Rogers owns SportsNet. And probably some other stations.
On the sports side, their ownership goes even higher up the chain. They own the Blue Jays, and now the are part owners of MLSE (The Leafs, Raptors, TorontoFC, the Marlies - and the specialized TV networks associated with them - plus they own or manage all the buildings these teams play in). The other major partner in MLSE: Bell (who also own part of the Montreal Canadians).
So on the sports side, we can have one company owning the team, the building, the TV station, and the cable/internet/cell provider. That is a heck of a lot of brands working together under the same ownership.
Content that might not exist if it weren't for the CRTC. Networks up here might just lazily buy the broadcast rights for US shows rather than look for anything original.
There is a lot that I don't like about the CRTC, but mandating Canadian content isn't so terrible. Especially since it is so easy for the consumer to watch or listen to whatever they want anyhow. The content rules really just provide incentive to create content in Canada, keeping the domestic industry operating.
Unfortunately, that same protectionist attitude that keeps small Canadian studios and artists going is also being used to protect a few big telecommunications companies from having to actually compete against the big bad US and European network providers.
In much of the west, it is still a duopoly as far as TV and internet goes.
Shaw has a non-compete pact with Rogers for cable TV and internet, giving Shaw the west and Rogers the east. On the telephone side, BC and Alberta have Telus, Saskatchewan has SaskTel, and Manitoba has MTS. I don't know if Telus and Bell have a non-compete pact or not, but either way they do not compete head to head. I do know that Sasktel and MTS have at various times had a relationship will Bell, and certainly all of the telcos share their network and wireless spectrum.
The only arena where you see multiple telcos or cable companies competing with one another is in the cell phone market. Even there, it is mostly just Rogers, Bell, and Telus. Each of them operating multiple sub-brands, each offering the exact same thing as the competitors. Shaw bought spectrum and was going to enter the cell phone market, but unfortunately decided against it.
I suppose you could count the Satelite TV providers as well, which include two companies owned by Shaw and Bell. Another duopoly with a cable company vs a telco.
Municipal planning has now moved on from trying to do their part to fight global warming (which no one city can make a dent in alone), and towards planning for a future where climate change is a given.
I imagine the rest of the world will be heading towards that approach as well. Rather than avoidance, it is mitigation.
We have a financial system based on unlimited growth, and an entire planet is being altered by our activities. One way or another, this does not end well.
Seriously, what's the issue with having an anti-trust chief who is aware of and intends to keep an eye on potential future problems? If regulators had been keeping a closer eye on Microsoft, then maybe U.S. vs Microsoft would have happened early enough to actually make a difference.
I'd rather have one that finishes the job.
Agreed. Instead of one that achieves a guilty verdict, then lets the guilty party write their own settlement. It is unfortunate that the Bush admin came in and completely changed the DOJ's outlook on that case, because the DOJ had been completely successful up until that point.
The comments by Judge Jackson, and the change of administration, were both major victories for Microsoft in what was otherwise a disastrous case.
Now that Java is open source, wouldn't it make more sense to use the JVM as the standard runtime, instead of something that "might" not get sued for copying the.NET runtime?
Java has already been made to run on.NET. I wonder if it'd really be that hard to get standardized C# running on the JVM?
I think the DOJ got it right with the first verdict: break up Microsoft. Have one company continue to develop Microsoft Windows, and another can develop their applications and whatever else. That way, Windows is just Windows until it hits the OEM. And MS applications would no longer have any reason to run on only one platform. That way, we wouldn't need to talk about bundling every browser in existence to negate the advantage that IE has over the others.
Of course the EU doesn't have the power to break up a US based corporation, and the DOJ blew the one chance they had to create a competitive market for desktop applications and operating systems. The only thing that has brought some semblance of competition back to the market is Microsoft's own inability to deal with change, and their own incompetence.
Already exists in the form of the 'Broadcast Flag'. Hasn't been used much though, as the broadcasters know it'd cause backlash. Coupled with the fact it'd be ineffective, it does make it unlikely that the broadcast flag will see a lot of usage.
3. They have to improve their product quality. That will be a huge challenge given their code base, and maybe Windows 7 will be a substantial quality improvement. The record for Microsoft seems to be "every other product is OK" (Win 98 was much better than Win 95, Win XP is much better than Win 2k, hopefully Win 7 will be much better than Vista."
I disagree with your assessments of Windows. Windows 98 was better than Windows 95 in some small ways, but Win95 was much more stable. You could usually run Win95 for a week before rebooting. Win98 would often get to the point where it'd bluescreen daily, especially if you went more than 6 months without reinstalling fresh. Win98SE was managed to get close to the stability of Win95, which isn't really saying much.
