the nerve of those 10,000 users to actually use bandwidth.
For non-academic, illegal purposes, on the State's dime. Yeah, I'd say I agree, without the sarcasm.
What would any ISP do in the situation
Let me make it simple for you, in numbered fashion.
1. Universities are not commerical ISPs. They are educational institutions.
2. Universities are mostly funded by government. Most students are also partially funded by government backed loans and grants.
3. It is not in the citizens interests to expend additional resources to facilitate even one byte of illegal data transfer.
4. Because of the illegal actions of students, legitimate academic users are often starved for bandwidth.
5. Commerical ISPs are largely covered by laws that make them a "common carrier" - meaning they are not generally liable for the content their users consume or provide. Universities are not presently generally protected in this manner. Therefore, the actions of a few infringing students puts the entire University and ultimately the citizens at financial risk.
or boot the smallest fraction of users necessary to unclog the network
The point being, with any decent sized campus the amount of throttling that would need to be done, or the number of users that would need to be blocked approaches 100%. Even if you throttle users to 5 kb/s upstream (which makes many legitimate applications unsuitable for serious use) spread over 2000 concurrent connections this would still cripple a 10 Mbps Internet connection. Additionally, without throttling cutting out the top users would simply open a vacuum of bandwidth for other users - most of whom do not know how to configure their own client software to limit connections or bandwidth.
Another serious consideration is the overhead involved in stateful packet filtering and bandwidth shaping. Blocking ports incurs virtually no overhead - meaning existing hardware and software is not impacted. Adding continually and more complex rules to throttle, limit, and handle dynamic bandwidth shifts requires significant computing power. Most Univerisities can think of better things to spend their money on than investing in new hardware and software to institute these limitations. And don't you dare say "just throw a 486 with Linux on it in the corner". Simply not realistic with more than a small number of users.
one key reason is that they cannot afford sufficient or sufficiently competent staff to put a more complex rule into place than "block port X."
Finally, no. Your argument is absurd. The ability to do this is "plug and play" when equipped with many of the typical hardware based routing solutions commerical available. As I've said, I've worked in this situation, and I could easily have worked out what you describe manually or through a commerical solution.
Because "everyone else" is still in principle doing the same thing as the absuers, but just less. Trading 10 bandwidth tryants for 10,000 isn't progress.
This way you can remain blissfully ignorant of any specific data being transfered and can point any lawsuits in the user's direction as needed.
Except that is not how the law works. Organizations and people with deep pockets are targeted, not poor college students. This "blissfully ignorant" portion of your equation doesn't exisit in law for Universities. As a matter or principle, why should the taxpayers of a state have to shoulder the bandwidth, technical, and legal costs of a bunch of government subsidized cry-babies desire to get stuff for free and without consequence?
Then why not throttle their upstream?
The essential reason is that even with a throttled upstream they will still transfer tons and tons of data. If data was limited, to say, 25 kb/s outgoing, they would transfer that 24/7. Meaning, that in a month, that user would send somewhere around 60GB a month. It's lower, but when you factor that by the two thousand student PCs on a small campus, and the *twenty-thousand* on a huge campus, you have major problems.
without assigning yourself the role of campus copyright enforcer
But you are still harboring and shielding students from their illegal actions, and that still puts the IT department and college in the crosshairs.
(the nerve of people to actually use the network connection!)
Let's get real, and drop the pretentious B.S. about progressivity.
I've worked in a college IT department. And I've grep'd the logs for data transfer stats. When you have a small group (~7) of students sending 6000GB (Yes, 6000 gigabytes) of data a week through P2P apps you have a problem.
I hardly think that stopping 0.25% of students from using 97% of the bandwidth is unreasonable. The small college I worked for had a 144 Mbps link to the world. At any given moment a huge percentage of that was in p2p traffic. Based on additional investigation we determined that a least 75% of that was out and out copyright infrigining data transfer - movies, games, porn, music, e-books - with another 15% or so being of questionable status (for example, game betas/samples that had license agreements prohibiting redistribution; we went easy on these people as a rule).
When you drop the B.S. at least 9 out of 10 bits transferred into and out of our campus was in legally dubious p2p sharing. Expecting the college to put up with this, actually facilitate it, and act as a shield to protect students from the reprecussions of their actions is obscenity.
It is a case of the bad apples spoiling it for the good, only in this real world case its the bad 90% spoiling it for the good 10%.
Add to that the VERY real threat that lawsuits pose to IT departments, and it's a no brainer.
I really doubt that Democrats are that stupid to do that, especially to a company with a huge financial power.
I am not saying they threatned them. I am saying they rewarded their political donors. Bill Clinton and Al Gore both personally asked for contributions from Microsoft. Personally. That is fact. Sun and Netscape and AOL all gave money in the same cycle to the DNC and the reelection committee. MS did not. None. Not One Red Cent. Two months later the DOJ "kicked in MS's door" so to speak. I am not saying the case wasn't merited, just that at that time it was politcally motivated.
