It's about time. Although it'll obviously hit the appeals process, the decision has the split beginning in 90 days. (Hopefully it'll get expidited to the Supremes, who can save everyone time by letting it stand without hearing it)
At any rate, given that I live in Bellevue, not more than a mile from MS, I believe I'll be cruising by and taunting them today. It's childish I know, but I think I deserve a chance to vent after putting up with them for so long.;)
Well *MANY* people working in the manga and anime fields in Japan got their start making doujinshi (fan-created comics, frequently of very high quality) and selling them at the Comic Markets.
It's basically the minors - why crack down on the next generation of professionals?
Wish that more American companies were as smart about this sort of thing.
You can't own information. You _CAN_ be the only person allowed to do certain things with it, but that's not at all the same. (copyright is: a temporary monopoly on the distribution of copies of the music, sometimes)
However, what he was complaining about was that copyright holders are attempting to control how he can use material he paid for a copy of which flies in the face of the first amendment and the tradition of first sale.
As for RMS, you're missing two issues. First, that the GPL only kicks in if you want to redistribute someone elses' GPL'ed code. You may of course use it in any other way you want, which is traditional for all copyrighted material. Copyright has nothing to do with use. It concerns itself with some, but not all cases of distribution of copies.
Moneyed copyright holders are trying to change this even though it's unconstitutional. Their efforts are a Bad Thing.
And of course, if there were no copyrights on software (personally I can accept copyrights, but the current system both sucks and blows) then while the GPL would no longer work, there would be no point in hiding source code - people could legally copy everything anyway. I suspect RMS would not have as big a problem with that as you might think. The GPL is only a good solution within the current rules.
But the point remains, no one owns information. It's not property. It's nothing like property. Attempts to treat it as though it were are doomed to failure, which is why the law doesn't do that anyway. Copyright isn't property law.
The specific technologies used in the new MS optical mouse were developed at Aligent. (formerly a part of HP) MS's contribution was the case, not the technology.
One other question for the crowd: Why is it that people obessed with making money are never called zealots?
Well, if I remember right, the Zealots were a fanatical religious group in Roman-occupied Judea who were trying to get rid of the Romans. (and didn't really do so well - the Romans were powerful and determined to stay)
So I'd say that while any group of fanatics can be labeled zealots it's most appropriate for religious (and religious-like) oriented fanatics.
Besides, people obsessed with money are already called greedy. And if they don't utilize their money, but instead just keep it around (uncommon now, but more common when usury was generally criminal) they're miserly too.
Saying 'Bill Clinton is a woman' is not libellous, because no reasonable person is going to believe it. Libel is not simply a true/untrue thing. There's a lot more to it than that, and it's generally considered to be a Good Thing when it's difficult to find some communication slander or libel b/c it preserves a lot of additional speech.
Any attempt to restrict freedom of speech must be examined *very* carefully and still kept to an absolute minimum.
Congratulations. I believe that you're the first person I've run across who is familiar with ICANN that does not believe (unless a lot of sarcasm is going over my head here) that they're controlled by corporate interests.
Without this being enforced by InterNIC anymore though where are you getting this from? I find it unlikely that there's legal precedent that.com invariably shows commercial intent (implying that.net shows intent to provide network services and.org implies a non-commercial entity, etc.)
This might fly in other countries which more closely control their namespace (e.g. only permitting commercial concerns a single domain, requiring a pre-existing trademark/service mark etc.) but not in the US these days.
Well, while man has always dreamed of destroying the Sun, I don't think that the same can be said about the Moon. But perhaps we can convince Bill to move to the Sun instead? (at night... when it sets;)
This is weird. First you claim that MS developed a product that was at least perceived as good in order to gain their monopoly. Then you say that because they did that in order to _get_ a monopoly, they must not be sitting pretty now that they have one.
MS is one of the most paranoid companies around. This would be good in virtually any other company - it keeps them healthy and active. Companies that get complacent do tend to stop innovating. The much famed Xerox PARC invented all kinds of amazing things that Xerox never capitalized on because they didn't see the point in a copier company selling an unrelated niche product like laser printers.
