No, split them over the dozens of other similar situations with numerous OEM and software customers they bullied for the past 10 years. Split 'em and make it clear to any ermerging player that you will play fair or you will suffer. A fine would have to be of such immense numbers to make any impact of MS that it seems like a silly suggestion. How much do you fine a company for stifling healthy competiton? And how does the government taking in cash benefit end users; the dollars they have taken from business and consumers through illegal means, or repair the myriad small companies they have stifled? How can anyone still defend these jerks?
You know, I would agree if it were a cash rich ISP doing the same thing (a.k.a. AOL). But when it is the maker of the dominant desktop OS, it's not just a matter of good investing, it's a process of owning your eyeballs for the entire computing experience. MS only does things that help maintain the monopoly, if there is perceived consumer benefit then that is just a perk. MS has been proven to be ruthless and unethical numerous times, there is little in the way of a defensible position for a Microsoftie (not implying you lean one way or the other, so please take no offense).
Hmmm, DELL, well there's one (for the record we buy DELL boxes with Linux preinstalled at my place), but one OEM hardly represents a free marketplace. Still can't walk into Office Depot or Sears and buy anything but a Windows box. And since Compuserve/AOL are actual online service providers, it's hardly a comparison. What the MSN rebate is a sign of is a monopoly software vendor extending it's reach into markets where it doesn't belong (not that AOL isn't doing the same thing, but don't change the subject). You can post all of the lame ass rebuttals you like, the transcripts from the trial show that MS was cognizant it was breaking the law and using it's desktop monopoly to harm competiton. The fact that anyone tries to defend this shows what a sad society we live in.
Are you for real? Until you can walk into a store and buy a PC with a choice of operating systmes, the OEMs are far from FREED. The situation has improved, but it will take several years to get it back in balance. Let's see, more proof of monopoly...how about the fact that MS has so much cash they can offer you $400 up front via a number of retailers if you agree to use their online service? Is this because they want to topple the evil AOL empire (evil, yes, but a different topic altogether) or because they want to own every aspect of your computing experience? Either way, the consumer ends up with one less choice in the end. Please show the competiton that MS is being exposed to, and give relevant examples. While the rapid acceptance of Linux is surely viewed by a threat to the Redmond Menace, it hasn't put a dent of MS revenue stream YET (please note the yet). This isn't about beating a self righteous drum, it's about taking an illegal monopoly to task.
Not going to be felt by the public? Then, by all means, show me a case that will have greater impact on the public? We are all racing along in an economy that is now entirely driven on technology, and the face of that technology for the vast majority of the world is MS Windows. After the mounds of evidence presented in the trial there can be no doubt MS broke the law, and that the most important recourse is to force MS to compete on a levelled playing field. This case cannot come to a satifactory end until a consumer can walk into a store and by a PC with a non-MS operating system, and until you can purchase anything at a major electronics store without being offered a rebate if you sign up for another MS service. Consumers are bombarded by the MS mesaage everyday, you don't think a break up would impact this? Not felt by I.T. pros? We are already looking for more non-MS solutions and are excited to see our OEMs offering support for Linux, not only do we feel it, we love it. I can only hope that politics don't allow MS to escape the punishment they have so obviously earned.
I know your pain! I share an office with an incompetent oaf who spends more time playing with his desktop settings than administrating. I inherited his botched front end and 200+ disgruntled users. He defends any work on the back end as his and his alone, even though we have a handful of servers that are near death. So what is an industrious geek to do, but show his shortcomings at every turn! Not by pointing them out to the boss, but by implementing better and more cost effective solutions in every area I touch. Moving to a standardized desktop, migrating from a nightmare Windows desktop to first a stable NT image and now slowly Linux, taking small ground in the back end space (building a new FTP server, taking over DNS maintenance and adding email users), and always offering to let him assist me. My director sees how he leaves me flagging in the wind and still the job gets done, so I have been assured my annual raise will be sweet and my Xmas bonus fat. Don't get mad, get ahead by capitalizing on your superior skills. I save money and eliminate downtime so management loves me, I give the users a stable and standardized desktop so they love me. And I have unlimited job security. What fun!!!
Then you must only deal with MS apps, I have to make three registry hacks just to change the IP address on a ghosted NT machine with Netware clients installed. Registry hacking is part of using any version of Windows, but seems more common on networked machines with a lot of 3rd party apps. Don't call someone a troll just because you have been lucky enough to avoid hacking the registry.
