"Exclusionary contracts by a monopoly are illegal."
Then Be really doesn't have a lawsuit since the contracts were signed before Microsoft was declared a Monopoly by the courts.
As far as the argument that consumers weren't offered a choice, that's horseshit. I have copies of both BeOS 3 and 4 at home which I purchased. I would not have these copies if I, as a consumer, had not had a choice. That's ultimately where your whole argument falls apart.
BTW, Sony licensed Be for there eVilla and killed the product after only 6 months because of a lack of sales. Again you cannot blame Microsoft because your product doesn't sell in a free market.
It's called whining, and there seems to be a lot of it occuring in the world.
Besides Apple is more guilty of destroying Be than Microsoft.
"Imagine what might have happened if Dell or Compaq had sold consumer systems dual booting with BeOS and Windows95."
But that's sort of the point. You're imaginging, and you've left reality behind. What would have happened in reality is Windows would be the dominant OS, and Be would still be bankrupt.
I agree that Microsoft shouldn't have had exclusive contracts with OEMs. It certainly gives an unfair impression, but it was their right and the OEMs certainly didn't complain at the better pricing they garnered.
But the end wouldn't have mattered to Be. Consumers weren't demanding BeOS, and if Compaq had forced it upon them they would have simply increased their support calls. "You said I'd get an 8 gig drive, Windows says I only have 4 gigs!"
"Don't you think Dell and Gateway would prefer to be able to say to consumers, "Hey, you can boot into Windows, Darwin, FreeBSD *and* Linux if you buy one of our laptops/desktops!" "
Considering this would probably quadruple the number of support calls, I seriously doubt Dell or Gateway would prefer it.
As far as the consumers are concerned, all they care about is that the OS runs their applications, so they don't want this either.
Are you really so unfamiliar with the computer market that you think people haven't thought of these ideas before?
Linux zealots are a strange bunch. The scream and shout to the world that they have no choice but Windows.
Yet they prove their points wrong every day by booting up Linux.
What they're really saying is that Linux is not as convenient to use as Windows and that's just not fair. Why it's not fair is an excercise left to those who contemplate the meaning of life.
But asking and thinking about something doesn't equate into sales.
You admit that you didn't have any use for it. I'll bet the people you spoke to about it also didn't have any use for it.
I actually purchased BeOS 3 and 4, and tried it at home. Yes it was cool, but I also had no use for it and it never spent more than a month on any one of my machines.
It's hard to comprehend what Be's claim is against MS. That they couldn't market their product? That there was no consumer demand for it because Windows worked better and people had no complaints? I pointed out this slashdot hypocrisy to show just out ludicrous Be's claims were. There were many people who knew of their product, many of them even went and purchased it or downloaded it. But hardly any of them had any use for it.
If there isn't a market for your product, how do you expect to sell it?
Microsoft had nothing to do with Be's ineptitude, and this is unfortunately another example of Americans whining about life being unfair. Be(or rather Palm) has adopted the sue-Microsoft business model instead of innovating in product development.
"Howver, I have absolutely no believe that such is the case in the software market."
Consumers disagree with you. The reason why Microsoft has a monopoly with Windows is not because of any sort of scarcity of resources that only they control, but because consumers have routinely rejected competing platforms.
Consumers want a uniform computing platform. The way our system of producing software works today(due to copyright and other laws), that means one producer of the OS.
I don't see any way around this today with the present shape of things. Even if there was a standard defined to describe the OS and what it should provide as far as base services, the competing companies would make their implementations incompatible with one another. We need only look at similar experiments such as Unix, Linux, Java, etc to see the problems inhererent in this concept.
ACtually if you read the findings of fact you'll see that Judge Jackson clarifies that.
He completely discounts Be, Linux, Mac, etc. because they aren't Windows. He esentially defines Microsoft as a monopoly because they are the only company selling the Windows operating system.
It's actually quite funny to read, even if it is bizarre logic.:-)
The huge die size of the Itanium and its upcoming successor make the chip far more expensive than the Pentium...
This is a short term problem. I mean go back and look at the original Pentium 60 and where that went... Given time with the new architecture they will work on these issues and improve it. The original P60 was quite a heat generator compared to subsequent models.
I also haven't seen where its performence is that impressive.
Take a look at the floating point scores. The few benchmarks I have seen have it blowing away most of the competing RISC processors.
x86 code performence, since its emulated, is poor. Recompile or else.