However, MS has carried this to an extreme. They've earned quite a reputation for attacking other companies with FUD; copying other people's developments rather than do original work and leapfrog them; in a few cases outright illegal activity (Stacker, anyone?) and anticompetitive practices. (threatening to raise prices if OEMs attempt to support MS competitors)
If MS were smaller, Dell could safely preinstall Linux on their machines no matter what MS thinks. But MS is a 500 pound gorilla, and can't be ignored. You'd have to be blind to think otherwise. This means that competition all throughout the industry is harmed. And competition is good for everyone, even if it may be bad for some people.
It's better to have that than to have many monopolies. (the only way to even attempt competiting with a big company, all else being equal, is to be just as big - which leads towards even more harmful monopolies, collusion, etc.) Not regulating them will result in just such a dismal future. We've come perilously close before back in the days when antitrust laws were first enacted. And there are always companies that try anyway.
But why should MS have to behave like any other business to sustain their monopoly? If two similar companies are competing in the marketplace their behavior is predictable; they'll try to out-do each other. MS can buy them out. Or order their customers not to do business with the upstart. Or spread enough FUD and imitations to harm their competitor's business.
None of this is because MS cares about the new business. They may indeed expand into it. But first and foremost they have to protect their existing monopolies. Then their goal will be to acquire new monopolies. A monopoly in operating systems was leveraged into a monopoly in office suites. OSes were leveraged in getting a monopoly in browsers (remember, Netscape claimed that applications that ran within the browser would be platform agnostic - as plain a threat to Windows as can be; all you would need is a machine that ran Netscape)
Sometimes (not always) MS acquires their new monopoly by introducing a product that really is better. But the law does not deal solely in actions, it also deals with intent. Any action that a monopoly takes is going to have to be carefully scrutinized because anti-competitve intent is impermissible as long as we want the economy to work for us. Supporting monopolies because they may have better products when they aggressively expand is being penny wise and pound foolish.
As for the morality issue, you're misinterpreting an analogy. I didn't say that monopolies or businesses were immoral. I will say that they're ammoral: they are non-human organizations. PEOPLE have morals. Companies are incapable of having morals.
Of course, _many_ religions and philosophies from around the world and different times find many business practices immoral. I personally think that the goals of businesses must be made subservient to the goals of moral people. It is unacceptable morally for a business to engage in behavior which is immoral. Is it okay for Nike to make shoes in sweatshops? Only if money is more important than human beings. I have real problems accepting that idea. But these are the kinds of paths that averice leads to.
At any rate what I was actually attempting to illustrate, though you didn't realize it, was that the poison can sometimes be found in the dose.
Algae that takes advantage of ultra-favorable conditions causes red tides that kill off huge amounts of other life. Cancer is the uncontrolled reproduction of cells to the point where it is deadly to the organism afflicted with it. Total freedom in human beings leads to an anarchy that is terrible to experience.
Why would a business with too much power be any different? Particularly when the germane goal of society is not successful businesses but the opportunity for successful businesses. Monopolies eradicate such opportunities, as has been shown again and again and again. While the MS case is breaking new ground in some places, it's generally the same old tune.
You are in fact, wrong. The existance of a monopoly does not depend on having no competitors. It depends on having no competitors able to significantly effect the monopoly.
There were other phone companies besides ATT when it was broken up. There were other oil companies when Standard Oil was broken up. There were other movie theaters and studios when they were broken up (yes, they all used to be parts of the same companies - it would be 'bad' for the economy if any movie theater could play any movie, they said)
Linux, BeOS, BSD, MacOS, etc. all added up together are not capable of budging MS off the top of the hill. THAT's why MS is a monopoly.
It doesn't even matter why MS was able to become a monopoly. It could be entirely legal w/o changing the current situation. For a hundred years, MS has known full well that the government makes monopolies play by DIFFERENT rules because they're too dangerous to the economy. MS broke those rules. Even if Red Hat or Be or Apple did the same things, they're allowed to because it doesn't harm as many people.
This is how the world works. Your naivete doesn't really change things, I'm afraid.
Nope. Do you really think that IBM would have permitted microcomputers to evolve beyond hobbyist kits like the Altair or Apple I if they'd had a free reign? Their only significant competitor was DEC, and DEC was not nearly as strong as IBM.