Don't confuse your personal ignorance with the reality of the situation. Just because MP3 is a valid and popular format doesn't mean that all forms of intellectual property rights are abolished. The artist have a right to be paid for their work. The record companies are claiming that they are attacking Napster (criminal act) and MP3.com (illegal actions performed with prior knowledge) to protect the earnings of their artist. Since Courtney knows this is bull and she will neve see a penny of any settlement she is suing for her share. Not only is this funny, but pretty cool, and should be the most sobering call to the music industry. Everyone ackonwledges that MP3.com is not the problem, but the current business model of the record companies, and that MP3.com is suffering becsause their own internal documents showed that they knew they were breaking the law. Napster, on the other hand, is nothing more than a criminal act, making illegal copies of artist work and giving it away on the Internet is not sharing , it is theft.
Did you miss the part about Linux being free, easy to change/adapt due to the source code being freely distributable, or the part where chairman Bill charges me vital organs and rare jewels for the privelege of running the worlds longest beta of the "how to blue screen your PC" program?
I was hoping that this whole argument would blow away after the GPLing of the QT. This whole concept of Gnome as holy war is absurd. While I see the point that in order to protect the GPL and it all stands for/protects, certain specific points must be enforced. But this arrogant bashing of the KDE group is goind beyond the call of decency. The whole "militant" aspect of the OSS movement will do more harm than good. I love reading a thread that disparges every distro but Debian, and any desktop manager except Gnome because they don't meet some geek purity test. Is Mandrake not good for Linux, just because it tries to simplify some of the harder admin task? Now that the liscencing issue is fixed, why not use KDE (personal opinions aside)? Why do so many purist have issues with Red Hat, is RPM too easy for "real" Linux users? I know the answer to all of these questions already, but if I was a newbie and was taking my first look at teh Linux community these types of flame wars would send me back to Windows in a heart beat.
Linux and OSS excite me because they are about choice and innovation, and giving users many ways to scratch the same itch. I think we are on the brink of mass acceptance for Linux, and am completely excited by the advances that are about the reach realization in the next few months (a finally debugged XFree86 4.xx, a finished Mozilla, new Gnome-Helix, Eazel, KDE 2, the 2.4 kernel, Koffice, open source Star Office, the list goes on). The community should be coming together now, wasn't this the whole point?
It's is discouraging to see the whole "cult of personality" thing take such a foothold, and the whole community taking sides.
Because my 19" Viewsonic hurts my chest when I lay on the couch to read with it=) And I look even sillier on the train going to work=)
I agree, I like using the PC for almost any short (although you can't call some of the how-tos short) documentation I can find, but find it cumbersome for something like a whole book.
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No, split them over the dozens of other similar situations with numerous OEM and software customers they bullied for the past 10 years. Split 'em and make it clear to any ermerging player that you will play fair or you will suffer. A fine would have to be of such immense numbers to make any impact of MS that it seems like a silly suggestion. How much do you fine a company for stifling healthy competiton? And how does the government taking in cash benefit end users; the dollars they have taken from business and consumers through illegal means, or repair the myriad small companies they have stifled? How can anyone still defend these jerks?
You know, I would agree if it were a cash rich ISP doing the same thing (a.k.a. AOL). But when it is the maker of the dominant desktop OS, it's not just a matter of good investing, it's a process of owning your eyeballs for the entire computing experience. MS only does things that help maintain the monopoly, if there is perceived consumer benefit then that is just a perk. MS has been proven to be ruthless and unethical numerous times, there is little in the way of a defensible position for a Microsoftie (not implying you lean one way or the other, so please take no offense).
Hmmm, DELL, well there's one (for the record we buy DELL boxes with Linux preinstalled at my place), but one OEM hardly represents a free marketplace. Still can't walk into Office Depot or Sears and buy anything but a Windows box. And since Compuserve/AOL are actual online service providers, it's hardly a comparison. What the MSN rebate is a sign of is a monopoly software vendor extending it's reach into markets where it doesn't belong (not that AOL isn't doing the same thing, but don't change the subject). You can post all of the lame ass rebuttals you like, the transcripts from the trial show that MS was cognizant it was breaking the law and using it's desktop monopoly to harm competiton. The fact that anyone tries to defend this shows what a sad society we live in.
Are you for real? Until you can walk into a store and buy a PC with a choice of operating systmes, the OEMs are far from FREED. The situation has improved, but it will take several years to get it back in balance. Let's see, more proof of monopoly...how about the fact that MS has so much cash they can offer you $400 up front via a number of retailers if you agree to use their online service? Is this because they want to topple the evil AOL empire (evil, yes, but a different topic altogether) or because they want to own every aspect of your computing experience? Either way, the consumer ends up with one less choice in the end. Please show the competiton that MS is being exposed to, and give relevant examples. While the rapid acceptance of Linux is surely viewed by a threat to the Redmond Menace, it hasn't put a dent of MS revenue stream YET (please note the yet). This isn't about beating a self righteous drum, it's about taking an illegal monopoly to task.