Second, I am not a republican. Take that back.
Third, dozens of promiment democrats sided with the republicans in appointing a special prosecutor. GW Bush will probably go down in history as the most corrupt president. Second will be Clinton. Both of these two bozos have been so massively corrupt as to be a joke. It's amazing really.
Finally, read this article. You will see the timing laid out in a clear way.
One more point about Bush and "favoring the wealthy". Essentially, you believe in class warfare. The idea that if one group wins another group loses. The republican (little r) ideal is summed easily by saying "a rising tide lifts all boats". Playing favorites with one group or another is unfair and unjust. Desiging policy to help one group or another is wrong. Policy in the US ideally should treat all equal. What the reality reflects is group politics, which your attitudes promote. Good policy does not micromanage or promote a single group or collection of groups.
After that, there's no reason the DOJ couldn't continue to persue a breakup order; just because the judge supposedly exprpessed bias does not automaticly mean his ruling was wrong, it simply means they need an unbiased judge to make a new ruling.
You are making it sound simple. It was not. The breakup order was rebuffed again and again by the appeals court. Even after the appeal. After one appeal the appellate court essentailly said "never gonna happen". They Jackson was tossed, Bush came into office, and bammo.
Bush, FYI, campaigned on the promise of instructing the DOJ to settle.
FROM THEN ON, operate under a completely different set of rules than all the other businesses out there. At least until the Court rules otherwise.
The last settlement expires in a few years. After that, any future action would be dependent on MS being ruled a Monopoly all over again.
When the current deal expires, MS is free to operate however they want. And unless they are proved a monopoly again the DOJ can do nothing.
Considering that everyone of MS's points has proven true it is unlikely that they will be provded a monopoly again.
So what if Linux isn't an economic powerhouse? What does that prove? Nothing. MS has responded dramatically to Linux - they have a special response process to deal just with Linux. I've dealt with Microsoft. Mention Linux as an alternative and they will bargain on pricing everytime. Period. ENd of story. End of monopoly. Five years, that was false.
During the last antitrust trial, evidence was introduced that suggested MS could sell Windows for $50 (quantity one at retail) and still make a profit
And finally, just so you know, Windows XP Home costs $48 now in volume. The full retail version is $199, with a price reduction scheduled for January to $139 (the same price about as MacOSX, I believe).
THEN Bush and Co. said that he was biased.
Absolute lie. Give me a case reference. Ohh, you can't. Let's see here. Jackson gave an ex-parte interview with a tech journalist during the trial in which he personally slandered MS and it's executives. That's a classic case of the apperance of impropriety. Judges get removed from cases for far less. It's common. And frankly, it was STUPID thing for Jackson to do. Additionally, this ruling had NOTHING to do with Bush, and you simply can't prove otherwise. Bush had nothing to do with the appeals court ejecting Jackson from the case.
ho in hell wouldn't build up a bias after HEARING THE FACTS and then JUDGING?
No, his attacks were personal against the management of the company. What a judge does is not form BIAS. He makes a decision based on facts. BIAS is by defintion an "unreasoned tendancy". The case WASN'T over. It WASN'T fully adjudicated. He'd already decided at that point what MS's fate should be before the sentencting portion of the trial began.
More and more websites are flooding the web with Active-X code that locks out any other platform except Windows.
Can you back that up with facts? I challange your assertions. Java has never had better market share. Mozilla has never had better market share. Evidence points against your lame claim.
Once web standards are polluted by MS, all other platforms will be nearly powerless to demand real standards.
MS has done alot more to promote to web standards in the last 3 years than you can probaly imagine or admit. MS's move to SOAP based XML-transactions are just a sliver of what MS has been doing to back up a revised stance on web-standards.
I for one have been writing my state's AG and the USDOJ for the past 3 years and have gotten NO WHERE. IT IS UP FOR US to vote MS's dominance down in November.
You are an abject fool. MS has lost its monopoly control over IA32 Desktop Operating Systems. No court in the country will rule else wise. It's absurd to think otherwise. Write all you want, rule all you want, but no president or congress will change that. Linux is killing MS and there is nothing MS can do to stop it.
The only thing that is politically motivated is not following the law; enforcing the law does not need any justification or explanation.
That's bullshit. Utter bullshit. The law is a mass of crap. Contradictions, typos, and mistakes. You can't just "enforce the law". It is political. Very political.
As long as Microsoft's business practices are monopolistic
FALSE. If MS's practices are monopolistic AND they have a monopoly, they are involation of the law. I run a two person computer shop, and I can clone MS's business practices 100% without breaking any laws. Why? Because I do not have a monopoly. All of MS's practices are essentially legal except for the monopoly status.
It is not obvious that MS hasn't sunken in marketshare to the level that certain practices don't pay. It is rather clear to the otherwise. They exert no undue control over the market. In a MS dominated world, we'd all be using.NET Passport to login to Slashdot. They have a monpoly, right? They can force it on small websites, right?