IBM would have eventually put out microcomputers anyway (there sure are a lot of non IBM-compatable platforms out there now; imagine if they'd been more aggressive)
MS would have never gotten a contract for the DOS, and in the unlikely event that they had, it's certain that they'd never be allowed to keep it. (and resell it to cloners)
Lord only knows what would have happened to Phoenix and Compaq. Their supply lines probably would have been cut out from under them, besides being hit with trade secret lawsuits. (intended to drain their cash reserves) I expect that Intel would have been bought out.
IBM used to be incredibly nasty. The current thriving computing industry is what you get when you prevent a monopoly from harming innovation and competition because it's only interested in self-preservation.
Why is it so far a stretch to come to the realization that the industry would be doing BETTER than it is now, if we eliminated MS's ability to harm it out of self-preservation?
Why is it wrong for the government not to have these laws? Do you like a working economy? Do you like your personal freedoms? Do you reasonably expect that big businesses could give a damn about either one as long as they remain successful?
We have checks and balances in our government to prevent abuses. Laws like these are the checks on businesses to prevent abuses.
Monopolies are the toxic waste of capitalism - they break it. A monopoly, by definition does not have to respond to the pressures of a capitalist economy. They do not have to innovate or concern themselves to any degree with the wishes of their customers or the competition of other businesses.
In order to preserve the greatest degree of freedom, we sacrifice as small an amount as possible of our freedom. Without laws I could kill people for no reason. But so too could I be killed. Better then to give up that freedom, assume restrictions on my actions but be able to exercise all my other freedoms at my lesiure.
Well, in order to preserve capitalism we have to regulate and break up monopolies because they're too successful for the economy and society to remain healthy. Cancers are cells that are reproducing _too_ well. Monopolies are just the same.
IIRC the PlayStation was basically an SNES with a CD drive that Sony and Nintendo developed together. But Nintendo never used it and Sony got tired of getting jerked around. They built a better standalone unit.
Since it wouldn't be the original PlayStation (even though that was never sold) it needed a different name. Just as 'extortion' sounds better because of the 'x', the new one was the PlayStation X. Then they dropped the X from the name, but not the acronym.
The PS2 should have been the PS3 or the PSY of course, but what the hell.
Re:Tenchi Muyo - it's never that simple...
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Let's not even discuss the character designs from BGC2040...
Sylia is Ifurita, Linna is Nabiki, Priss is Joan Jett and Nene is a blonde.... shudder.
AIC is getting annoying, which sucks because they've done a lot of good stuff. (including the joke Knight Saber Pretty Sammy;)
We still have prohibition on drugs. It's not working well and it's increasing a lot of crime. There was hardly even any significant drug use back then (I'd trade the current situation for a few people in opium dens)
But IIRC the last shift in parties - not the position they took, but one party arising from nowhere - was the Republican party popping up just prior to the Civil War.
The Perotistas suprised everyone though and there's definately the opportunity now for a change.
Still, vote for an alternative. Even if you don't think they'll win there's no reason for people casting secret ballots to HAVE to vote for a sure winner. If enough people do it the results could be suprising.
I'm not arguing against capitalism. I've said so all over/. for quite a while. I'm arguing against capitalism being considered more important than a society that functions well, preserves as many human rights as possible and is good to live in.
I generally find that monopolies (particularly those which are only as regulated as much as any other business) turn that upside down. Capitalism is not more important than the preservation of human freedoms or a working society or that society not harming those within it, but MS and it's bretheren act as though they believe just the opposite.
Capitalism is good when it matches the 'shape' of a good society. It's bad when it gets out of line, and that's when we restrain it. If something better comes along (hasn't yet) I'll take a close look. I'm not married to capitalism for God's sake, if there's an alternative that REALLY is better. This has just never come up.
Still, if you're looking for an extreme statement from me (it won't be in support of Sun. I'm generally neutral towards them, though they've been mishandling Java for some time now because they're also greedy) it would be that I don't like corporations at all. I think that people should be able to have their own businesses. I think that partnerships are just fine. But a business that exists independently of any person at all? Bad idea. It gets worse when you assign a _thing_ the rights that God has granted to us human beings. No sir, I don't like it. I don't see the advantage, but I do see a lot of problems.
