consumers from artificially inflated prices and making sure they have choices.
Anti-trust legislation are indeed not about keeping one company from dominating a market, they are about keeping one company to use such monopoly to have an unfair advantage in another market or to refrain them from using their market power to make it impossible to other to enter the field of this market. Microsoft did both.
Of course this is to keep customers from inflated price, but the way to do so is to prevent them to use their monopoly power.
However this is not about making sure they have choice. If a company has a monopoly but manage to keep simply because they have the best product and the best price and other companies can't outmatch them and they didn't use their monopoly power to keep them at bay (say, sell at a loss) then more power to them, if the customers want choice they have the possibility.
This can seem contradictory but it is not. In one case customers have not choice because a company has enough power to stop the laws of competition, in the other they customers have no choice because up to now noone was able to compete fairly with them. In the latter the company is still forced to continue to improve because if it doesn't the others may catch up and get more market share.
Microsoft can neither raise the price of operating systems generally,
Oh, and what did they do to IBM. Did they not multiply the price of Windows for them because they wanted to develop an alternative to office? And keeping your price the same while it would have dropped in a competitive environment is just as bad.
nor prevent people from using high-quality alternatives.
MS can, at least they try very hard. They do it by making it very hard for Windows and other MS applicaitons to cooperate with other applications/OS's. Why do you think Wine and Samba are such huge projects?
What they basically did was to destroy the browser market completely. Now we don't have to pay for Netscape or IE, and the act spawned Mozilla, which is a far greater boon to the people than either of the others. All of which happened without the DOJ's help. Not exactly the sort of thing which makes me feel dependent upon the government for my protection.
True, but Netscape didn't Open Source Mozilla because they were forced by normal market pressure, but because MS used Windows to monopolise the browser market, thus killing Netscape main revenue stream (which is anticompetitive practice) and deprive the public at large from an alternative and impose their own (which is not good for them, even though it may seem so on the surface).
Are you claiming that since their action did have good consequence the charged should be droped, even though the action itself was bad? I fear that I have to disagree. Look, ok, I cracked Bill Gates account but I gave all the money to charities, helping them build schools in poor countries, so you should not put me in jail guys. Robin Hood may be a great character, but he didn't have any other mean to fight, we have, so let not use it as an excuse ok?
Are you kidding?? IBM had a market share of 65% at the beginning of the case! The case was dismissed after 13 years because it was totally irrelevant. That's a sad testiment to the nature of big government, not big business.
Yup, but this was largely due to the fact that they didn't have as much room to use the same tactics during the 13 years (remember that IBM was already using the FUD method among others), thus making it easier for competitors to...compete (and among them...MS).
Well, ok, it usually doesn't. I've argued this point here before. But there are, to me, clear examples of laws which need broken. Rosa Parks flaunted a law, and it was a deed well done IMHO. Ditto for the folks who staged The Boston Teaparty. And I would argue that nearly any law of a Fascist or Communist government should be flaunted at any opportunity.
I agree with you and you have a good point but it seems to me that the English expression is "civil disobedience". You will have a hard time making me believe that Microsoft were breaking anti-trust laws for the sake of civil disobedience.
I daresay, if you asked them privately, they would certainly tell you they thought the laws were wrong.
Well, I certainly am ill-placed to speak for themselves but apparently, officials and employees (judgin from article and posts from some of them here) seem to believe sincerly that they did nothing wrong. If it is not sincere they should go to Hollywood right now and become actors.
That's simply not a viable tact to take in court.
Right, but I don't think that there tactic in court was any more viable. Apparently Judge Jackson tells me right.
I'm not so sure there's a valid distinction to be made between the two, for the purposes of this argument, but let's pass on that...
It is for the application market. you don't use the same applications on a desktop computer and a server.
MS clearly has not a monopoly on server computer, there are numerous other operating systems, among which the different Unix (including free ones), MacOS X server now, Netware... (the other are more for bigger boxes like OS/400, VMS...)
But in the desktop space MS clearly has a monopoly, they have the most applications, and although there are replacement for most of the most important applications there is also the problem that it is harder to make a typical user switch than a computer expert.
And watch the way they are trying to leverage their desktop monopoly to have a server monopoly, most notably lately with the Kerberos trick.
I daresay, Linux is running quite a few more desktops than BeOS, mature or not.
Quite probably, but right now I think that BeOS would be easier to use for a typical John Windows user than Linux, if only for the greater consistency due to its younger age (they could avoid many pits the Unix folk couldn't and Linux difficultly could due to the Unix heritage).
However I also think this is changing, Linux is getting easier to use and that's good.
In any case, Windows is certainly not the only choice a person has for their desktop,
What other choice is there? The overpriced Macs with less applications? The hard to use Linux (for John Doe at least)? The application lacking, wrongly viewed as niche market BeOS? The almost defunct Atari (or should I say TOS) and AmigaOS?
Don't seem to be that much choice. What did I leave out? (however the situation is changing, but that doesn't chang ethe fact that right now they still are a monopoly)
so they're not a monopoly in that sense, at least. And as far as I can tell, that's the only sense in which the consumer needs any protection here.
That's not what the Sherman Act seems to say. I heard there were even antitrust suits against companies having as few as 40% of the market.
The problem is not to know whether the choice exist, but to know whether the choice is easy enough to prevent the company having the alleged monopoly to control the market.
Given that the price of computer hardware constantly dropped during the years while the price of Windows stayed about constant and given that MS doesn't have that much duplication costs (mostly OEM's and even that is nothing compared to the cost of duplicating a computer;)) I think this is quite obvious that they have a monopoly.