Wrong. Not. Not at all. MS lost its monopoly to Linux, and at some point not far from now, Linux will be the dominant OS variant. At what point would admit MS has losts its monopoly? My guess is slightly before they declare Chapter 13.
I tell you what, you can have 99.99% of market share and NOT have a monopoly. There is no magic percentile. And that is LEGAL FACT. No weed needed.
imply saying "now there is an alternative, kind of, for some people, if they're willing to do complex and expensive migrations means Windows doesn't have a monopoly"
You can use Linux without a single IOTA of technical expertise, just like Windows. You can buy a PC from the world's largets PC maker, shipped to you 100% Linux free, for equal or lesser cost of a comparable Windows PC. There is a Linux distro out there for every single type of person.
You walking around saying its self-evident that MS has a monopoly is the real doublethink. Sit down and think about, and tell me why anyone needs to run Windows. More often than not, it's out of choice, not of need or requirement. That's the true test.
You don't have to have 100% market share to have a monopoly>
Of course not, and I do not claim that. In some markets 30% is a monopoly, and in others, 90% isn't. It all depends.
True, one could argue that they do not have a monopoly in the server room, but they still have one on the desktop.
On servers, it's fact. They do not have a monopoly. It's not even a majority. Linux, Commerical UNIX, Novell, Mac - there is no doubt that MS does not hold a server room monopoly.
On the desktop, they used to, but any objective person can clearly now see that they do not.
rosoft names the terms by which the desktop market operates
That is false. Not true anymore. They used to, not any more though.
You present false standards to claim they hold a monpoly. For example:
Their browser quirks define what an acceptable webpage is, not standards.
Standards *never have*. No browser follows the "standards". Not even the widely used Gecko engine. The standards are voluntary. And, frankly, IE has nothing to do with MS desktop OS monopoly.
Their document formats define what people use in the office. Their media formats, increasingly, define what people listen to.
These are all different markets. MS has never had a monopoly in either market. Therefore, this is a moot conversation. Marketshare in both markets is declining. Not increasing.
That's their monopoly. Not the fact that Joe Hacker runs KDE at home.
MS has never been convicted of having anything but an illegal monopoly on IA32 Desktop Operating Systems. Not on Office-style software, on media formats, on web browsers, or ANYTHING else. Everything you've used here is essentially garbage for the argument.
The tests set forth by the courts in the MS case are clearly not true anymore. Legal tests like "can MS dictate prices and terms to OEMs". The answer is, clearly demonstrated by dozens and dozens of OEMs who sell Linux pre-installed is no. Legal tests like "can MS dictate feature sets and options for the entire market", which MS clearly cannot.
MS had a monopoly, but now doesn't. Oddly, MS was right all along - they said at any time a competitor could come around and knock them off the block. It is a *very* real possibility that Windows will be a money losing operation in as little as 5 years.
I just know I'm going to get every partisan in the place foamed up by saying this, but the Clinton DOJ was actually pursuing the MS antitrust case, and the Bush people dropped it like a hot rock.
To be fair, Bush campaigned openly that he'd instruct the DOJ to seek a settlement. And, to be fair as well, there is a high likelihood that the anti-trust action was brought as a political move, rather than one based on law. That's not to discount the legal merits of the case, but that's the reason the case was brought. Most of the evidence supports the idea that Sun, AOL/Netscape, and other hi-techs with *vast* lobbying efforts in Washington DC consistently lobbied for a harsh line against MS. Both Clinton and Al Gore personally appealed to higher ups during the Clinton re-election for campaign donations - and both were refused. Until this point, MS had no widescale lobbying program, no nationwide political agenda, and no significant history of donations or involvement in DC politics. Not long after the Clinton re-election did the real meat of the DOJ attack start. The strongest likelihood is that MS was being punished for being politically neutral. The result? Now MS learned that lesson and in less than 10 years has the most well-funded lobbying operation in history. Go figure.
IANAL but I know the industry, and so do most of you. Let's be realistic. MS basically got off with a "please don't do it again, OK?"
There is another aspect you might have missed. The DOJ was going for a breakup. Ruling after ruling the DOJ was rebuffed on this issue, at one point the judge saying basically "it ain't ever going to happen with this case". At that point, the DOJ "lost" in terms of public perception. They lost the case by not winning their chosen punishment. Any penalty tha the point was moot - as we know, MS can work around any wording no matter how clever.
The only way in the long run to stop this "compete with anything but quality and price" attitude is for the government to finally enforce the antitrust law. And that may only happen if you all vote.
The problem is now, there isn't a reasonable tech saavy person around who can argue that Windows still has a monopoly hold on any market. Linux is an equal or superior product in every possible way, without exception, without question, period. There is nothing MS can do to stop its growth, and its plain as fact for everyone to see. MS is fighting a holding battle as of now. And any future action would require first that MS be proven a current monopoly. Between Linux, MacOSX, and misc. products, it is MOST highly unlikely that MS would face any significant challenge.