So what? A monopoly exists when a single entity (or cartel) controls the market. There can be competitors, they're just ineffectual. Imagine putting a midget next to a giant. A million midgets are not going to stop the giant from squishing them.
I like Linux, BeOS, MacOS, etc. but I don't pretend that they are as big players as MS is. No one kow-tows to them. When Be is as abusive and all-powerful as MS is, I'll rail against them too.
We do not live in a free market by any means. If we did then you'd have to buy your life from the people who would threaten to take it away on the streets.
The economy is bound by laws. This is a good thing, because people are more frickin' important than the economy. Free markets have slaves. Free markets have unsafe, polluting factories operated by children and produce unhealthy, defective goods.
MS knew the rules - antitrust is not new. They chose to break the rules. They could afford lawyers since day one. (Bill has been loaded as all get-out since he was born) Well... they went ahead and broke the law anyway. Why should they be allowed to get away with it?
With AT&T, by the way, there was choice. Not much at all, but there were other phone companies in scattered pockets around the country. The existance of choice does not mean a monopoly cannot exist. A monopoly simply has so much power that any choices you have, added together still don't amount to a hill of beans.
All non-MS OSes together don't have nearly it's marketshare. MS exerts too much control to be healthy for consumers AND the marketplace. Monopolies do not foster capitalism, they impair it because it threatens them. We prune them for overall health, just like we do plants. Or excise cancers.
Hey buddy, guess what? The world is not run on capitalism. Now I'm not advocating communism (naive at best - Russia was more of a fascist dictatorship, not communist at all) or socialism.
But economic systems are here to serve people. Capitalism is the best of the lot because it pretty accurately follows how human beings actually behave and how our freedoms are used. But it's not perfect. Monopolies are the giant failure of capitalism.
And capitalism is just how we happen to do things. Lord knows the law takes precedence over capitalism as long as it doesn't impact on human rights (which are a seperate matter; it's unlikely that property is a human right if you actually think about it seriously)
Please tell me how a single entity with no incentive to compete against anyone (they can squish them instead; this is not competition) and no incentive to do anything for their customers, only to protect their monopoly is capitalist. It is not. Monopolies hinder competition, and competition is at the heart of capitalism.
This is why we have laws which regulate the economy. Because when the economy begins to harm people the people must necessarily win. There's no other tolerable solution.
Futhermore you should turn in your Nobel Prize for Economics, because you'd realize that a monopoly doesn't have to be 100% in order to be a monopoly. It need only have such a commanding presence that it is unassailable. Think of a guy with a stick trying to invade a castle. It's not going to happen.
Linux is getting better all the time. But it's not a big player yet in most of the fields that MS is a big player in. MS's monopoly has not been successfully challenged yet in the market, because the market is broken as long as MS is around. (or any other monopoly; IBM was about the same many years ago. MS wouldn't be here if not for IBM being forced to tone things down)
Besides... you're apparently fond of the idea that if you don't like the rules you don't have to play at all. Well the rules have been on the books for a century and MS agreed when it decided to do business in the US. No one made them.
The govt is (suprisingly) acting in a way that is pro-freedom (protecting ours from MS), pro-competition (making MS get off their fat asses and compete for a change) and actually quite moral. MS is amoral anyway, by definition.
I don't want them to suffer. I just want MS to stop befouling the industry. MS has harmed innovation a hell of a lot more than the government ever has.
Really? I'm sure I remember hearing him on NPR around Super Tuesday and he was virtually reading off of an MS-written speech. It had all the usual language (innovation being the big one - MS wouldn't know innovation if it bit them in the ass)
Course I loathe Bush and Gore. I don't like greens much, but I may vote for Nader. This country really could use a 'Sensible Party' instead of all these jerks.
If a judge is biased there's still some leeway - he must still be as fair as possible. You're NEVER going to get unbiased judges. You think the Supremes sit in underground meditation rooms all day and only get hauled out when something happens?