And often, I'm told, if you are. Let me rephrase that... this one seems more nebulous than most.:-)
Ok, especially when you can't trust the pieces of evidence (I am particulary thinking about a given video tape).
The more I think and read about it, the more I think they're not. The Sherman Act... we're talking about a document intended to keep a company from limiting the supply of a physical good in order to raise prices.
Not exactly, this just was the most popular implementation of monopolistic practices at the time. The Sherman Act was more done to prevent a company having enough power to control a market to use this power to extend itself in another market.
It's being applied in a situation where the company in question is only too happy to produce as many copies of their software as anyone will buy...
Yeah, tell that to compaq. They want us to buy Windows (correction, to license it), true, but under their condition, and if we won't accept we won't have it. If they can afford to choose whether to sell it to us or not then they have a monopoly; in a competitive market you can't choose, you just try to sell the maximum of stuff at the bigger price you can.
and their great anti-competitive act was to drop their prices to zero! Something's amiss here.
Nope, and its not new either. It's called bait and switch. Make it attractive to buy first "look, it's free" and then when everybody use it and they killed the concurrence (because they have deeper pockets) they can safely raise the prices.
And if IE is part of Windows then it isn't free, the cost is simply hidden in the cost of Windows (which makes Windows slightly cheaper, if the total price is the same).
Yeah, they surely were guilty of all the antics you list. The real question, to me, is more about the power of the US Government than Microsoft's scruple shortage.
So you are saying that the State (including all the system, with the police and the legal system) should have the power to make laws but not to enforce them?
IIRC, the Sherman Act is quite different in that the plaintiff is not someone that has been directly touched by the defendant breaking the law but by the government (which are, in fact, only the representatives of those that are fucked up, the customers), but would you say that, say, you, shouldn't be able to sue Microsoft over IDONTKNOWWHAT? So you should be able to sue because you have been harmed but the government should not be able to protect those he represent?
Unless maybe you suggest that everybody should be able to bring an anti-trust suit? I think that would be worse because instead of dealing with one dangerous entity (the gov) you would have to deal with many (all the big companies).
Saying that MS flaunted the laws doesn't answer whether the laws are just.
Yup, that's right, but that doesn't say that they are unjust either, so your point is totally irrelevant.
What is relevent is "if MS should not be punished even thought they broke the law I shouldn't either be punished when I break the law and copy Windows".
With this characterization I totally disagree. The US Government is not our parent, and we are not its children. We are adults, governed, supposedly, by our own consent.
Its exact, but when you are a grown up you also have more responsability, and if you don't take them the drawback are bigger. This iswhat Bill Gates is learning right now.
Had I children, they would not be secure in their effects against search and seizure on my part. I would not hesitate to ask them self-incriminating questions, and demand answers. They would not be permitted to speak in any fashion they pleased. They are children, and are ruled by their elders, not governed by their elected peers.
Glad not to be your child.
Children don't have as much right as adults, right, but they still have some rights, and they should also gain more over the year when they grow into adults, otherwise they will never learn to be responsible, only to break the rules and try not to be caught (which doesn't mean that the rules shouldnt' be broken either, but you should take your responsability when doing so). But this si another discussion.
There is a growing paternalism in the US Government, which I find most offensive. They're not supposed to be protecting us from ourselves
I agree (drug war anyone).
or deciding who's naughty and scolding them back into the fold.
No, but they should decide, what is naughty. The anti-trust law is an exception in that they change their hat and take the hat of defending those they represent (well, ideally at least), but this is rather an exception.
This, however, is really the fault of the government. They're the ones who put you in jail, and who make and enforce unjust laws. So no, it's still not MS I have cause to fear, IMHO.
Nope, this is your fault. You did vote (or failed to, which is even worse) for those that vote the laws, like it is often said, write your congressman.
I don't include me directly in it because i am not American, not because I think I am better than other people in this respect.
This has come up elsewhere, so I believe I should have been clearer in my diction. No, they don't pick and choose, in the sense that they should never have discretionary power over enforcing laws. The role of the Legislature is to make clear, generally applicable laws. The role of the Executive is to bring charges, uniformly, without favor, against anyone who seems to violate those laws. The role of the Judiciary is to decide whether those laws have indeed been broken.
Then change the constitution so that corruption is made illegal (and not considered legal under the false guise of free speech and called lobbying).
t should never be the case that the Legislature makes laws which are vague, aimed against individuals, or which make the whole population criminal.
I agree, but it is a tradeoff. If the law is too specific it won't last long to the changes of the society and of technology, if it is too general, it is too vague and broad. You have to aim at the middle.
The Executive must not choose to prosecute one fellow but not another, according to their desires. Nor should the courts play favorites, or interpret law to suit their purpose. These things I mean by picking and choosing.
Given that MS already had problem with the DOJ but fucked them and given that I clearly think it is a case of antitrust violation (not to say, rape) I don't think they were chosen to please anyone, not even their competitor. Remember the number of politicians that said that it was bad for the image it gave to America, given the position of MS in the world.
Of course, that doesn't mean either that other companies do not deserve being sued too, there time will come.
Microsoft is not a monopoly. It might have been closer to a monopoly when it assaulted Netscape, but it's obviously not so now. Linux (okay, okay, GNU/Linux), is prospering happily alongside Windows, and the movement has spawned its own little industry.