The same was true when 64 bit RISC processors were first introduced. I remember getting our first DEC Alpha back in '94 and having to rewrite large pieces of our research apps to take advantage of it. Or look at the Mac when the PowerPC was introduced. The same will happen with the Intel world of applications. Given time, things will evolve and you won't look back.
The upcoming AMD Hammer series
Well we'll have to see. AMD might be able to cut themselves a nice niche in the desktop market. But Intel may eventually rule the servers where recompiling your code is not an issue if you can achieve greater performance.
Speculation: Intel gets Hammered in the second half of this year.
I wouldn't take that bet. My speculation, especially in light of your other comments with regards to Sun is that McNealy ends up on the Today show complaining about liquidity and having to sell the cottage in Aspen. Sun is between a rock and a hard place, yes they would love to take a swipe at both Intel and Microsoft. But by backing away from Sparc and Solaris and adopting Linux and AMD they do more harm to themselves than the Wintel monopoly.
On the other hand, by doing the "smart" thing, and focusing on Solaris and Sparc they also harm themselves. This is the Innovator's Dilemna that guy from Harvard wrote about and that's why I say rock and hard place. So we'll see how Sun plays this.
I still don't see AMD as a serious threat to Intel as they don't have the reputation for reliability to be widely adopted by business. Mitigating risk is nearly all about reputation.
Regardless of whether or not people use Mozilla like it... I have one big complaint.
Every time I reference people to webstandards.org because their Netscape 4.x browser doesn't render properly, and suggest they upgrade to Netscape 6.x...
Every single one of them comes back and says Netscape 6.x is too slow and buggy.
It seems to me that the target audience of Mozilla is the current users of Netscape, and they can't even convince them to upgrade.
Then again it might have something to do with AOL still pushing Netscape 4.x over 6.x.:(
Anybody who claims making an OS compatible on the x86 platform is fairly easy has not learned any lessons from watching BeOS or Linux.
Linux is only now in the past couple of years getting to a point where hardware compatibility is not a major issue. But even then there are still issues with various video cards, etc.
Don't even talk about Be which had few compatible network cards, storage drivers, video cards, etc. etc. etc. etc.
Microsoft has utilized the HTML rendering component all throughout the operating system.
Personally I think it's bullshit that you claim Microsoft does not have a right to improve the OS in ways which are beneficial to programmers and consumers, by componentizing HTML rendering into an engine that can be utilized by anyone.
That's been the problem with this case since the beginning, a bunch of technically incompetent whiners who keep trying to strong arm companies.
"Didn't an NT fix pack a while ago prevent Lotus Notes server from working?"
NT4 SP6 caused Lotus to stop working because it prevented non-Administrators from opening a Winsock connection.
This security access problem also caused issues with a great many other applications, not just Notes.
It was also fixed within a day.
There is an old saying, "Don't contribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence." It continues to amaze me how whiners continue looking for ghosts in the shadows instead of just understanding the technical issues, realizing people make mistakes and moving on.
"that a failure to vote "correctly" would impact your career."
But doesn't it?
If you've bet your career on Linux, and the market is continuing to move away from Unix towards Windows... isn't your career quickly becoming irrelevant?
Even ignoring that issue, you have the one of support of someone's favorite niche OS. Most anti-MS people on/. appear to believe that they can destroy Microsoft, and the result will be that their favorite niche will become the new leader.
Face it, anti-MS people are just as motivated by financial gain as pro-MS people.
Slashdot Mirror
COM... ActiveX... .Net...
Been there done that.
Hence the description of his knowledge being outdated.
Dude, just because you don't know how to do something doesn't mean you can't do something.
Weird, I'm able to bind IP addresses to ethernet cards under Win2k and XP without reboots.
How can you accuse Microsoft of lying if your knowledge is outdated?
"Exclusionary contracts by a monopoly are illegal."
Then Be really doesn't have a lawsuit since the contracts were signed before Microsoft was declared a Monopoly by the courts.
As far as the argument that consumers weren't offered a choice, that's horseshit. I have copies of both BeOS 3 and 4 at home which I purchased. I would not have these copies if I, as a consumer, had not had a choice. That's ultimately where your whole argument falls apart.
BTW, Sony licensed Be for there eVilla and killed the product after only 6 months because of a lack of sales. Again you cannot blame Microsoft because your product doesn't sell in a free market.