But from what I understand, what judges really really hate is when one side tries to fool them. I heartily encourage you to go read the early Slate reports about the case (these are from winter '98). They're really excellent. Of course as soon as MS found out (they own Slate) they tried a different reporter (who also fell asleep; this is boring stuff, you'd fall asleep too) and then a true Microsoftie. Then they quit altogether.
Wish I still had a copy hanging around.
Anyway, the big stumbling block is the Findings of Fact. If you can read that and still claim MS is not guilty then you're truly weird. I don't think that it will be overturned in the end.
I'm sorry but you're way off base. I'm a Mac and Linux user, and I've followed non-Wintel stuff for years. If you think that MS is not a monopoly you're clearly not looking around.
What OS do ~90% of all microcomputers come with? Who's applications are bundled with it? Who's browser?
It ain't Linux, buddy.
Being a monopoly does NOT mean you have no competitors. Even at it's height, there were US phone companies other than Bell (which was as clear an example of a monopoly as you get). What it means is that you have no competitors who can have enough of an impact on your monopoly that you need to give a rat's ass.
MS could burn hundred dollar bills to heat their offices and still not worry about Linux, the Mac, BeOS, etc. It's actually worse because they do. (they don't need to, they do anyway)
The government understands the industry better than many insiders do. Half of them just want to usurp MS and take over themselves. Many others have a naive faith in the market, despite this attitude having lent a hand in the creation of MS.
Capitalism isn't perfect - monopolies are both a frequent end product and yet not at all capitalistic themselves; economies serve people, not the other way around. We don't have to put up with it. Not that there are better systems yet, just that raw capitalism isn't good enough for human consumption.
Remember, IBM was nearly broken up. When it was under the government's eye, it inadvertantly permitted the entire microcomputer revolution to occur. MS owes it's power to govt. antitrust action against IBM. Just think about all the cool stuff we're missing out on because MS is hindering innovation, as all monopolies do.
Well I'm thinking baseball here, and the single best thing that can possibly happen to baseball is to take away their monopoly. (who the hell came up with that bright idea?)
No monopoly means that the major leagues would be open to everyone, professional and amature alike, provided that the team could demonstrate some consistant level of skill. (hopefully this would not exclude the Red Sox;)
So I'd expect to see the number of teams explode. Here in Seattle, rather than having the Mariners we might have the Seattle Mariners, the Redmond Monopolies, Renton Airplanes, Mercer Island Snobs, Freemon Communists, etc. I'd find that rooting for an actual home team a lot more fun. Especially if seats didn't cost much.
This is why the minor leagues are fun, and the major leagues suck ass. I don't care how good the team is so much as I want to have a good time.
Currently teams justify getting public money by threatening to move out. With low barriers to entry, any team that left would probably get replaced fast. It wouldn't work anymore. Teams could build their own stadiums and charge what they liked, or use public facilities and charge no fee for seats instead using merchandise as a revenue source.
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It's about time. Although it'll obviously hit the appeals process, the decision has the split beginning in 90 days. (Hopefully it'll get expidited to the Supremes, who can save everyone time by letting it stand without hearing it)
;)
At any rate, given that I live in Bellevue, not more than a mile from MS, I believe I'll be cruising by and taunting them today. It's childish I know, but I think I deserve a chance to vent after putting up with them for so long.
Well *MANY* people working in the manga and anime fields in Japan got their start making doujinshi (fan-created comics, frequently of very high quality) and selling them at the Comic Markets.
It's basically the minors - why crack down on the next generation of professionals?
Wish that more American companies were as smart about this sort of thing.
Again?
You can't own information. You _CAN_ be the only person allowed to do certain things with it, but that's not at all the same. (copyright is: a temporary monopoly on the distribution of copies of the music, sometimes)
However, what he was complaining about was that copyright holders are attempting to control how he can use material he paid for a copy of which flies in the face of the first amendment and the tradition of first sale.
As for RMS, you're missing two issues. First, that the GPL only kicks in if you want to redistribute someone elses' GPL'ed code. You may of course use it in any other way you want, which is traditional for all copyrighted material. Copyright has nothing to do with use. It concerns itself with some, but not all cases of distribution of copies.
Moneyed copyright holders are trying to change this even though it's unconstitutional. Their efforts are a Bad Thing.
