Bundling is forcing someone who buys Windows to also buy Office... i.e. Instead of Windows for $99 you have to buy Windows for $199, but you get a copy of Office with it.
So now onto your stupid suggestions...
#1. Microsoft would love this. Now instead of giving discounts to Dell and such, they can charge one high price.
#2. That wouldn't fly in from the SCOTUS.
#3. Again this wouldn't fly.
#4. That's in the settlement.
This MS-DOJ battle started because of political considerations.
Yes, 4 years ago Microsoft gave hardly any money to political campaigns, choosing instead to be neutral in such things. Their competitors, however, did not remain neutral and had been giving money for years. So Microsoft changed heart, and started giving money in hope of consideration.
You're an extreme fool if you think this case was ever motivated by concern for the consumers.
They took the idea of Smart tags from Office XP which was broadly received by the customer base and put this into the IE 6.0 beta.
Hint: see that word beta?
People took a look at it, generally said they didn't really care for it. It caused pages to be difficult to read, etc.
So Microsoft, listening to the customer, removed it from the final product.
Looks to me like you've just provided evidence for the exact opposite point you were trying to make.
If you look further into this, Microsoft uses a very open beta program to get feedback on their products. They have a usability test lab at their facilities and constantly bring people in from outside the company to provide feedback. They work with industry experts long in advance to help define the features that consumers would like to see in the products.
Microsoft is one of the few vendors that really listens to their customers, which is why they are so successful at making products that people actually want to use.
Of course one of the questions I've asked that's never been answered...
Where's the damages?
I've yet to see any valid numbers that show customers have been harmed by Microsoft's monopoly. Yet you can build quite a substantial case for exactly the opposite, that customers have benefited over the past several years as a result.
Powerchute works just fine. I've been using Powerchute on NT/2k systems for the past 4 years and have never had any problems.
I have used apcupsd on a sparcstation, and it works well. But I would not say it's signifigantly better, in fact it lacks several features from the APC software especially if you are using SmartUPS models.
I don't understand your mentality. Powerchute is free and works well. The only reason I can see for using apcupsd is if you can't use the free version of powerchute. Like the sparcstation I mentioned.
In other related news Sun reported yesterday that they will be laying off 3,900 employees or 9% of their workforce.
There have been no announcements of layoffs at Microsoft.
I think we all know who Linux is really hurting, and it's not Microsoft.
Re:Comparing Gary Kildall's personality to Bill Ga
on
MS DOS: A Eulogy
·
· Score: 2
That eulogy is a good one, and it does reinforce my point. Gary didn't miss any chance by not providing CP/M-86 for the PC... he didn't really want that chance. As it says, he wasn't in search of fame and money.
Unfortunately you distorted this point into an insult towards Bill Gates, which is sad. The reality is that you do need people like Gates to lead the market in these directions.
anti-Microsoft conspiracy theories
on
MS DOS: A Eulogy
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
One of the interesting things about most of the anti-Microsoft conspiracies is that they all involve settlements covered under Non-Disclosure agreements. This way there is no way to validate the authenticity of the story.
It makes it rather convenient.
At the time there was no secret that the new MS-DOS was very similar to CP/M-80. CP/M is what people were used to using and seeing, and so Patterson designed his new OS for 16 bit processors to behave similarly. But there were also pieces of functionality that arrived into MS-DOS that were similar to Unix.
It's also entirely possible that it included some similar code. CP/M-80 BDOS could be disassembled and carried in your briefcase. It only took up around 5-7K of RAM and wasn't that complicated at all.
Besides, if MS-DOS had really been a copy of CP/M, wouldn't it have also implemented the PIP and STAT commands?
But the real question is... does it matter?
From everything I've read of Gary Kildall and Digital Research, already at the time IBM first approached them the company was too big for Kildall's liking. He was not a manager, he hated it. But he was also a control freak and couldn't stand someone else running things for him.
One story I read indicated that he often would walk around the office building afraid to go in, and that at one point he even offered to sell the whole thing to a friend of his for $50,000.
One of the realities is that some people are willing to grab success, and others aren't. There are a lot of people in this world who purposefully miss an opportunity because they are unhappy or uncomfortable with assuming the responsibility it might entail.
Kildall was one such person. Obviously Bill Gates is not.