It's called whining, and there seems to be a lot of it occuring in the world.
Besides Apple is more guilty of destroying Be than Microsoft.
"Imagine what might have happened if Dell or Compaq had sold consumer systems dual booting with BeOS and Windows95."
But that's sort of the point. You're imaginging, and you've left reality behind. What would have happened in reality is Windows would be the dominant OS, and Be would still be bankrupt.
I agree that Microsoft shouldn't have had exclusive contracts with OEMs. It certainly gives an unfair impression, but it was their right and the OEMs certainly didn't complain at the better pricing they garnered.
But the end wouldn't have mattered to Be. Consumers weren't demanding BeOS, and if Compaq had forced it upon them they would have simply increased their support calls. "You said I'd get an 8 gig drive, Windows says I only have 4 gigs!"
"Don't you think Dell and Gateway would prefer to be able to say to consumers, "Hey, you can boot into Windows, Darwin, FreeBSD *and* Linux if you buy one of our laptops/desktops!" "
Considering this would probably quadruple the number of support calls, I seriously doubt Dell or Gateway would prefer it.
As far as the consumers are concerned, all they care about is that the OS runs their applications, so they don't want this either.
Are you really so unfamiliar with the computer market that you think people haven't thought of these ideas before?
Linux zealots are a strange bunch. The scream and shout to the world that they have no choice but Windows.
Yet they prove their points wrong every day by booting up Linux.
What they're really saying is that Linux is not as convenient to use as Windows and that's just not fair. Why it's not fair is an excercise left to those who contemplate the meaning of life.
But asking and thinking about something doesn't equate into sales.
You admit that you didn't have any use for it. I'll bet the people you spoke to about it also didn't have any use for it.
I actually purchased BeOS 3 and 4, and tried it at home. Yes it was cool, but I also had no use for it and it never spent more than a month on any one of my machines.
It's hard to comprehend what Be's claim is against MS. That they couldn't market their product? That there was no consumer demand for it because Windows worked better and people had no complaints? I pointed out this slashdot hypocrisy to show just out ludicrous Be's claims were. There were many people who knew of their product, many of them even went and purchased it or downloaded it. But hardly any of them had any use for it.
If there isn't a market for your product, how do you expect to sell it?
Microsoft had nothing to do with Be's ineptitude, and this is unfortunately another example of Americans whining about life being unfair. Be(or rather Palm) has adopted the sue-Microsoft business model instead of innovating in product development.
"Howver, I have absolutely no believe that such is the case in the software market."
Consumers disagree with you. The reason why Microsoft has a monopoly with Windows is not because of any sort of scarcity of resources that only they control, but because consumers have routinely rejected competing platforms.
Consumers want a uniform computing platform. The way our system of producing software works today(due to copyright and other laws), that means one producer of the OS.
I don't see any way around this today with the present shape of things. Even if there was a standard defined to describe the OS and what it should provide as far as base services, the competing companies would make their implementations incompatible with one another. We need only look at similar experiments such as Unix, Linux, Java, etc to see the problems inhererent in this concept.
I recall all the articles posted to slashdot about BeOS, and how nearly every one of them was greeted by jeers and disgust.
/. masses.
:-)
"Be wasn't free, it wasn't open source. Who wants to use that crap anyway?" was the response of the
Now the slashdot masses want to complain that Microsoft killed Be?
This is hilarious.
ACtually if you read the findings of fact you'll see that Judge Jackson clarifies that.
:-)
He completely discounts Be, Linux, Mac, etc. because they aren't Windows. He esentially defines Microsoft as a monopoly because they are the only company selling the Windows operating system.
It's actually quite funny to read, even if it is bizarre logic.
This is a short term problem. I mean go back and look at the original Pentium 60 and where that went... Given time with the new architecture they will work on these issues and improve it. The original P60 was quite a heat generator compared to subsequent models.
I also haven't seen where its performence is that impressive.
Take a look at the floating point scores. The few benchmarks I have seen have it blowing away most of the competing RISC processors.
x86 code performence, since its emulated, is poor. Recompile or else.
The same was true when 64 bit RISC processors were first introduced. I remember getting our first DEC Alpha back in '94 and having to rewrite large pieces of our research apps to take advantage of it. Or look at the Mac when the PowerPC was introduced. The same will happen with the Intel world of applications. Given time, things will evolve and you won't look back.