Wrong, Microsoft may not be a monopoly in the server space, where Linux is competing most, but nobody claimed that. OTOH MS is still a monopoly in the desktop space, where the only real competition now could be Apple and maybe BeOS, Linux is only entering this and is far from being mature (but its coming).
Instead, we're to see the US Government step in. Now I'm no lawyer, but these antitrust laws seem to me pretty darned nebulous...
Don't worry, any suit seems nebulous when you are not a lawyer, this is because the law got out of our reach, whic is bad IMHO.
I'm surprised to find so many Slashdotters hailing government for meddling with technology, using all those oft-maligned outdated laws, simply because this time it suits their purposes.
I don't like the Government meddling with technology either but I still think that the anti-trust laws are still up to date.
I don't know. I surely don't understand the nuances of this case very well, so perhaps I'm wrong and MS does deserve what's tantamount to a death penalty.
They have. It is not as if they weren't told it was wrong. They already had problems at the beginning of the decade and had a consent decree with the DOJ. They used a loophole to continue to use the same tactics. Basically the loophole was to say that Windows wasn't MS-DOS so they could do whatever they wanted. The DOJ was not happy, they sued again on new grounds (given that they settled on the old ones), most notably IE, MS tried the old trick again by saying that Windows 98 was not Windows 95 and that IE was an integral part of the OS, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. After that MS kept saying they were innocent despite all the evidence of the contrary, they tried to rig the trial (fake video comes to mind) and continued to deny everything despite the finding of facts and the ruling. They didn't even try to settle, they just trie dto have the DOJ let them alone once more.
Frankly, I am not sure it is the best remedy and it may be too harsh with them but they certainly acted as if they wanted to have it. I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft's directors were found to be masochistic given the way they handled this.
Oh, BTW, have you kids? Pretend yes for one minute. Let's say that you caught your kid doing very bad things. Let's say that he ask for forgiveness and you grant it. Let's say you catch him again doing the same thing. Let's say he deny everything despite ample proofs of the contrary.
Would you let him go away easily?
But what fear have I of Microsoft? They cannot arrest me or take my property. Not yet... (Ok, this one was a HHOS). Seriously, they cannot arrest you directly but with the current trend in copyright/patent/trademark/intellectual property laws in general companies (MS included) will have enough powers to put you in jail at a whim because it would be next to impossible not to break these law and to still have a spark of liberty left.
As for taking your property, they are already. When I buy a book it is mine; when I buy a painting, it is mine; when I buy a car, it is mine; when I buy a software, it is not mine (and now even less than ever with MS's last move). Unfortunately that applies to all proprietary softwares.
A government which picks and chooses who is a criminal is another story. Isn't that the role of a governmnet? A government is here to make laws, the congress is here to vote them (or reject them) and the government, with its tool called the police, is here to enforce them. The judge are here to decide whether those that the government think are criminals really are, and judge jackson ruled that MS broke the law.
Of course, this is an idealistic view of politics and justice but this is the basics.
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I suppose that you might be interested in reading the evil overlord list if you didn't previously.
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Maybe we'll think about it when "Parle vous ingles?" stops getting an affirmative response 9 times out of 10 in Paris. Well, if you go in big shops you won't have a problem because of the tourists that are likely to speak English, but if you want to stay for longer than a few weeks of holiday then you will need to speak at least rudimentary French because all French, far from it, don't speak English and you would lose a good lot of things if you are not able to communicate.
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God, you Americans believe that no matter where in the world you go, You Should Be Able To Speak Your Native Language.
Well, in fact I am French. It is just that English being the langua franca of the 20th century there is less incentive for them to learn other language, which is a loss for them I think, learning a foreign language helps you understand your own language better.
Anyway, when I came in England I was studying because I didn't care about the course itself and it let me a lot of time to slack off and read English and talk to other people. After a while I took a student job in which I didn't have too much interaction with too much people. Now I am looking for a "real" job becausemy English is good enough (or so do I and other makes me think) to allow me to work efficiently without having the language barrier be a huge problem.
And when I will be really fed up with the English weather I will go back home.
I figure that it is the same for English/Americans and that they may prefer to work in an English speaking company if they don't speak a very good French/German/...
Personally, I wouldn't mind if not all windoze apps were supported - as long as StarCraft runs fine!
And don't forget that Wine, Kde and Gnome have replacement or run the originals of the most important Windows software: The Solitaire and Minesweeper.;)
A common programming assignment that we had was: "Using your knowledge of scheme, re-program windows 95 with a fully function GUI and AI desktop."
Funny, I love Scheme/functional programming but I am not quite sure that it would be possible to use it to reprogram Win95 from scratch in one assignment.
What is less rare is having to modify a Scheme interpreter writtent in Scheme to add this or that feature. Given that it already is in Scheme it generally is easy to snarf the feature from the underlying system. Try to do that in C/C++ and you will understand your pain.
I disagree. Classic interpreted BASIC is interactive.
Get the best of both world and use Lisp. It is thrice (does this word exist?) easy, powerful and interactive. And functional programming gives a good incentive to structure your programs well.
A lot of people will say. yeah, but Lisp suck with all its parenthesis and its prefix syntax. Maybe but the latter is mainly because you are used to infix by other language and don't want to/can't learn new ways of doing things while the former may not be the most aesthetically pleasing to some but really helps checking you got everything closed correctly with any editor able to match parenthesis.
So I would say go for Scheme, given that it is basically a Lisp designed to be clean and to have as few concepts as possible at the base.