A friend's girlfriend has a similiar laptop-- it's really hot and nice.
Mother-in law just got a desktop. $600 with a 17" flat-screen CRT. Can't argue with that. It's peppy and fast, good standard components (I checked), and a nice integrated package.
In regards to the US University system - there is a college or university in the US for just about every type of person.
It's funny. In the UK, they are considering charging a fairly low tuition for state college education. On NPR they had an interview with an angry college-age protestor, who complained that if the government instituted this onerous tutition law that higher education in the UK would become like that in the US, where "only the upper classes can afford to go".
It was with full irony borne that the commentator noted that a far larger percentage of students went on to college in the US - across all economic classes.
Why is this? Because in many countries - including many European ones - college is just for the top students. It is the exclusive home of the cream of the cream of the students.
In the US, even fully mediocre students go on to college. In fact, there are colleges designed for poor students.
The point being, that the range of colleges in the US is very wide. We have absolutely cutting-edge, highly rated, competitive, innovative, awe inspiring educational facilities - think RIT, RPI, John Hopkins, etc. And we also have mediocre state run institutions.
All in all, there is something for just about everyone.
Shouldn't a compsci major have seen at least one or two machines opened up?
By the time they are CEO of Dell or HP, yeah probably...
Do you think those CEOs of Ford or GM had seen and were familiar with car build process by their first year in business school?
where everyone is competent and is involved in IT because they *love* computers/coding/networking etc. Damn.
That is a fantasy world. Most people don't like their job. Most IT people don't like their job.
Atlantis, Endeavour, and Discovery
Discovery is being overhauled, is it not? "Overhauled" as in, virtually permantely overhauled, right?
And I bet the astronauts would be more than willing to go.
You could find qualified astronauts to go on a mission with 99-to-1 change against coming back. Let's get real. Astronaut willingness is not a valid indicator.
The cost of another lost shuttle to NASA would be enormous. The loss of funding, support, and interest would likely end manned space flight for decades.
If a technology works, don't change and/or discard it until you have something better up and running
Would you risk your life to fix the Hubble knowing that (a) your mission may not succeed, (b) you might blow up at any time, (c) a replacement will be ready around 2007, and (d) that if you die during mission, it may be the end of manned space flight for generations to come?
It's crazy and immoral to ask fine Americans (who'd probably gladly accept for the thrill of space flight!) to risk their lives on this basis.
WHY are we just letting the Hubble die again?
We have 2 space shuttles. We've lost two recently. If we lose one more, that's effectively the end of the shuttle program. We need the shuttles for (1) contingency, (2) the ISS, and (3) future satellite/instrument launches. It is risky to send up 50% of the fleet for a single mission.
On top of that, a replacement will be ready sometime in 2007. The replacement will need a shuttle to launch. Now, if we send up a mission to repair Hubble, and buy it another 3-4 years, what good does that do if we can't launch the sucessor because the shuttle exploded on return to Earth?
Guess we better junk it because it seems we aren't getting any good science out of it.
They never said. You made it up. It's a tough choice, which the NASA administrator admits.
Until then, I think its worth perhaps *outsourcing* a maintinence mission to another country (or private company) who thinks they can get the job done.
No country would be able to fill that contract without spending billions more than a replacement would cost. Dozens of billions probably. The Hubble is big. Real big. It weighs 11,000kb. The Russian rocket classes can handle somewhere between 550 kg to 950 kg, with proposed models that could have handled 4000 kg (into LEO only) scrapped for financial reasons. A repair payload for Hubble would likely run at least 5000 kg, maybe more.
Other nations are equipped for satellite launching, and most barely at that.
Once again, I think NASA really needs to learn a very old saying that you don't junk something until you have a replacement.
A replacement is on the way. However, this is not "NASA junking" something. That implies active plan to junk something. The Hubble is failing, and requires massive, extraordinary measures to save it. It will in all likelyhood require an EVA to repair. It will require a full manned shuttle mission.
Another failed shuttle with a dead crew would likely lead to a dramatic toll being taken on NASA. Or possibly the end of NASA as it is known. It is too risky to rest that all on a single mission with dubious outcomes.
I think you are ignorant and mal-informed as to what the real reasons behind the NASA decision is.
Why risk 50% of our remaining space shuttle fleet, another human crew, and untold billions to repair Hubble at this point?
A few years gap won't kill science or the stars. I mean... for all of human history except for the 14 years that Hubble has been in service we had no equivalent of Hubble. What's another 3-4 years when we've already missed 11.2 billion years?
Uhh.. assuming WINE implements Windows API perfectly without change, I suppose. It sounds okay, but would you trust a seriously big clients seriously valuable data to it? Not me...
Slashdot Mirror
the nerve of those 10,000 users to actually use bandwidth.
For non-academic, illegal purposes, on the State's dime. Yeah, I'd say I agree, without the sarcasm.
What would any ISP do in the situation
Let me make it simple for you, in numbered fashion.