The upcoming AMD Hammer series
Well we'll have to see. AMD might be able to cut themselves a nice niche in the desktop market. But Intel may eventually rule the servers where recompiling your code is not an issue if you can achieve greater performance.
Speculation: Intel gets Hammered in the second half of this year.
I wouldn't take that bet. My speculation, especially in light of your other comments with regards to Sun is that McNealy ends up on the Today show complaining about liquidity and having to sell the cottage in Aspen. Sun is between a rock and a hard place, yes they would love to take a swipe at both Intel and Microsoft. But by backing away from Sparc and Solaris and adopting Linux and AMD they do more harm to themselves than the Wintel monopoly.
On the other hand, by doing the "smart" thing, and focusing on Solaris and Sparc they also harm themselves. This is the Innovator's Dilemna that guy from Harvard wrote about and that's why I say rock and hard place. So we'll see how Sun plays this.
I still don't see AMD as a serious threat to Intel as they don't have the reputation for reliability to be widely adopted by business. Mitigating risk is nearly all about reputation.
Regardless of whether or not people use Mozilla like it... I have one big complaint.
:(
Every time I reference people to webstandards.org because their Netscape 4.x browser doesn't render properly, and suggest they upgrade to Netscape 6.x...
Every single one of them comes back and says Netscape 6.x is too slow and buggy.
It seems to me that the target audience of Mozilla is the current users of Netscape, and they can't even convince them to upgrade.
Then again it might have something to do with AOL still pushing Netscape 4.x over 6.x.
Anybody who claims making an OS compatible on the x86 platform is fairly easy has not learned any lessons from watching BeOS or Linux.
Linux is only now in the past couple of years getting to a point where hardware compatibility is not a major issue. But even then there are still issues with various video cards, etc.
Don't even talk about Be which had few compatible network cards, storage drivers, video cards, etc. etc. etc. etc.
I knew that, and I would have corrected the post or posted a followup if slashdot didn't prevent this.
Why is it bullshit?
Microsoft has utilized the HTML rendering component all throughout the operating system.
Personally I think it's bullshit that you claim Microsoft does not have a right to improve the OS in ways which are beneficial to programmers and consumers, by componentizing HTML rendering into an engine that can be utilized by anyone.
That's been the problem with this case since the beginning, a bunch of technically incompetent whiners who keep trying to strong arm companies.
Well the fuss is all just from a few companies who can't compete and politicians who didn't feel they were getting their wheels greased.
Has Netscape ever asked to replace the IE integration in Windows? Are they even competent enough to pull it off if Microsoft documented it?
The answer to both question is No, BTW. Which is how this all ties up into the first paragraph.
Your first sentence was by far the most accurate thing you have said.
Yeah, but either is Bill Gates.
.Net comments.
And if you really had an argument, we wouldn't be reading articles on slashdot about how RMS wants Miguel to explain himself on his
"The most damning evidence that a browswer doesn't have to be so close to the kernel"
Microsoft has never claimed that IE is integrated into the kernel.
They have claimed it is integrated into the OS.
If you were to ask most Windows developers if it was a good thing, they would unanimously argue yes.
Don't agree? Well KDE did the same sort of bundling of their web browser component.
"Didn't an NT fix pack a while ago prevent Lotus Notes server from working?"
NT4 SP6 caused Lotus to stop working because it prevented non-Administrators from opening a Winsock connection.
This security access problem also caused issues with a great many other applications, not just Notes.
It was also fixed within a day.
There is an old saying, "Don't contribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence." It continues to amaze me how whiners continue looking for ghosts in the shadows instead of just understanding the technical issues, realizing people make mistakes and moving on.
"that a failure to vote "correctly" would impact your career."
/. appear to believe that they can destroy Microsoft, and the result will be that their favorite niche will become the new leader.
But doesn't it?
If you've bet your career on Linux, and the market is continuing to move away from Unix towards Windows... isn't your career quickly becoming irrelevant?
Even ignoring that issue, you have the one of support of someone's favorite niche OS. Most anti-MS people on
Face it, anti-MS people are just as motivated by financial gain as pro-MS people.
IBM used Windows code to make OS/2.
Why am I reminded of Monty Python and the Holy Grail... "Help help! I'm being oppressed!"