I think Visual Basic should please 11-13 years old kid very well given that you can easily do nifty stuff like sending love letters just when their hormones are calling to action.
Slashdot Mirror
Damn, I almost forgot how many billions less they made this year!
What, a beowul... Hum, too easy.
What would be cool though would be to do a dinosaur out of these. Talk about huge (ok, a whale would be bigger, but it would begin to be quite astronomical).
Of coruse, apart from that it is probably the less worse choice because it gives us the time to find a solution (fusion?).
Over here (in France) you get the water naturally cooled down on a long canal before it can go back in the river and the hot water is used to have exotic (for here) animals like crocodiles.
Now THAT is proffessional consciousness for a /. poster.
Sorry but being European what worries me more is to have to worry about my rights online inside the United States given the recent court decisions trying to make the DMCA apply to foreign (read, not under US juridiction) websites.
"Torvalds is a "hacker" in the traditional and true sense of the word, which originally meant a programmer with imagination and elegance."
It is because one day Linux will be a fond memory spuerseded by a better OS but Hackers will still be around and we need little phrases like this in mainstream journals to be able to say "I am a Hacker" and not to have to explain that no, we are not criminals although try to imply that i am one of those pseudo hackers one more and I may become one, grumble mumble.
This wouldn't stop hot grits and NP trolls because your script cannot respond resonably to something that hasn't any sense.
Shouldn't it be:
Bill Gates opened the Pandora box and then Win32 was released ;).
I will simply takes the excellent idea that Kent Lundberg had in Technocrat to use the fact that fair use still exist for books and quote Good Omens (from Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, excellent book):
Along with the standard computer warranty agreement which said that if the machine 1) didn't work, 2) didn't do what the expensive advertisements said, 3) electrocuted the immediate neighborhood, 4) and in fact failed entirely to be inside the expensive box when you opened it, this was expressly, absolutely, implicitly and in no event the fault or responsibility of the manufacturer, that the purchaser should consider himself lucky to be allowed to give his money to the manufacturer, and that any attempt to treat what had just been paid for as the purchaser's own property would result in the attentions of serious men with menacing briefcases and very thin watches. Crowley had been extremely impressed with the warranties offered by the computer industry, and had in fact sent a bundle Below to the department that drew up the Immortal Soul agreements, with a yellow memo form attached just saying: "Learn, guys."
-- a footnote from Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett in "Good Omens" (Crowley is one of the main characters, and a servant of Hell).
Traditionnaly there were two main markets, the server market and the desktop market. Now this line is indeed blurred with Linux being both, Win2000 being both too although MS put an artificial separation to make more money.
Now with the rise of Linux and Free Software in general we see another separation happening. And indeed this separation is between the retail market, what is sold in stores, and the installation market, what is indeed installed. Right now this separation sin't very visible due to the fact that Windows is still largely the leader both in sales and in installations. However, given that you can download Linux/FreeBSD/... and install it or buy a CD and install on many machines the number of machine running Linux is likely to be more important than what is reflected by the sales. Of course you must take in account the way you count the sales. Do you count a magazine putting Linux on their CD as a sale or not? You may have bought many distribution for the same computer given that unlike with Windows your old computer is likely to run newer versions of Linux.
All in all I think (and many other people do) that there ar efar more Linux installations than Linux sales.
If this phenomena continue and Linux continue to increase in sales and in installation we may indeed find ourselves in a situation where we have both "markets".
Now you agree that absolute control over the retail market, measured in sales, is insufficient for being a monopoly.
I agree but not inconditionaly. Remember that it is the situation where Debian has 90% of the installation market. Given that today the sales market and the installation market are highly correlated for Windows (that is, most versions of Windows sold are also installed and used) having a monopoly in one means having a monopoly in another.
Should the two market be loosely correlated, then having a monopoly in one would not imply having a monopoly in the other. But the only way I can think of right now to make it loosely correlated is through free (speech) software.
Neither, of course, can domination of the installation market be sufficient for having a monopoly... otherwise, in the example, Debain would be a monopoly.
In the scenario, Debian would indeed have a monopoly on the installation market. Therefore Debian would have the4 same kind of power Microsoft has. However, their power would be quite weak compared to Microsoft's one given of the nature of the GPL. I am not happy with the way Debian work? Just fork it in my own distro. There is absolutely nothing preventing me to do it.
The only way for Debian to have the same power as Microsoft in such a situation is if they bundled proprietary software that they control and that is a core part of the distro. I don't see this happening soon.
It would appear that to be a monopolist, one must dominate in both markets. Great. For the moment, let's call Microsoft a monopoly. Now in your words:
The most important in term of control is the installation market. If nobody buy your stuff but everybody use it and you are able to lock them in your stuff and then make them pay, Bingo, you've locked them so they can't go easily , so they must pay you.
OTOH, if everybody buy only your stuff but only because they don;t need to buy the competitor to use it, then you may have the control of the reatil market but you won'd have a lot of power because most peopel are not using your stuff anyway.
I think that I didn't make myself clear because I didn't split the two markets before given that they actually are highly correlated.
(or, of course, because people choose them for their own reasons...)
Care to elaborate? I sense a litle bit of sarcasm but I am not sure to interpret it correctly.
Now explain to me how Microsoft can use their monopoly power to sustain their domination of the installation market (and thus their monopoly). Any end user who wants Debian can install it on his PC, free of charge. If enough of them chose to do so, Microsoft would have no monopoly. What power has Microsoft to stop the laws of competition in the installation market?
All this has already be explained very well in the finding of fact.