1. Universities are not commerical ISPs. They are educational institutions.
2. Universities are mostly funded by government. Most students are also partially funded by government backed loans and grants.
3. It is not in the citizens interests to expend additional resources to facilitate even one byte of illegal data transfer.
4. Because of the illegal actions of students, legitimate academic users are often starved for bandwidth.
5. Commerical ISPs are largely covered by laws that make them a "common carrier" - meaning they are not generally liable for the content their users consume or provide. Universities are not presently generally protected in this manner. Therefore, the actions of a few infringing students puts the entire University and ultimately the citizens at financial risk.
or boot the smallest fraction of users necessary to unclog the network
The point being, with any decent sized campus the amount of throttling that would need to be done, or the number of users that would need to be blocked approaches 100%. Even if you throttle users to 5 kb/s upstream (which makes many legitimate applications unsuitable for serious use) spread over 2000 concurrent connections this would still cripple a 10 Mbps Internet connection. Additionally, without throttling cutting out the top users would simply open a vacuum of bandwidth for other users - most of whom do not know how to configure their own client software to limit connections or bandwidth.
Another serious consideration is the overhead involved in stateful packet filtering and bandwidth shaping. Blocking ports incurs virtually no overhead - meaning existing hardware and software is not impacted. Adding continually and more complex rules to throttle, limit, and handle dynamic bandwidth shifts requires significant computing power. Most Univerisities can think of better things to spend their money on than investing in new hardware and software to institute these limitations. And don't you dare say "just throw a 486 with Linux on it in the corner". Simply not realistic with more than a small number of users.
one key reason is that they cannot afford sufficient or sufficiently competent staff to put a more complex rule into place than "block port X."
Finally, no. Your argument is absurd. The ability to do this is "plug and play" when equipped with many of the typical hardware based routing solutions commerical available. As I've said, I've worked in this situation, and I could easily have worked out what you describe manually or through a commerical solution.
Because "everyone else" is still in principle doing the same thing as the absuers, but just less. Trading 10 bandwidth tryants for 10,000 isn't progress.
This way you can remain blissfully ignorant of any specific data being transfered and can point any lawsuits in the user's direction as needed.
Except that is not how the law works. Organizations and people with deep pockets are targeted, not poor college students. This "blissfully ignorant" portion of your equation doesn't exisit in law for Universities. As a matter or principle, why should the taxpayers of a state have to shoulder the bandwidth, technical, and legal costs of a bunch of government subsidized cry-babies desire to get stuff for free and without consequence?
Then why not throttle their upstream?
The essential reason is that even with a throttled upstream they will still transfer tons and tons of data. If data was limited, to say, 25 kb/s outgoing, they would transfer that 24/7. Meaning, that in a month, that user would send somewhere around 60GB a month. It's lower, but when you factor that by the two thousand student PCs on a small campus, and the *twenty-thousand* on a huge campus, you have major problems.
without assigning yourself the role of campus copyright enforcer
But you are still harboring and shielding students from their illegal actions, and that still puts the IT department and college in the crosshairs.
(the nerve of people to actually use the network connection!)
Let's get real, and drop the pretentious B.S. about progressivity.
I've worked in a college IT department. And I've grep'd the logs for data transfer stats. When you have a small group (~7) of students sending 6000GB (Yes, 6000 gigabytes) of data a week through P2P apps you have a problem.
I hardly think that stopping 0.25% of students from using 97% of the bandwidth is unreasonable. The small college I worked for had a 144 Mbps link to the world. At any given moment a huge percentage of that was in p2p traffic. Based on additional investigation we determined that a least 75% of that was out and out copyright infrigining data transfer - movies, games, porn, music, e-books - with another 15% or so being of questionable status (for example, game betas/samples that had license agreements prohibiting redistribution; we went easy on these people as a rule).
When you drop the B.S. at least 9 out of 10 bits transferred into and out of our campus was in legally dubious p2p sharing. Expecting the college to put up with this, actually facilitate it, and act as a shield to protect students from the reprecussions of their actions is obscenity.
It is a case of the bad apples spoiling it for the good, only in this real world case its the bad 90% spoiling it for the good 10%.
Add to that the VERY real threat that lawsuits pose to IT departments, and it's a no brainer.
I really doubt that Democrats are that stupid to do that, especially to a company with a huge financial power.
I am not saying they threatned them. I am saying they rewarded their political donors. Bill Clinton and Al Gore both personally asked for contributions from Microsoft. Personally. That is fact. Sun and Netscape and AOL all gave money in the same cycle to the DNC and the reelection committee. MS did not. None. Not One Red Cent. Two months later the DOJ "kicked in MS's door" so to speak. I am not saying the case wasn't merited, just that at that time it was politcally motivated.
Second, I am not a republican. Take that back.
Third, dozens of promiment democrats sided with the republicans in appointing a special prosecutor. GW Bush will probably go down in history as the most corrupt president. Second will be Clinton. Both of these two bozos have been so massively corrupt as to be a joke. It's amazing really.