It's that difference in personalities that is really the secret behind Microsoft.
Personally, I know that I'm a lot like Gary Kildall in that regard. But knowing this I also try to not be resentful when I pass up an opportunity.
Ok, here's an example of someone who doesn't really understand what "really sweet" means.
I found this off the internet, it's a way to use a.Net web service to grab the stock market closes from yahoo.com.
http://www.dotnet101.com/articles/art031_StockQu ot esWebSvc.asp
It's kind of an interesting kludge. You place a.Net webservice in between the client and the yahoo stock pages.
Better yet would simply be if Yahoo(or whoever) provided a web service you could instantiate, pass it the stock you want a quote on and it would return a value. Makes life tremendously simpler and no need for about half the code that was written in the above article.
Hmm. I used to work for a University and everything we bought was at the academic price point. We were buying SCO Unix at the time for right around $500/desktop when the retail price was $1800/desktop. That was several years ago, but still.
If the study was to be useful to non-academics, then a college shouldn't have been used as a case study.
I agree with you on the PC prices, students could get slightly better discounts. But on Dell's website it's pretty clear that you click on the links saying you are a college and they give you a price. I would doubt they would price it higher than what's listed on the website.
I'm sorry, I got to the first case study regarding the University and decided at that point the article was not worth reading any further.
I'm not certain at what point and time this article was researched. So I'm going to ignore the glaring price descrepancy for the hardware... specifically the Dell GX150 which they list at $1200, but I can get for $900 from Dell's website.
But the most glaring error in a case study about academic purchases is that the $479 is a retail price for Office XP Standard full edition.
A college would most certainly qualify for academic prices, which would put you at only $159/desktop for the software. That is a $320 discrepancy per desktop resulting in at least a $160,000 error in the bottom line.
Furthermore with more than 500 computers on campus, the college would qualify for the Academic Select licensing which will likely further reduce costs.
It's unclear if the author made further mistakes of this nature. I can only assume that he didn't factor in the fact that students can buy Office XP for home use for only $150 as well, and so forth.
I just barely glanced at the costs used for the corporate side and saw similar glaring errors.
I'm still trying to figure out why he decided to throw Microsoft Operations Manager into the mix. That seems like a convenient way to throw another $120k onto the price tag. I wonder if the author even knows what MOM does, or that it's actually a NetIQ product licensed by Microsoft.
Once again it becomes blazingly obvious that the bulk of Microsoft's detractors haven't a clue which end they use to go to the bathroom, much less what.Net is.
This is about.Net services. You know... the idea of web services? Like this is what it'll cost if you want to utilize Microsoft's services as part of your system.
Has nothing to do with the.Net programming environment, which from everything I have seen thus far indicated will be available free as in beer. Except for a number of value add pieces, such as the IDE, ASP.Net caching, and a performance tuned compiler.
Sorry, you are wrong. Even though I consider Ashcroft an idiot as well, you don't know what terrorism means.
Definition of terrorism from dictionary.com:
"The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons."
Notice the 'use of force...against...property' part of that definition?
Let's talk about the really bad stuff. Like say Smallpox, Anthrax, Bubonic Plague. If you use it for study, keep it in the lab and study it to try to find ways to innoculate against it. That's for a good purpose right?
But if you stick it in an envelope and mail it to someone working at the state dept... That's not a good thing, right?
So it seems pretty simple to me. Writing a virus is not a crime... Releasing it into the public *IS*.
Send them to jail. It's part of the Darwinian natural selection to weed out the morons.
Some of the analysis I have read on Nimda indicated that it came out of China and appeared to initially target government and financial institutions. I don't know if that's true or not, I didn't follow up to verify those statements.
It's been pretty apparent in the recent years that a lot of these computer crimes, specifically website vandalism have a purpose behind them, usually political.
Slashdot Mirror
While I'd sincerely like to trust you, your article stinks of FUD and spin.
Bundling is forcing someone who buys Windows to also buy Office... i.e. Instead of Windows for $99 you have to buy Windows for $199, but you get a copy of Office with it.
So now onto your stupid suggestions...
#1. Microsoft would love this. Now instead of giving discounts to Dell and such, they can charge one high price.
#2. That wouldn't fly in from the SCOTUS.
#3. Again this wouldn't fly.
#4. That's in the settlement.
So what?