Not going to be felt by the public? Then, by all means, show me a case that will have greater impact on the public? We are all racing along in an economy that is now entirely driven on technology, and the face of that technology for the vast majority of the world is MS Windows. After the mounds of evidence presented in the trial there can be no doubt MS broke the law, and that the most important recourse is to force MS to compete on a levelled playing field. This case cannot come to a satifactory end until a consumer can walk into a store and by a PC with a non-MS operating system, and until you can purchase anything at a major electronics store without being offered a rebate if you sign up for another MS service. Consumers are bombarded by the MS mesaage everyday, you don't think a break up would impact this? Not felt by I.T. pros? We are already looking for more non-MS solutions and are excited to see our OEMs offering support for Linux, not only do we feel it, we love it. I can only hope that politics don't allow MS to escape the punishment they have so obviously earned.
I know your pain! I share an office with an incompetent oaf who spends more time playing with his desktop settings than administrating. I inherited his botched front end and 200+ disgruntled users. He defends any work on the back end as his and his alone, even though we have a handful of servers that are near death. So what is an industrious geek to do, but show his shortcomings at every turn! Not by pointing them out to the boss, but by implementing better and more cost effective solutions in every area I touch. Moving to a standardized desktop, migrating from a nightmare Windows desktop to first a stable NT image and now slowly Linux, taking small ground in the back end space (building a new FTP server, taking over DNS maintenance and adding email users), and always offering to let him assist me. My director sees how he leaves me flagging in the wind and still the job gets done, so I have been assured my annual raise will be sweet and my Xmas bonus fat. Don't get mad, get ahead by capitalizing on your superior skills. I save money and eliminate downtime so management loves me, I give the users a stable and standardized desktop so they love me. And I have unlimited job security. What fun!!!
Then you must only deal with MS apps, I have to make three registry hacks just to change the IP address on a ghosted NT machine with Netware clients installed. Registry hacking is part of using any version of Windows, but seems more common on networked machines with a lot of 3rd party apps. Don't call someone a troll just because you have been lucky enough to avoid hacking the registry.
Don't confuse your personal ignorance with the reality of the situation. Just because MP3 is a valid and popular format doesn't mean that all forms of intellectual property rights are abolished. The artist have a right to be paid for their work. The record companies are claiming that they are attacking Napster (criminal act) and MP3.com (illegal actions performed with prior knowledge) to protect the earnings of their artist. Since Courtney knows this is bull and she will neve see a penny of any settlement she is suing for her share. Not only is this funny, but pretty cool, and should be the most sobering call to the music industry. Everyone ackonwledges that MP3.com is not the problem, but the current business model of the record companies, and that MP3.com is suffering becsause their own internal documents showed that they knew they were breaking the law. Napster, on the other hand, is nothing more than a criminal act, making illegal copies of artist work and giving it away on the Internet is not sharing , it is theft.
Did you miss the part about Linux being free, easy to change/adapt due to the source code being freely distributable, or the part where chairman Bill charges me vital organs and rare jewels for the privelege of running the worlds longest beta of the "how to blue screen your PC" program?
I was hoping that this whole argument would blow away after the GPLing of the QT. This whole concept of Gnome as holy war is absurd. While I see the point that in order to protect the GPL and it all stands for/protects, certain specific points must be enforced. But this arrogant bashing of the KDE group is goind beyond the call of decency. The whole "militant" aspect of the OSS movement will do more harm than good. I love reading a thread that disparges every distro but Debian, and any desktop manager except Gnome because they don't meet some geek purity test. Is Mandrake not good for Linux, just because it tries to simplify some of the harder admin task? Now that the liscencing issue is fixed, why not use KDE (personal opinions aside)? Why do so many purist have issues with Red Hat, is RPM too easy for "real" Linux users? I know the answer to all of these questions already, but if I was a newbie and was taking my first look at teh Linux community these types of flame wars would send me back to Windows in a heart beat. Linux and OSS excite me because they are about choice and innovation, and giving users many ways to scratch the same itch. I think we are on the brink of mass acceptance for Linux, and am completely excited by the advances that are about the reach realization in the next few months (a finally debugged XFree86 4.xx, a finished Mozilla, new Gnome-Helix, Eazel, KDE 2, the 2.4 kernel, Koffice, open source Star Office, the list goes on). The community should be coming together now, wasn't this the whole point? It's is discouraging to see the whole "cult of personality" thing take such a foothold, and the whole community taking sides.
Because my 19" Viewsonic hurts my chest when I lay on the couch to read with it=) And I look even sillier on the train going to work=) I agree, I like using the PC for almost any short (although you can't call some of the how-tos short) documentation I can find, but find it cumbersome for something like a whole book.