Finally, read this article. You will see the timing laid out in a clear way.
One more point about Bush and "favoring the wealthy". Essentially, you believe in class warfare. The idea that if one group wins another group loses. The republican (little r) ideal is summed easily by saying "a rising tide lifts all boats". Playing favorites with one group or another is unfair and unjust. Desiging policy to help one group or another is wrong. Policy in the US ideally should treat all equal. What the reality reflects is group politics, which your attitudes promote. Good policy does not micromanage or promote a single group or collection of groups.
After that, there's no reason the DOJ couldn't continue to persue a breakup order; just because the judge supposedly exprpessed bias does not automaticly mean his ruling was wrong, it simply means they need an unbiased judge to make a new ruling.
You are making it sound simple. It was not. The breakup order was rebuffed again and again by the appeals court. Even after the appeal. After one appeal the appellate court essentailly said "never gonna happen". They Jackson was tossed, Bush came into office, and bammo.
Bush, FYI, campaigned on the promise of instructing the DOJ to settle.
FROM THEN ON, operate under a completely different set of rules than all the other businesses out there. At least until the Court rules otherwise.
The last settlement expires in a few years. After that, any future action would be dependent on MS being ruled a Monopoly all over again.
When the current deal expires, MS is free to operate however they want. And unless they are proved a monopoly again the DOJ can do nothing.
Considering that everyone of MS's points has proven true it is unlikely that they will be provded a monopoly again.
So what if Linux isn't an economic powerhouse? What does that prove? Nothing. MS has responded dramatically to Linux - they have a special response process to deal just with Linux. I've dealt with Microsoft. Mention Linux as an alternative and they will bargain on pricing everytime. Period. ENd of story. End of monopoly. Five years, that was false.
During the last antitrust trial, evidence was introduced that suggested MS could sell Windows for $50 (quantity one at retail) and still make a profit
And finally, just so you know, Windows XP Home costs $48 now in volume. The full retail version is $199, with a price reduction scheduled for January to $139 (the same price about as MacOSX, I believe).
I read the entire case history, start to finsh.
THEN Bush and Co. said that he was biased.
Absolute lie. Give me a case reference. Ohh, you can't. Let's see here. Jackson gave an ex-parte interview with a tech journalist during the trial in which he personally slandered MS and it's executives. That's a classic case of the apperance of impropriety. Judges get removed from cases for far less. It's common. And frankly, it was STUPID thing for Jackson to do. Additionally, this ruling had NOTHING to do with Bush, and you simply can't prove otherwise. Bush had nothing to do with the appeals court ejecting Jackson from the case.
ho in hell wouldn't build up a bias after HEARING THE FACTS and then JUDGING?
No, his attacks were personal against the management of the company. What a judge does is not form BIAS. He makes a decision based on facts. BIAS is by defintion an "unreasoned tendancy". The case WASN'T over. It WASN'T fully adjudicated. He'd already decided at that point what MS's fate should be before the sentencting portion of the trial began.
More and more websites are flooding the web with Active-X code that locks out any other platform except Windows.
Can you back that up with facts? I challange your assertions. Java has never had better market share. Mozilla has never had better market share. Evidence points against your lame claim.
Once web standards are polluted by MS, all other platforms will be nearly powerless to demand real standards.
MS has done alot more to promote to web standards in the last 3 years than you can probaly imagine or admit. MS's move to SOAP based XML-transactions are just a sliver of what MS has been doing to back up a revised stance on web-standards.
I for one have been writing my state's AG and the USDOJ for the past 3 years and have gotten NO WHERE. IT IS UP FOR US to vote MS's dominance down in November.
You are an abject fool. MS has lost its monopoly control over IA32 Desktop Operating Systems. No court in the country will rule else wise. It's absurd to think otherwise. Write all you want, rule all you want, but no president or congress will change that. Linux is killing MS and there is nothing MS can do to stop it.
The only thing that is politically motivated is not following the law; enforcing the law does not need any justification or explanation.
.NET Passport to login to Slashdot. They have a monpoly, right? They can force it on small websites, right?
That's bullshit. Utter bullshit. The law is a mass of crap. Contradictions, typos, and mistakes. You can't just "enforce the law". It is political. Very political.
As long as Microsoft's business practices are monopolistic
FALSE. If MS's practices are monopolistic AND they have a monopoly, they are involation of the law. I run a two person computer shop, and I can clone MS's business practices 100% without breaking any laws. Why? Because I do not have a monopoly. All of MS's practices are essentially legal except for the monopoly status.
It is not obvious that MS hasn't sunken in marketshare to the level that certain practices don't pay. It is rather clear to the otherwise. They exert no undue control over the market. In a MS dominated world, we'd all be using
Wrong. Not. Not at all. MS lost its monopoly to Linux, and at some point not far from now, Linux will be the dominant OS variant. At what point would admit MS has losts its monopoly? My guess is slightly before they declare Chapter 13.