I found Win2K to be the best release of Windows ever. Solid NT code base with a clean and quick interface, with the win32 goodies from the 98 code base. I thought XP merely added bloat, annoying intrusions, and menus rearranged for no reason. XP did improve as it went along though, and it has come to the point where 2K is missing too much modern functionality due to lack of support from MS and OEMs. XP has far better support for wireless, laptops, etc. I think Win2K was the better OS though, even though it was allowed to die.
I think Win2K's achilles heel was horrendous security, thanks to putting the network workstation services of the NT era onto the public internet. Too many remote holes. At least Win98 users had to do something stupid to be infected - Win2K merely needed a network connection.
I do agree Vista sucked. But to me, it was their second bad release of Windows in a row. They made Vista even worse than an OS released 7 year ago, that wasn't very good to begin with.
Bush saved the company from being broken up by the DOJ. The DOJ's case against MS had already been won, but under a Bush administration, it seems they didn't worry too much about imposing a penalty or having strict compliance. That wouldn't have been the case under Clinton's DOJ, and maybe not under a Gore one either.
So I guess Bush may have been a turning point for them, in that he let them continue as a single company.
Both the US and European courts disagree. By their legal definition of monopoly, Microsoft has one. That in itself isn't illegal. Abusing that monopoly power to take over other markets is what is illegal. And they've been convicted of it time and time again.
It is really a shame that the US court case basically disappeared once Bush came into power. That trial covered a lot more issues than merely bundling IE to kill Netscape. Some shady deals with OEMs, and many other predatory business practices, came to light then and since then. But the Bush DOJ didn't really see the need to do anything about it, despite already getting a conviction.
Nowadays Windows is shrinking in relevance at such a rate that it may not make much sense to intervene. They're about 10 years too late to make a difference to those companies and the markets harmed by these tactics. It seems forcing MS to be careful about anti-trust issues is helping their current competitors though, so that is a small victory.
Even Sun's employees seem to be a bit annoyed with the product marketing there:
"Back in the 90's this was the Netscape Enterprise Server, which later morphed into the iPlanet Web Server during the Sun|Netscape Alliance. After some years it was renamed the SunONE Web Server and most recently renamed again to the JES Web Server (Sun just like to keep you confused, thus the constant renaming of the product!)"
Pretty much what it is. But the Vista name has too much "baggage" associated with it. Everyone is staying with XP and waiting for Windows 7, so MS is going to deliver it. Even if it is just Vista again.
Growing up, my examples of "right wing" financial dealing involved Brian Mulroney as Prime Minister and Grant Devine as Premier of Saskatchewan.
Both of them left their respective governments deep in debt. It was the Liberals who came in and stopped the debt from ballooning out of control in Canada. And it is the current minority Conservative government that has started running deficits again.
Provincially, Devine left Saskatchewan in a ridiculous pile of debt. The "left wing" NDP party came in and straightened out the finances after he was gone, and a number of people in Devine's party had a criminal record for stealing money from the province.
I do think other provinces are a different story for sure, but trying to say the Conservatives create "small" debt is hilarious considering what Mulroney and Devine did.
Well, we could complain that XFCE and Xubuntu isn't getting any help, but since it is based on GTK as well, they'll get some benefits to that work. And obviously anything that goes into X and GL drivers can't hurt any desktop environment.
MS apologists used the same argument to defend Microsoft Windows' position in the market.
Having a monopoly in and of itself is not a crime. Microsoft wasn't guilt of anything by virtue of making a product that most people wanted (or at least purchased anyhow).
What is a crime is obtaining or maintaining that monopoly with underhanded means. MS did this through their dealings with OEMs, among other ways.
It is also a crime to use that monopoly to hurt competition in other sectors. The big part of the MS case was their use of Windows to take over the browser market, though it applies to many products.
For a trail to proceed against Google, it would have to be shown they actually have a monopoly to begin with, and then that they abused it somehow. Given the number of products and services has, it was inevitable that they'd draw scrutiny.
Well, the Phoenix/Firebird browsers were actually very lean and simple browsers. It truly was a Mozilla browser, without the painfully big footprint of the suite. However, somewhere along the line, it got bloated again.
Yep, not only do the users hate it, but it also doesn't even work. And from a technical standpoint, it never can work. Why anyone thinks it makes good business sense to annoy your customers for absolutely no technical gains is anyone's guess.
Slashdot Mirror
The mouse over text is especially apt here.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3Ltr4XFiuzEJ:www.datamation.com/applications/how-libreoffice-writer-tops-ms-word-12-features-1.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca
Rogers owns SportsNet. And probably some other stations.