And of course, if there were no copyrights on software (personally I can accept copyrights, but the current system both sucks and blows) then while the GPL would no longer work, there would be no point in hiding source code - people could legally copy everything anyway. I suspect RMS would not have as big a problem with that as you might think. The GPL is only a good solution within the current rules.
But the point remains, no one owns information. It's not property. It's nothing like property. Attempts to treat it as though it were are doomed to failure, which is why the law doesn't do that anyway. Copyright isn't property law.
The specific technologies used in the new MS optical mouse were developed at Aligent. (formerly a part of HP) MS's contribution was the case, not the technology.
Well, if I remember right, the Zealots were a fanatical religious group in Roman-occupied Judea who were trying to get rid of the Romans. (and didn't really do so well - the Romans were powerful and determined to stay)
So I'd say that while any group of fanatics can be labeled zealots it's most appropriate for religious (and religious-like) oriented fanatics.
Besides, people obsessed with money are already called greedy. And if they don't utilize their money, but instead just keep it around (uncommon now, but more common when usury was generally criminal) they're miserly too.
Saying 'Bill Clinton is a woman' is not libellous, because no reasonable person is going to believe it. Libel is not simply a true/untrue thing. There's a lot more to it than that, and it's generally considered to be a Good Thing when it's difficult to find some communication slander or libel b/c it preserves a lot of additional speech.
Any attempt to restrict freedom of speech must be examined *very* carefully and still kept to an absolute minimum.
Congratulations. I believe that you're the first person I've run across who is familiar with ICANN that does not believe (unless a lot of sarcasm is going over my head here) that they're controlled by corporate interests.
Without this being enforced by InterNIC anymore though where are you getting this from? I find it unlikely that there's legal precedent that .com invariably shows commercial intent (implying that .net shows intent to provide network services and .org implies a non-commercial entity, etc.)
This might fly in other countries which more closely control their namespace (e.g. only permitting commercial concerns a single domain, requiring a pre-existing trademark/service mark etc.) but not in the US these days.
Well, while man has always dreamed of destroying the Sun, I don't think that the same can be said about the Moon. But perhaps we can convince Bill to move to the Sun instead? (at night... when it sets ;)
This is weird. First you claim that MS developed a product that was at least perceived as good in order to gain their monopoly. Then you say that because they did that in order to _get_ a monopoly, they must not be sitting pretty now that they have one.
MS is one of the most paranoid companies around. This would be good in virtually any other company - it keeps them healthy and active. Companies that get complacent do tend to stop innovating. The much famed Xerox PARC invented all kinds of amazing things that Xerox never capitalized on because they didn't see the point in a copier company selling an unrelated niche product like laser printers.
However, MS has carried this to an extreme. They've earned quite a reputation for attacking other companies with FUD; copying other people's developments rather than do original work and leapfrog them; in a few cases outright illegal activity (Stacker, anyone?) and anticompetitive practices. (threatening to raise prices if OEMs attempt to support MS competitors)
If MS were smaller, Dell could safely preinstall Linux on their machines no matter what MS thinks. But MS is a 500 pound gorilla, and can't be ignored. You'd have to be blind to think otherwise. This means that competition all throughout the industry is harmed. And competition is good for everyone, even if it may be bad for some people.
It's better to have that than to have many monopolies. (the only way to even attempt competiting with a big company, all else being equal, is to be just as big - which leads towards even more harmful monopolies, collusion, etc.) Not regulating them will result in just such a dismal future. We've come perilously close before back in the days when antitrust laws were first enacted. And there are always companies that try anyway.
But why should MS have to behave like any other business to sustain their monopoly? If two similar companies are competing in the marketplace their behavior is predictable; they'll try to out-do each other. MS can buy them out. Or order their customers not to do business with the upstart. Or spread enough FUD and imitations to harm their competitor's business.
None of this is because MS cares about the new business. They may indeed expand into it. But first and foremost they have to protect their existing monopolies. Then their goal will be to acquire new monopolies. A monopoly in operating systems was leveraged into a monopoly in office suites. OSes were leveraged in getting a monopoly in browsers (remember, Netscape claimed that applications that ran within the browser would be platform agnostic - as plain a threat to Windows as can be; all you would need is a machine that ran Netscape)
Sometimes (not always) MS acquires their new monopoly by introducing a product that really is better. But the law does not deal solely in actions, it also deals with intent. Any action that a monopoly takes is going to have to be carefully scrutinized because anti-competitve intent is impermissible as long as we want the economy to work for us. Supporting monopolies because they may have better products when they aggressively expand is being penny wise and pound foolish.