Any end user who wants Debian can install it on his PC, free of charge.
True, but MS was not attacked because they were preventing users to install non-Microsoft software, they were attacked because they were preventing OEM's to install non-Microsoft software.
Now you may say, yeah, but some began to install Linux recently. Yeah, recently, but the trial was arlready begun then.
What power has Microsoft to stop the laws of competition in the installation market?
The power that if OEM's were trying to install (Netscape) or develop (IBM developing Lotus) other softwares competing with MS software they refused to sell them Windows. Given that it meant losing an awful lot of clients because nobody knew about Linux then (and even today he isn't strong in the desktop market yet) it would have mean "Either you install netscape and die or give up and survive".
Is that not enough power for a monopoly?
The law says it is.
They raised the price of Windows, not of operating systems generally.
I nver claimed otherwise.
As well they can do; they own Windows.
Oh, yeah, but in a competitive market (i.e. if they didn't have a monopoly) they wouldn't have been able to because poeple would have been able to go to an alternative with a better cost/quality ratio. Given that here was no alternative they were able to keep the prices up.
Again, compare this with the hardware market where there is real competition and where the prices drop constantly.
The same way McDonald's can charge $100 a Big Mac if it pleases them... because while only they can sell Big Macs, they don't have a monopoly on hamburgers. If their price goes up too much, people will begin eating Whoppers, even if they don't think they're as tasty.
That's exactly the point, MacDo may have the right to increase the price but due to the competitive nature of their market they can't. Microsoft being a monopoly they can raise the price to more than the value it would have in a competitive market.
That's competition. Companies frequently do increase their prices in competitive environments, if they think they'll profit by it. And it's no different with Operating Systems. High quality alternatives are available. If Microsoft's price goes higher than the market will bear, people will switch.
That's wishful thinking. It is easier to move from MacDo to Burger King than from Window sto Linux. Micrsoft makes everything possible to make it harder. They don't publish all their API's; they extend open protocol in closed ways; they patent file formats;...
When I go to burger king instead of MacDo their is just the price and the taste that change, when I try to move away from Microsoft I have the risk of losing part or all of my data.
I, and many other Slashdotters, are living proof they can't.
Nope, up to now we where the exception that confirmed the rule. And don't forget that they are judged for things that happened between 1995 and 1997. Did you already use Linux at the time? Me I didn't and barely heard of it either.
Sure. No law against being obnoxious.
You don't seem to believe they are a monopoly, so I am trying to explain to you why they are (in my and Jackson's mind) a monopoly. This has nothing to do with why they broke the law. After, there are thing that they did to keep their monopoly and to extand it in another market that did borke the law, but it is useless to speak about it if you don't even think they are a monopoly.
Recapitulation:
1. I think they are a monopoly. Although I don't love the way they got it I am not arguing whether they gained it legally.
2. In order to keep their monopoly and extand it to another market they did things that are unlawful.
We are currently discussing 1., not two (yet) although it crept up in the conversation.
I don't like what Microsoft does. But they're entitled to change their protocols and data formats every day, as far as I am (or the law is) concerned. It certainly hasn't kept me from using Linux.
I agree with you and again, I don't say that it is illegal (although I find it unethical), just that it justify my view that they are a monopoly and some of the ways they use to keep it.
I'm claiming that the free market produced a better result than timely government interference would have... as is almost always the case. The laws are bad.
Except that it is not the free market that produced it. It is merely a side effect of Ms using their monopoly. In a free market, you probably would not pay for Netscape but much more people would still use it, because they wouldn't have been driven out of the market by MS forcing OEM's to install IE.
a) In what world is 65% of a market a monopoly? Ok, listen. YOU FUCKING DON'T NEED 100% TO HAVE A MONOPOLY.
What you need is enough control of the market to be able to manipulate it. I know that it is not the pure mathematical definiiton but it is the one that count.
b) FUD is not, nor should it ever be, illegal
Again, this is one tactic to help keeping a monopoly and i am not discussing its legality given that MS wasn't sued about it, just explaining why they are a monopoly and some of their tactics to keep it. It happen that some are legal (but not ethical IMHO) adn some were deemed illegal by Judge Jackson.
c) Personal Computers, with standardized, interchangable parts, changed the market, and there was nothing IBM could have done to stop that.
Yes, but why did they change the market? Because the DOJ was on IBM's back back then. Remember that we are talking about a different beast from today's IBM. At the time IBM was doing everything in house, the chips, the hard drive, the OS...
If the DOJ wasn't on their back and if IBM wasn't so damn pressed to get the PC out they probably would not have used Intel and MS or would have bought either or both of them.
Also, remember that it was because of a similar action (don't remember if it is the same) that IBM was forced to publish the code of the BIOS, which then helped Compaq to reverse engineer it using the clean room methodology to produce clones.
Without a series fo events concurring the IBM PC may well have been a proprietary system just like the Macintosh, the Atari ST or the Amiga 1000. And one of these events was the DOJ suit.
I don't mean to; Microsoft is neither idealistic nor, IMHO, admirable. But their motives aren't at issue. MS is, I believe, breaking an unjust law, which is why the comparision is appropriate. I chose very sympathetic examples merely to make my point, not to flatter MS.
That's what I thought, just the way you expressed yourself was funny.
However I disagree as to say that antitrust laws are unjust.
They know they broke laws (of course... thus the coverup); they don't believe they did anything wrong. Big difference.
Good point.
Personnaly I believe they did both, and i am not gonna cry for them.