On the sports side, their ownership goes even higher up the chain. They own the Blue Jays, and now the are part owners of MLSE (The Leafs, Raptors, TorontoFC, the Marlies - and the specialized TV networks associated with them - plus they own or manage all the buildings these teams play in). The other major partner in MLSE: Bell (who also own part of the Montreal Canadians).
So on the sports side, we can have one company owning the team, the building, the TV station, and the cable/internet/cell provider. That is a heck of a lot of brands working together under the same ownership.
Content that might not exist if it weren't for the CRTC. Networks up here might just lazily buy the broadcast rights for US shows rather than look for anything original.
There is a lot that I don't like about the CRTC, but mandating Canadian content isn't so terrible. Especially since it is so easy for the consumer to watch or listen to whatever they want anyhow. The content rules really just provide incentive to create content in Canada, keeping the domestic industry operating.
Unfortunately, that same protectionist attitude that keeps small Canadian studios and artists going is also being used to protect a few big telecommunications companies from having to actually compete against the big bad US and European network providers.
In much of the west, it is still a duopoly as far as TV and internet goes.
Shaw has a non-compete pact with Rogers for cable TV and internet, giving Shaw the west and Rogers the east. On the telephone side, BC and Alberta have Telus, Saskatchewan has SaskTel, and Manitoba has MTS. I don't know if Telus and Bell have a non-compete pact or not, but either way they do not compete head to head. I do know that Sasktel and MTS have at various times had a relationship will Bell, and certainly all of the telcos share their network and wireless spectrum.
The only arena where you see multiple telcos or cable companies competing with one another is in the cell phone market. Even there, it is mostly just Rogers, Bell, and Telus. Each of them operating multiple sub-brands, each offering the exact same thing as the competitors. Shaw bought spectrum and was going to enter the cell phone market, but unfortunately decided against it.
I suppose you could count the Satelite TV providers as well, which include two companies owned by Shaw and Bell. Another duopoly with a cable company vs a telco.
Actually in this case, the camera would've been hiding right in the neighbor's yard.
Iran: Is this your camera? What is this camera doing here?
US: Nothing. but can we have it back?
Municipal planning has now moved on from trying to do their part to fight global warming (which no one city can make a dent in alone), and towards planning for a future where climate change is a given.
I imagine the rest of the world will be heading towards that approach as well. Rather than avoidance, it is mitigation.
We have a financial system based on unlimited growth, and an entire planet is being altered by our activities. One way or another, this does not end well.
SIlverlight 2.0 is only supported on Intel Macs. So any PPC Mac owners are screwed.
So are people with another platform without a Silverlight implementation, such as Linux, BSD, Nintendo Wii, Playstation, your phone, etc...
I shudder at the thought of a new society being founded by those folks. We'd be handing them an entire planet.
At least they'd be doing less damage to ours from that distance.
Agreed. Instead of one that achieves a guilty verdict, then lets the guilty party write their own settlement. It is unfortunate that the Bush admin came in and completely changed the DOJ's outlook on that case, because the DOJ had been completely successful up until that point.
The comments by Judge Jackson, and the change of administration, were both major victories for Microsoft in what was otherwise a disastrous case.
Now that Java is open source, wouldn't it make more sense to use the JVM as the standard runtime, instead of something that "might" not get sued for copying the .NET runtime?
Java has already been made to run on .NET. I wonder if it'd really be that hard to get standardized C# running on the JVM?
I think the DOJ got it right with the first verdict: break up Microsoft. Have one company continue to develop Microsoft Windows, and another can develop their applications and whatever else. That way, Windows is just Windows until it hits the OEM. And MS applications would no longer have any reason to run on only one platform. That way, we wouldn't need to talk about bundling every browser in existence to negate the advantage that IE has over the others.
Of course the EU doesn't have the power to break up a US based corporation, and the DOJ blew the one chance they had to create a competitive market for desktop applications and operating systems. The only thing that has brought some semblance of competition back to the market is Microsoft's own inability to deal with change, and their own incompetence.
Already exists in the form of the 'Broadcast Flag'. Hasn't been used much though, as the broadcasters know it'd cause backlash. Coupled with the fact it'd be ineffective, it does make it unlikely that the broadcast flag will see a lot of usage.
3. They have to improve their product quality. That will be a huge challenge given their code base, and maybe Windows 7 will be a substantial quality improvement. The record for Microsoft seems to be "every other product is OK" (Win 98 was much better than Win 95, Win XP is much better than Win 2k, hopefully Win 7 will be much better than Vista."
I disagree with your assessments of Windows. Windows 98 was better than Windows 95 in some small ways, but Win95 was much more stable. You could usually run Win95 for a week before rebooting. Win98 would often get to the point where it'd bluescreen daily, especially if you went more than 6 months without reinstalling fresh. Win98SE was managed to get close to the stability of Win95, which isn't really saying much.