This MS-DOJ battle started because of political considerations.
Yes, 4 years ago Microsoft gave hardly any money to political campaigns, choosing instead to be neutral in such things. Their competitors, however, did not remain neutral and had been giving money for years. So Microsoft changed heart, and started giving money in hope of consideration.
You're an extreme fool if you think this case was ever motivated by concern for the consumers.
What Smartlinks fiasco?
They took the idea of Smart tags from Office XP which was broadly received by the customer base and put this into the IE 6.0 beta.
Hint: see that word beta?
People took a look at it, generally said they didn't really care for it. It caused pages to be difficult to read, etc.
So Microsoft, listening to the customer, removed it from the final product.
Looks to me like you've just provided evidence for the exact opposite point you were trying to make.
If you look further into this, Microsoft uses a very open beta program to get feedback on their products. They have a usability test lab at their facilities and constantly bring people in from outside the company to provide feedback. They work with industry experts long in advance to help define the features that consumers would like to see in the products.
Microsoft is one of the few vendors that really listens to their customers, which is why they are so successful at making products that people actually want to use.
One of the most insightful comments I've read on /. for a long time.
It's important to point out that Larry Ellison is a *HUGE* supporter of the Democratic party. He gave millions to the Gore campaign last year.
Whose one of the biggest proponents of this anti-trust fight? Oh yeah, Larry Ellison.
I agree, this case was primarily driven by politics.
Of course one of the questions I've asked that's never been answered...
Where's the damages?
I've yet to see any valid numbers that show customers have been harmed by Microsoft's monopoly. Yet you can build quite a substantial case for exactly the opposite, that customers have benefited over the past several years as a result.
A penalty should fit the crime.
So maybe instead they should have submitted the article from the AOL/TW site... cnn.com?
/ in dex.html
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/11/01/microsoft.ap
Powerchute works just fine. I've been using Powerchute on NT/2k systems for the past 4 years and have never had any problems.
I have used apcupsd on a sparcstation, and it works well. But I would not say it's signifigantly better, in fact it lacks several features from the APC software especially if you are using SmartUPS models.
I don't understand your mentality. Powerchute is free and works well. The only reason I can see for using apcupsd is if you can't use the free version of powerchute. Like the sparcstation I mentioned.
In other related news Sun reported yesterday that they will be laying off 3,900 employees or 9% of their workforce.
There have been no announcements of layoffs at Microsoft.
I think we all know who Linux is really hurting, and it's not Microsoft.
That eulogy is a good one, and it does reinforce my point. Gary didn't miss any chance by not providing CP/M-86 for the PC... he didn't really want that chance. As it says, he wasn't in search of fame and money.
Unfortunately you distorted this point into an insult towards Bill Gates, which is sad. The reality is that you do need people like Gates to lead the market in these directions.
One of the interesting things about most of the anti-Microsoft conspiracies is that they all involve settlements covered under Non-Disclosure agreements. This way there is no way to validate the authenticity of the story.
It makes it rather convenient.
At the time there was no secret that the new MS-DOS was very similar to CP/M-80. CP/M is what people were used to using and seeing, and so Patterson designed his new OS for 16 bit processors to behave similarly. But there were also pieces of functionality that arrived into MS-DOS that were similar to Unix.
It's also entirely possible that it included some similar code. CP/M-80 BDOS could be disassembled and carried in your briefcase. It only took up around 5-7K of RAM and wasn't that complicated at all.
Besides, if MS-DOS had really been a copy of CP/M, wouldn't it have also implemented the PIP and STAT commands?
But the real question is... does it matter?
From everything I've read of Gary Kildall and Digital Research, already at the time IBM first approached them the company was too big for Kildall's liking. He was not a manager, he hated it. But he was also a control freak and couldn't stand someone else running things for him.
One story I read indicated that he often would walk around the office building afraid to go in, and that at one point he even offered to sell the whole thing to a friend of his for $50,000.
One of the realities is that some people are willing to grab success, and others aren't. There are a lot of people in this world who purposefully miss an opportunity because they are unhappy or uncomfortable with assuming the responsibility it might entail.
Kildall was one such person. Obviously Bill Gates is not.
It's that difference in personalities that is really the secret behind Microsoft.
Personally, I know that I'm a lot like Gary Kildall in that regard. But knowing this I also try to not be resentful when I pass up an opportunity.