This would be a funny case in which MS would indeed have the monopoly of the retail market, but they wouldn't have monopoly power on the OS market because most OS are shipped in another way.
You are right that MS sholdn't be punished in this case, but this is because they don't have monopoly power on it and thus can't abuse it.
Anti-trust legislation isn't about keeping one company from dominating a market, it's about protecting consumers from artificially inflated prices and making sure they have choices.
Anti-trust legislation are indeed not about keeping one company from dominating a market, they are about keeping one company to use such monopoly to have an unfair advantage in another market or to refrain them from using their market power to make it impossible to other to enter the field of this market. Microsoft did both.
Of course this is to keep customers from inflated price, but the way to do so is to prevent them to use their monopoly power.
However this is not about making sure they have choice. If a company has a monopoly but manage to keep simply because they have the best product and the best price and other companies can't outmatch them and they didn't use their monopoly power to keep them at bay (say, sell at a loss) then more power to them, if the customers want choice they have the possibility.
This can seem contradictory but it is not. In one case customers have not choice because a company has enough power to stop the laws of competition, in the other they customers have no choice because up to now noone was able to compete fairly with them. In the latter the company is still forced to continue to improve because if it doesn't the others may catch up and get more market share.
Microsoft can neither raise the price of operating systems generally,
Oh, and what did they do to IBM. Did they not multiply the price of Windows for them because they wanted to develop an alternative to office? And keeping your price the same while it would have dropped in a competitive environment is just as bad.
nor prevent people from using high-quality alternatives.
MS can, at least they try very hard. They do it by making it very hard for Windows and other MS applicaitons to cooperate with other applications/OS's. Why do you think Wine and Samba are such huge projects?
What they basically did was to destroy the browser market completely. Now we don't have to pay for Netscape or IE, and the act spawned Mozilla, which is a far greater boon to the people than either of the others. All of which happened without the DOJ's help. Not exactly the sort of thing which makes me feel dependent upon the government for my protection.
True, but Netscape didn't Open Source Mozilla because they were forced by normal market pressure, but because MS used Windows to monopolise the browser market, thus killing Netscape main revenue stream (which is anticompetitive practice) and deprive the public at large from an alternative and impose their own (which is not good for them, even though it may seem so on the surface).
Are you claiming that since their action did have good consequence the charged should be droped, even though the action itself was bad? I fear that I have to disagree. Look, ok, I cracked Bill Gates account but I gave all the money to charities, helping them build schools in poor countries, so you should not put me in jail guys. Robin Hood may be a great character, but he didn't have any other mean to fight, we have, so let not use it as an excuse ok?
Are you kidding?? IBM had a market share of 65% at the beginning of the case! The case was dismissed after 13 years because it was totally irrelevant. That's a sad testiment to the nature of big government, not big business.
Yup, but this was largely due to the fact that they didn't have as much room to use the same tactics during the 13 years (remember that IBM was already using the FUD method among others), thus making it easier for competitors to...compete (and among them...MS).
Well, ok, it usually doesn't. I've argued this point here before. But there are, to me, clear examples of laws which need broken. Rosa Parks flaunted a law, and it was a deed well done IMHO. Ditto for the folks who staged The Boston Teaparty. And I would argue that nearly any law of a Fascist or Communist government should be flaunted at any opportunity.
I agree with you and you have a good point but it seems to me that the English expression is "civil disobedience". You will have a hard time making me believe that Microsoft were breaking anti-trust laws for the sake of civil disobedience.
I daresay, if you asked them privately, they would certainly tell you they thought the laws were wrong.
Well, I certainly am ill-placed to speak for themselves but apparently, officials and employees (judgin from article and posts from some of them here) seem to believe sincerly that they did nothing wrong. If it is not sincere they should go to Hollywood right now and become actors.
That's simply not a viable tact to take in court.
Right, but I don't think that there tactic in court was any more viable. Apparently Judge Jackson tells me right.
It is for the application market. you don't use the same applications on a desktop computer and a server.
MS clearly has not a monopoly on server computer, there are numerous other operating systems, among which the different Unix (including free ones), MacOS X server now, Netware... (the other are more for bigger boxes like OS/400, VMS...)
But in the desktop space MS clearly has a monopoly, they have the most applications, and although there are replacement for most of the most important applications there is also the problem that it is harder to make a typical user switch than a computer expert.
And watch the way they are trying to leverage their desktop monopoly to have a server monopoly, most notably lately with the Kerberos trick.
I daresay, Linux is running quite a few more desktops than BeOS, mature or not.
Quite probably, but right now I think that BeOS would be easier to use for a typical John Windows user than Linux, if only for the greater consistency due to its younger age (they could avoid many pits the Unix folk couldn't and Linux difficultly could due to the Unix heritage).
However I also think this is changing, Linux is getting easier to use and that's good.
In any case, Windows is certainly not the only choice a person has for their desktop,
What other choice is there?
The overpriced Macs with less applications?
The hard to use Linux (for John Doe at least)?
The application lacking, wrongly viewed as niche market BeOS?
The almost defunct Atari (or should I say TOS) and AmigaOS?
Don't seem to be that much choice. What did I leave out? (however the situation is changing, but that doesn't chang ethe fact that right now they still are a monopoly)
so they're not a monopoly in that sense, at least. And as far as I can tell, that's the only sense in which the consumer needs any protection here.
That's not what the Sherman Act seems to say. I heard there were even antitrust suits against companies having as few as 40% of the market.
The problem is not to know whether the choice exist, but to know whether the choice is easy enough to prevent the company having the alleged monopoly to control the market.