As for the morality issue, you're misinterpreting an analogy. I didn't say that monopolies or businesses were immoral. I will say that they're ammoral: they are non-human organizations. PEOPLE have morals. Companies are incapable of having morals.
Of course, _many_ religions and philosophies from around the world and different times find many business practices immoral. I personally think that the goals of businesses must be made subservient to the goals of moral people. It is unacceptable morally for a business to engage in behavior which is immoral. Is it okay for Nike to make shoes in sweatshops? Only if money is more important than human beings. I have real problems accepting that idea. But these are the kinds of paths that averice leads to.
At any rate what I was actually attempting to illustrate, though you didn't realize it, was that the poison can sometimes be found in the dose.
Algae that takes advantage of ultra-favorable conditions causes red tides that kill off huge amounts of other life. Cancer is the uncontrolled reproduction of cells to the point where it is deadly to the organism afflicted with it. Total freedom in human beings leads to an anarchy that is terrible to experience.
Why would a business with too much power be any different? Particularly when the germane goal of society is not successful businesses but the opportunity for successful businesses. Monopolies eradicate such opportunities, as has been shown again and again and again. While the MS case is breaking new ground in some places, it's generally the same old tune.
You are in fact, wrong. The existance of a monopoly does not depend on having no competitors. It depends on having no competitors able to significantly effect the monopoly.
There were other phone companies besides ATT when it was broken up. There were other oil companies when Standard Oil was broken up. There were other movie theaters and studios when they were broken up (yes, they all used to be parts of the same companies - it would be 'bad' for the economy if any movie theater could play any movie, they said)
Linux, BeOS, BSD, MacOS, etc. all added up together are not capable of budging MS off the top of the hill. THAT's why MS is a monopoly.
It doesn't even matter why MS was able to become a monopoly. It could be entirely legal w/o changing the current situation. For a hundred years, MS has known full well that the government makes monopolies play by DIFFERENT rules because they're too dangerous to the economy. MS broke those rules. Even if Red Hat or Be or Apple did the same things, they're allowed to because it doesn't harm as many people.
This is how the world works. Your naivete doesn't really change things, I'm afraid.
Nope. Do you really think that IBM would have permitted microcomputers to evolve beyond hobbyist kits like the Altair or Apple I if they'd had a free reign? Their only significant competitor was DEC, and DEC was not nearly as strong as IBM.
IBM would have eventually put out microcomputers anyway (there sure are a lot of non IBM-compatable platforms out there now; imagine if they'd been more aggressive)
MS would have never gotten a contract for the DOS, and in the unlikely event that they had, it's certain that they'd never be allowed to keep it. (and resell it to cloners)
Lord only knows what would have happened to Phoenix and Compaq. Their supply lines probably would have been cut out from under them, besides being hit with trade secret lawsuits. (intended to drain their cash reserves) I expect that Intel would have been bought out.
IBM used to be incredibly nasty. The current thriving computing industry is what you get when you prevent a monopoly from harming innovation and competition because it's only interested in self-preservation.
Why is it so far a stretch to come to the realization that the industry would be doing BETTER than it is now, if we eliminated MS's ability to harm it out of self-preservation?
Why is it wrong for the government not to have these laws? Do you like a working economy? Do you like your personal freedoms? Do you reasonably expect that big businesses could give a damn about either one as long as they remain successful?
We have checks and balances in our government to prevent abuses. Laws like these are the checks on businesses to prevent abuses.
Monopolies are the toxic waste of capitalism - they break it. A monopoly, by definition does not have to respond to the pressures of a capitalist economy. They do not have to innovate or concern themselves to any degree with the wishes of their customers or the competition of other businesses.
In order to preserve the greatest degree of freedom, we sacrifice as small an amount as possible of our freedom. Without laws I could kill people for no reason. But so too could I be killed. Better then to give up that freedom, assume restrictions on my actions but be able to exercise all my other freedoms at my lesiure.