I found Win2K to be the best release of Windows ever. Solid NT code base with a clean and quick interface, with the win32 goodies from the 98 code base. I thought XP merely added bloat, annoying intrusions, and menus rearranged for no reason. XP did improve as it went along though, and it has come to the point where 2K is missing too much modern functionality due to lack of support from MS and OEMs. XP has far better support for wireless, laptops, etc. I think Win2K was the better OS though, even though it was allowed to die.
I think Win2K's achilles heel was horrendous security, thanks to putting the network workstation services of the NT era onto the public internet. Too many remote holes. At least Win98 users had to do something stupid to be infected - Win2K merely needed a network connection.
I do agree Vista sucked. But to me, it was their second bad release of Windows in a row. They made Vista even worse than an OS released 7 year ago, that wasn't very good to begin with.
Bush saved the company from being broken up by the DOJ. The DOJ's case against MS had already been won, but under a Bush administration, it seems they didn't worry too much about imposing a penalty or having strict compliance. That wouldn't have been the case under Clinton's DOJ, and maybe not under a Gore one either.
So I guess Bush may have been a turning point for them, in that he let them continue as a single company.
Both the US and European courts disagree. By their legal definition of monopoly, Microsoft has one. That in itself isn't illegal. Abusing that monopoly power to take over other markets is what is illegal. And they've been convicted of it time and time again.
It is really a shame that the US court case basically disappeared once Bush came into power. That trial covered a lot more issues than merely bundling IE to kill Netscape. Some shady deals with OEMs, and many other predatory business practices, came to light then and since then. But the Bush DOJ didn't really see the need to do anything about it, despite already getting a conviction.
Nowadays Windows is shrinking in relevance at such a rate that it may not make much sense to intervene. They're about 10 years too late to make a difference to those companies and the markets harmed by these tactics. It seems forcing MS to be careful about anti-trust issues is helping their current competitors though, so that is a small victory.
One of my roommates had a 2.4GHz phone that knocked out the wireless connection no matter which channel we had either device set to. Quite annoying.
Even Sun's employees seem to be a bit annoyed with the product marketing there:
"Back in the 90's this was the Netscape Enterprise Server, which later morphed into the iPlanet Web Server during the Sun|Netscape Alliance. After some years it was renamed the SunONE Web Server and most recently renamed again to the JES Web Server (Sun just like to keep you confused, thus the constant renaming of the product!)"
Pretty much what it is. But the Vista name has too much "baggage" associated with it. Everyone is staying with XP and waiting for Windows 7, so MS is going to deliver it. Even if it is just Vista again.
Simple christmas tree made out of wireless sensor network hardware:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9114468111694568337&hl=en
Using 22 MicaZ motes, one displaying a counter on the LEDs and broadcasting, the rest listening and displaying what they receive on their LEDs.
Growing up, my examples of "right wing" financial dealing involved Brian Mulroney as Prime Minister and Grant Devine as Premier of Saskatchewan.
Both of them left their respective governments deep in debt. It was the Liberals who came in and stopped the debt from ballooning out of control in Canada. And it is the current minority Conservative government that has started running deficits again.
Provincially, Devine left Saskatchewan in a ridiculous pile of debt. The "left wing" NDP party came in and straightened out the finances after he was gone, and a number of people in Devine's party had a criminal record for stealing money from the province.
I do think other provinces are a different story for sure, but trying to say the Conservatives create "small" debt is hilarious considering what Mulroney and Devine did.
Well, we could complain that XFCE and Xubuntu isn't getting any help, but since it is based on GTK as well, they'll get some benefits to that work. And obviously anything that goes into X and GL drivers can't hurt any desktop environment.
MS apologists used the same argument to defend Microsoft Windows' position in the market.
Having a monopoly in and of itself is not a crime. Microsoft wasn't guilt of anything by virtue of making a product that most people wanted (or at least purchased anyhow).
What is a crime is obtaining or maintaining that monopoly with underhanded means. MS did this through their dealings with OEMs, among other ways.
It is also a crime to use that monopoly to hurt competition in other sectors. The big part of the MS case was their use of Windows to take over the browser market, though it applies to many products.
For a trail to proceed against Google, it would have to be shown they actually have a monopoly to begin with, and then that they abused it somehow. Given the number of products and services has, it was inevitable that they'd draw scrutiny.
Well, the Phoenix/Firebird browsers were actually very lean and simple browsers. It truly was a Mozilla browser, without the painfully big footprint of the suite. However, somewhere along the line, it got bloated again.
Yep, not only do the users hate it, but it also doesn't even work. And from a technical standpoint, it never can work. Why anyone thinks it makes good business sense to annoy your customers for absolutely no technical gains is anyone's guess.