Given that the price of computer hardware constantly dropped during the years while the price of Windows stayed about constant and given that MS doesn't have that much duplication costs (mostly OEM's and even that is nothing compared to the cost of duplicating a computer ;)) I think this is quite obvious that they have a monopoly.
And often, I'm told, if you are. Let me rephrase that... this one seems more nebulous than most. :-)
Ok, especially when you can't trust the pieces of evidence (I am particulary thinking about a given video tape).
The more I think and read about it, the more I think they're not. The Sherman Act... we're talking about a document intended to keep a company from limiting the supply of a physical good in order to raise prices.
Not exactly, this just was the most popular implementation of monopolistic practices at the time. The Sherman Act was more done to prevent a company having enough power to control a market to use this power to extend itself in another market.
It's being applied in a situation where the company in question is only too happy to produce as many copies of their software as anyone will buy...
Yeah, tell that to compaq. They want us to buy Windows (correction, to license it), true, but under their condition, and if we won't accept we won't have it. If they can afford to choose whether to sell it to us or not then they have a monopoly; in a competitive market you can't choose, you just try to sell the maximum of stuff at the bigger price you can.
and their great anti-competitive act was to drop their prices to zero! Something's amiss here.
Nope, and its not new either. It's called bait and switch. Make it attractive to buy first "look, it's free" and then when everybody use it and they killed the concurrence (because they have deeper pockets) they can safely raise the prices.
And if IE is part of Windows then it isn't free, the cost is simply hidden in the cost of Windows (which makes Windows slightly cheaper, if the total price is the same).
Yeah, they surely were guilty of all the antics you list. The real question, to me, is more about the power of the US Government than Microsoft's scruple shortage.
So you are saying that the State (including all the system, with the police and the legal system) should have the power to make laws but not to enforce them?
IIRC, the Sherman Act is quite different in that the plaintiff is not someone that has been directly touched by the defendant breaking the law but by the government (which are, in fact, only the representatives of those that are fucked up, the customers), but would you say that, say, you, shouldn't be able to sue Microsoft over IDONTKNOWWHAT? So you should be able to sue because you have been harmed but the government should not be able to protect those he represent?
Unless maybe you suggest that everybody should be able to bring an anti-trust suit? I think that would be worse because instead of dealing with one dangerous entity (the gov) you would have to deal with many (all the big companies).
Saying that MS flaunted the laws doesn't answer whether the laws are just.
Yup, that's right, but that doesn't say that they are unjust either, so your point is totally irrelevant.
What is relevent is "if MS should not be punished even thought they broke the law I shouldn't either be punished when I break the law and copy Windows".
With this characterization I totally disagree. The US Government is not our parent, and we are not its children. We are adults, governed, supposedly, by our own consent.
Its exact, but when you are a grown up you also have more responsability, and if you don't take them the drawback are bigger. This iswhat Bill Gates is learning right now.
Had I children, they would not be secure in their effects against search and seizure on my part. I would not hesitate to ask them self-incriminating questions, and demand answers. They would not be permitted to speak in any fashion they pleased. They are children, and are ruled by their elders, not governed by their elected peers.
Glad not to be your child.
Children don't have as much right as adults, right, but they still have some rights, and they should also gain more over the year when they grow into adults, otherwise they will never learn to be responsible, only to break the rules and try not to be caught (which doesn't mean that the rules shouldnt' be broken either, but you should take your responsability when doing so). But this si another discussion.
There is a growing paternalism in the US Government, which I find most offensive. They're not supposed to be protecting us from ourselves
I agree (drug war anyone).
or deciding who's naughty and scolding them back into the fold.
No, but they should decide, what is naughty. The anti-trust law is an exception in that they change their hat and take the hat of defending those they represent (well, ideally at least), but this is rather an exception.
This, however, is really the fault of the government. They're the ones who put you in jail, and who make and enforce unjust laws. So no, it's still not MS I have cause to fear, IMHO.
Nope, this is your fault. You did vote (or failed to, which is even worse) for those that vote the laws, like it is often said, write your congressman.
I don't include me directly in it because i am not American, not because I think I am better than other people in this respect.
This has come up elsewhere, so I believe I should have been clearer in my diction. No, they don't pick and choose, in the sense that they should never have discretionary power over enforcing laws. The role of the Legislature is to make clear, generally applicable laws. The role of the Executive is to bring charges, uniformly, without favor, against anyone who seems to violate those laws. The role of the Judiciary is to decide whether those laws have indeed been broken.
Then change the constitution so that corruption is made illegal (and not considered legal under the false guise of free speech and called lobbying).
t should never be the case that the Legislature makes laws which are vague, aimed against individuals, or which make the whole population criminal.
I agree, but it is a tradeoff. If the law is too specific it won't last long to the changes of the society and of technology, if it is too general, it is too vague and broad. You have to aim at the middle.
The Executive must not choose to prosecute one fellow but not another, according to their desires. Nor should the courts play favorites, or interpret law to suit their purpose. These things I mean by picking and choosing.
Given that MS already had problem with the DOJ but fucked them and given that I clearly think it is a case of antitrust violation (not to say, rape) I don't think they were chosen to please anyone, not even their competitor. Remember the number of politicians that said that it was bad for the image it gave to America, given the position of MS in the world.
Of course, that doesn't mean either that other companies do not deserve being sued too, there time will come.