I tell you what, you can have 99.99% of market share and NOT have a monopoly. There is no magic percentile. And that is LEGAL FACT. No weed needed.
imply saying "now there is an alternative, kind of, for some people, if they're willing to do complex and expensive migrations means Windows doesn't have a monopoly"
You can use Linux without a single IOTA of technical expertise, just like Windows. You can buy a PC from the world's largets PC maker, shipped to you 100% Linux free, for equal or lesser cost of a comparable Windows PC. There is a Linux distro out there for every single type of person.
You walking around saying its self-evident that MS has a monopoly is the real doublethink. Sit down and think about, and tell me why anyone needs to run Windows. More often than not, it's out of choice, not of need or requirement. That's the true test.
You don't have to have 100% market share to have a monopoly>
Of course not, and I do not claim that. In some markets 30% is a monopoly, and in others, 90% isn't. It all depends.
True, one could argue that they do not have a monopoly in the server room, but they still have one on the desktop.
On servers, it's fact. They do not have a monopoly. It's not even a majority. Linux, Commerical UNIX, Novell, Mac - there is no doubt that MS does not hold a server room monopoly.
On the desktop, they used to, but any objective person can clearly now see that they do not.
rosoft names the terms by which the desktop market operates
That is false. Not true anymore. They used to, not any more though.
You present false standards to claim they hold a monpoly. For example:
Their browser quirks define what an acceptable webpage is, not standards.
Standards *never have*. No browser follows the "standards". Not even the widely used Gecko engine. The standards are voluntary. And, frankly, IE has nothing to do with MS desktop OS monopoly.
Their document formats define what people use in the office. Their media formats, increasingly, define what people listen to.
These are all different markets. MS has never had a monopoly in either market. Therefore, this is a moot conversation. Marketshare in both markets is declining. Not increasing.
That's their monopoly. Not the fact that Joe Hacker runs KDE at home.
MS has never been convicted of having anything but an illegal monopoly on IA32 Desktop Operating Systems. Not on Office-style software, on media formats, on web browsers, or ANYTHING else. Everything you've used here is essentially garbage for the argument.
The tests set forth by the courts in the MS case are clearly not true anymore. Legal tests like "can MS dictate prices and terms to OEMs". The answer is, clearly demonstrated by dozens and dozens of OEMs who sell Linux pre-installed is no. Legal tests like "can MS dictate feature sets and options for the entire market", which MS clearly cannot.
MS had a monopoly, but now doesn't. Oddly, MS was right all along - they said at any time a competitor could come around and knock them off the block. It is a *very* real possibility that Windows will be a money losing operation in as little as 5 years.
I just know I'm going to get every partisan in the place foamed up by saying this, but the Clinton DOJ was actually pursuing the MS antitrust case, and the Bush people dropped it like a hot rock.
.
To be fair, Bush campaigned openly that he'd instruct the DOJ to seek a settlement. And, to be fair as well, there is a high likelihood that the anti-trust action was brought as a political move, rather than one based on law. That's not to discount the legal merits of the case, but that's the reason the case was brought. Most of the evidence supports the idea that Sun, AOL/Netscape, and other hi-techs with *vast* lobbying efforts in Washington DC consistently lobbied for a harsh line against MS. Both Clinton and Al Gore personally appealed to higher ups during the Clinton re-election for campaign donations - and both were refused. Until this point, MS had no widescale lobbying program, no nationwide political agenda, and no significant history of donations or involvement in DC politics. Not long after the Clinton re-election did the real meat of the DOJ attack start. The strongest likelihood is that MS was being punished for being politically neutral. The result? Now MS learned that lesson and in less than 10 years has the most well-funded lobbying operation in history. Go figure.
IANAL but I know the industry, and so do most of you. Let's be realistic. MS basically got off with a "please don't do it again, OK?"
There is another aspect you might have missed. The DOJ was going for a breakup. Ruling after ruling the DOJ was rebuffed on this issue, at one point the judge saying basically "it ain't ever going to happen with this case". At that point, the DOJ "lost" in terms of public perception. They lost the case by not winning their chosen punishment. Any penalty tha the point was moot - as we know, MS can work around any wording no matter how clever.
The only way in the long run to stop this "compete with anything but quality and price" attitude is for the government to finally enforce the antitrust law. And that may only happen if you all vote
The problem is now, there isn't a reasonable tech saavy person around who can argue that Windows still has a monopoly hold on any market. Linux is an equal or superior product in every possible way, without exception, without question, period. There is nothing MS can do to stop its growth, and its plain as fact for everyone to see. MS is fighting a holding battle as of now. And any future action would require first that MS be proven a current monopoly. Between Linux, MacOSX, and misc. products, it is MOST highly unlikely that MS would face any significant challenge.
DItton the on the e-machines...
A friend's girlfriend has a similiar laptop-- it's really hot and nice.
Mother-in law just got a desktop. $600 with a 17" flat-screen CRT. Can't argue with that. It's peppy and fast, good standard components (I checked), and a nice integrated package.