Yes, that's how it works.
You're right. But it's not a problem. It's just that the initial view of HTML and the web was very shortsighted.
Ok, here's an example of someone who doesn't really understand what "really sweet" means.
.Net web service to grab the stock market closes from yahoo.com.
u ot esWebSvc.asp
.Net webservice in between the client and the yahoo stock pages.
I found this off the internet, it's a way to use a
http://www.dotnet101.com/articles/art031_StockQ
It's kind of an interesting kludge. You place a
Better yet would simply be if Yahoo(or whoever) provided a web service you could instantiate, pass it the stock you want a quote on and it would return a value. Makes life tremendously simpler and no need for about half the code that was written in the above article.
Enjoy
Perhaps these two groups should get together and provide a list of motherboards which work properly with the AMD processor?
Who says people think highly of Sun today?
They've always been just as bad as Microsoft, IBM, etc.
Hmm. I used to work for a University and everything we bought was at the academic price point. We were buying SCO Unix at the time for right around $500/desktop when the retail price was $1800/desktop. That was several years ago, but still.
If the study was to be useful to non-academics, then a college shouldn't have been used as a case study.
I agree with you on the PC prices, students could get slightly better discounts. But on Dell's website it's pretty clear that you click on the links saying you are a college and they give you a price. I would doubt they would price it higher than what's listed on the website.
I believe Microsoft just released the product this past week. At least it's available for sale off their website.
I'm sorry, I got to the first case study regarding the University and decided at that point the article was not worth reading any further.
I'm not certain at what point and time this article was researched. So I'm going to ignore the glaring price descrepancy for the hardware... specifically the Dell GX150 which they list at $1200, but I can get for $900 from Dell's website.
But the most glaring error in a case study about academic purchases is that the $479 is a retail price for Office XP Standard full edition.
A college would most certainly qualify for academic prices, which would put you at only $159/desktop for the software. That is a $320 discrepancy per desktop resulting in at least a $160,000 error in the bottom line.
Furthermore with more than 500 computers on campus, the college would qualify for the Academic Select licensing which will likely further reduce costs.
It's unclear if the author made further mistakes of this nature. I can only assume that he didn't factor in the fact that students can buy Office XP for home use for only $150 as well, and so forth.
I just barely glanced at the costs used for the corporate side and saw similar glaring errors.
I'm still trying to figure out why he decided to throw Microsoft Operations Manager into the mix. That seems like a convenient way to throw another $120k onto the price tag. I wonder if the author even knows what MOM does, or that it's actually a NetIQ product licensed by Microsoft.
Scotty beam me up!
.Net is.
.Net services. You know... the idea of web services? Like this is what it'll cost if you want to utilize Microsoft's services as part of your system.
.Net programming environment, which from everything I have seen thus far indicated will be available free as in beer. Except for a number of value add pieces, such as the IDE, ASP.Net caching, and a performance tuned compiler.
Once again it becomes blazingly obvious that the bulk of Microsoft's detractors haven't a clue which end they use to go to the bathroom, much less what
This is about
Has nothing to do with the
Hmm, maybe if you stopped calling the general public stupid idiots you'd have a better social life.
I was referring to your claim that terrorism only exists where people are killed.
I'm glad that you have decided to start seeing the much larger picture.
Sorry, you are wrong. Even though I consider Ashcroft an idiot as well, you don't know what terrorism means.
Definition of terrorism from dictionary.com:
"The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons."
Notice the 'use of force...against...property' part of that definition?
Let's talk about the really bad stuff. Like say Smallpox, Anthrax, Bubonic Plague. If you use it for study, keep it in the lab and study it to try to find ways to innoculate against it. That's for a good purpose right?
But if you stick it in an envelope and mail it to someone working at the state dept... That's not a good thing, right?
So it seems pretty simple to me. Writing a virus is not a crime... Releasing it into the public *IS*.
Send them to jail. It's part of the Darwinian natural selection to weed out the morons.
Some of the analysis I have read on Nimda indicated that it came out of China and appeared to initially target government and financial institutions. I don't know if that's true or not, I didn't follow up to verify those statements.
It's been pretty apparent in the recent years that a lot of these computer crimes, specifically website vandalism have a purpose behind them, usually political.