Wrong, Microsoft may not be a monopoly in the server space, where Linux is competing most, but nobody claimed that. OTOH MS is still a monopoly in the desktop space, where the only real competition now could be Apple and maybe BeOS, Linux is only entering this and is far from being mature (but its coming).
Instead, we're to see the US Government step in. Now I'm no lawyer, but these antitrust laws seem to me pretty darned nebulous...
Don't worry, any suit seems nebulous when you are not a lawyer, this is because the law got out of our reach, whic is bad IMHO.
I'm surprised to find so many Slashdotters hailing government for meddling with technology, using all those oft-maligned outdated laws, simply because this time it suits their purposes.
I don't like the Government meddling with technology either but I still think that the anti-trust laws are still up to date.
I don't know. I surely don't understand the nuances of this case very well, so perhaps I'm wrong and MS does deserve what's tantamount to a death penalty.
They have. It is not as if they weren't told it was wrong. They already had problems at the beginning of the decade and had a consent decree with the DOJ. They used a loophole to continue to use the same tactics. Basically the loophole was to say that Windows wasn't MS-DOS so they could do whatever they wanted. The DOJ was not happy, they sued again on new grounds (given that they settled on the old ones), most notably IE, MS tried the old trick again by saying that Windows 98 was not Windows 95 and that IE was an integral part of the OS, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. After that MS kept saying they were innocent despite all the evidence of the contrary, they tried to rig the trial (fake video comes to mind) and continued to deny everything despite the finding of facts and the ruling. They didn't even try to settle, they just trie dto have the DOJ let them alone once more.
Frankly, I am not sure it is the best remedy and it may be too harsh with them but they certainly acted as if they wanted to have it. I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft's directors were found to be masochistic given the way they handled this.
Oh, BTW, have you kids? Pretend yes for one minute.
Let's say that you caught your kid doing very bad things.
Let's say that he ask for forgiveness and you grant it.
Let's say you catch him again doing the same thing.
Let's say he deny everything despite ample proofs of the contrary.
Would you let him go away easily?
But what fear have I of Microsoft? They cannot arrest me or take my property. Not yet... (Ok, this one was a HHOS). Seriously, they cannot arrest you directly but with the current trend in copyright/patent/trademark/intellectual property laws in general companies (MS included) will have enough powers to put you in jail at a whim because it would be next to impossible not to break these law and to still have a spark of liberty left.
As for taking your property, they are already. When I buy a book it is mine; when I buy a painting, it is mine; when I buy a car, it is mine; when I buy a software, it is not mine (and now even less than ever with MS's last move). Unfortunately that applies to all proprietary softwares.
A government which picks and chooses who is a criminal is another story. Isn't that the role of a governmnet? A government is here to make laws, the congress is here to vote them (or reject them) and the government, with its tool called the police, is here to enforce them. The judge are here to decide whether those that the government think are criminals really are, and judge jackson ruled that MS broke the law.
Of course, this is an idealistic view of politics and justice but this is the basics.
I suppose that you might be interested in reading the evil overlord list if you didn't previously.
Maybe we'll think about it when "Parle vous ingles?" stops getting an affirmative response 9 times out of 10 in Paris. Well, if you go in big shops you won't have a problem because of the tourists that are likely to speak English, but if you want to stay for longer than a few weeks of holiday then you will need to speak at least rudimentary French because all French, far from it, don't speak English and you would lose a good lot of things if you are not able to communicate.
Well, in fact I am French. It is just that English being the langua franca of the 20th century there is less incentive for them to learn other language, which is a loss for them I think, learning a foreign language helps you understand your own language better.
Anyway, when I came in England I was studying because I didn't care about the course itself and it let me a lot of time to slack off and read English and talk to other people. After a while I took a student job in which I didn't have too much interaction with too much people. Now I am looking for a "real" job becausemy English is good enough (or so do I and other makes me think) to allow me to work efficiently without having the language barrier be a huge problem.
And when I will be really fed up with the English weather I will go back home.
I figure that it is the same for English/Americans and that they may prefer to work in an English speaking company if they don't speak a very good French/German/...
When you are 40 move to France. By that time managers will be happy if you work for 40 hours while the rest will work for 35 ;).
Of course there is the small problem of the language barrier but there are American companies in which you talk in English.
And don't forget that Wine, Kde and Gnome have replacement or run the originals of the most important Windows software: The Solitaire and Minesweeper. ;)
"F...1...R...5...T... ...P...0...5...T...!...!"
Funny, I love Scheme/functional programming but I am not quite sure that it would be possible to use it to reprogram Win95 from scratch in one assignment.
What is less rare is having to modify a Scheme interpreter writtent in Scheme to add this or that feature.
Given that it already is in Scheme it generally is easy to snarf the feature from the underlying system. Try to do that in C/C++ and you will understand your pain.
Get the best of both world and use Lisp. It is thrice (does this word exist?) easy, powerful and interactive. And functional programming gives a good incentive to structure your programs well.
A lot of people will say. yeah, but Lisp suck with all its parenthesis and its prefix syntax. Maybe but the latter is mainly because you are used to infix by other language and don't want to/can't learn new ways of doing things while the former may not be the most aesthetically pleasing to some but really helps checking you got everything closed correctly with any editor able to match parenthesis.
So I would say go for Scheme, given that it is basically a Lisp designed to be clean and to have as few concepts as possible at the base.
I think Visual Basic should please 11-13 years old kid very well given that you can easily do nifty stuff like sending love letters just when their hormones are calling to action.
KEEP CmdrTaco IN PRISON please.
Will it work? ;)