In regards to the US University system - there is a college or university in the US for just about every type of person.
It's funny. In the UK, they are considering charging a fairly low tuition for state college education. On NPR they had an interview with an angry college-age protestor, who complained that if the government instituted this onerous tutition law that higher education in the UK would become like that in the US, where "only the upper classes can afford to go".
It was with full irony borne that the commentator noted that a far larger percentage of students went on to college in the US - across all economic classes.
Why is this? Because in many countries - including many European ones - college is just for the top students. It is the exclusive home of the cream of the cream of the students.
In the US, even fully mediocre students go on to college. In fact, there are colleges designed for poor students.
The point being, that the range of colleges in the US is very wide. We have absolutely cutting-edge, highly rated, competitive, innovative, awe inspiring educational facilities - think RIT, RPI, John Hopkins, etc. And we also have mediocre state run institutions.
All in all, there is something for just about everyone.
Forgot about Ford being a "family" business. That's a bad example.
Shouldn't a compsci major have seen at least one or two machines opened up?
By the time they are CEO of Dell or HP, yeah probably...
Do you think those CEOs of Ford or GM had seen and were familiar with car build process by their first year in business school?
where everyone is competent and is involved in IT because they *love* computers/coding/networking etc. Damn.
That is a fantasy world. Most people don't like their job. Most IT people don't like their job.
Atlantis, Endeavour, and Discovery Discovery is being overhauled, is it not? "Overhauled" as in, virtually permantely overhauled, right?
And I bet the astronauts would be more than willing to go.
You could find qualified astronauts to go on a mission with 99-to-1 change against coming back. Let's get real. Astronaut willingness is not a valid indicator.
The cost of another lost shuttle to NASA would be enormous. The loss of funding, support, and interest would likely end manned space flight for decades.
If a technology works, don't change and/or discard it until you have something better up and running
Would you risk your life to fix the Hubble knowing that (a) your mission may not succeed, (b) you might blow up at any time, (c) a replacement will be ready around 2007, and (d) that if you die during mission, it may be the end of manned space flight for generations to come?
It's crazy and immoral to ask fine Americans (who'd probably gladly accept for the thrill of space flight!) to risk their lives on this basis.
It's too risky.
WHY are we just letting the Hubble die again?
We have 2 space shuttles. We've lost two recently. If we lose one more, that's effectively the end of the shuttle program. We need the shuttles for (1) contingency, (2) the ISS, and (3) future satellite/instrument launches. It is risky to send up 50% of the fleet for a single mission.
On top of that, a replacement will be ready sometime in 2007. The replacement will need a shuttle to launch. Now, if we send up a mission to repair Hubble, and buy it another 3-4 years, what good does that do if we can't launch the sucessor because the shuttle exploded on return to Earth?
Guess we better junk it because it seems we aren't getting any good science out of it.
They never said. You made it up. It's a tough choice, which the NASA administrator admits.
Until then, I think its worth perhaps *outsourcing* a maintinence mission to another country (or private company) who thinks they can get the job done.
No country would be able to fill that contract without spending billions more than a replacement would cost. Dozens of billions probably. The Hubble is big. Real big. It weighs 11,000kb. The Russian rocket classes can handle somewhere between 550 kg to 950 kg, with proposed models that could have handled 4000 kg (into LEO only) scrapped for financial reasons. A repair payload for Hubble would likely run at least 5000 kg, maybe more.
Other nations are equipped for satellite launching, and most barely at that.
Once again, I think NASA really needs to learn a very old saying that you don't junk something until you have a replacement.
A replacement is on the way. However, this is not "NASA junking" something. That implies active plan to junk something. The Hubble is failing, and requires massive, extraordinary measures to save it. It will in all likelyhood require an EVA to repair. It will require a full manned shuttle mission.
Another failed shuttle with a dead crew would likely lead to a dramatic toll being taken on NASA. Or possibly the end of NASA as it is known. It is too risky to rest that all on a single mission with dubious outcomes.
I think you are ignorant and mal-informed as to what the real reasons behind the NASA decision is.
Because, in a representative republic it is assumed that our elected, educated, informed representatives will fund things despite PR offensives.
And so far, they have funded the ISS. Which by most accounts (like the above) is doing some spiffy if not complex science.
Hubble needs this sort of thing to keep it serviced. This is very interesting and in my mind at least partially justifies Hubble.
A better space telescope is in the works, and it is scheduled for launch as early as 2007.
Why risk 50% of our remaining space shuttle fleet, another human crew, and untold billions to repair Hubble at this point?
A few years gap won't kill science or the stars. I mean... for all of human history except for the 14 years that Hubble has been in service we had no equivalent of Hubble. What's another 3-4 years when we've already missed 11.2 billion years?
It's not for desktop use.. it's for recovery use. The comparison with Knoppix is completely inane. Disregard that.
Uhh.. assuming WINE implements Windows API perfectly without change, I suppose. It sounds okay, but would you trust a seriously big clients seriously valuable data to it? Not me...