Well, in order to preserve capitalism we have to regulate and break up monopolies because they're too successful for the economy and society to remain healthy. Cancers are cells that are reproducing _too_ well. Monopolies are just the same.
They skipped it because it would have been confusing.
IIRC the PlayStation was basically an SNES with a CD drive that Sony and Nintendo developed together. But Nintendo never used it and Sony got tired of getting jerked around. They built a better standalone unit.
Since it wouldn't be the original PlayStation (even though that was never sold) it needed a different name. Just as 'extortion' sounds better because of the 'x', the new one was the PlayStation X. Then they dropped the X from the name, but not the acronym.
The PS2 should have been the PS3 or the PSY of course, but what the hell.
Let's not even discuss the character designs from BGC2040...
;)
Sylia is Ifurita, Linna is Nabiki, Priss is Joan Jett and Nene is a blonde.... shudder.
AIC is getting annoying, which sucks because they've done a lot of good stuff. (including the joke Knight Saber Pretty Sammy
We still have prohibition on drugs. It's not working well and it's increasing a lot of crime. There was hardly even any significant drug use back then (I'd trade the current situation for a few people in opium dens)
But IIRC the last shift in parties - not the position they took, but one party arising from nowhere - was the Republican party popping up just prior to the Civil War.
The Perotistas suprised everyone though and there's definately the opportunity now for a change.
Still, vote for an alternative. Even if you don't think they'll win there's no reason for people casting secret ballots to HAVE to vote for a sure winner. If enough people do it the results could be suprising.
I'm not arguing against capitalism. I've said so all over /. for quite a while. I'm arguing against capitalism being considered more important than a society that functions well, preserves as many human rights as possible and is good to live in.
I generally find that monopolies (particularly those which are only as regulated as much as any other business) turn that upside down. Capitalism is not more important than the preservation of human freedoms or a working society or that society not harming those within it, but MS and it's bretheren act as though they believe just the opposite.
Capitalism is good when it matches the 'shape' of a good society. It's bad when it gets out of line, and that's when we restrain it. If something better comes along (hasn't yet) I'll take a close look. I'm not married to capitalism for God's sake, if there's an alternative that REALLY is better. This has just never come up.
Still, if you're looking for an extreme statement from me (it won't be in support of Sun. I'm generally neutral towards them, though they've been mishandling Java for some time now because they're also greedy) it would be that I don't like corporations at all. I think that people should be able to have their own businesses. I think that partnerships are just fine. But a business that exists independently of any person at all? Bad idea. It gets worse when you assign a _thing_ the rights that God has granted to us human beings. No sir, I don't like it. I don't see the advantage, but I do see a lot of problems.
So what? A monopoly exists when a single entity (or cartel) controls the market. There can be competitors, they're just ineffectual. Imagine putting a midget next to a giant. A million midgets are not going to stop the giant from squishing them.
I like Linux, BeOS, MacOS, etc. but I don't pretend that they are as big players as MS is. No one kow-tows to them. When Be is as abusive and all-powerful as MS is, I'll rail against them too.
But MS is clearly a monopoly.
We do not live in a free market by any means. If we did then you'd have to buy your life from the people who would threaten to take it away on the streets.
The economy is bound by laws. This is a good thing, because people are more frickin' important than the economy. Free markets have slaves. Free markets have unsafe, polluting factories operated by children and produce unhealthy, defective goods.
MS knew the rules - antitrust is not new. They chose to break the rules. They could afford lawyers since day one. (Bill has been loaded as all get-out since he was born) Well... they went ahead and broke the law anyway. Why should they be allowed to get away with it?
With AT&T, by the way, there was choice. Not much at all, but there were other phone companies in scattered pockets around the country. The existance of choice does not mean a monopoly cannot exist. A monopoly simply has so much power that any choices you have, added together still don't amount to a hill of beans.
All non-MS OSes together don't have nearly it's marketshare. MS exerts too much control to be healthy for consumers AND the marketplace. Monopolies do not foster capitalism, they impair it because it threatens them. We prune them for overall health, just like we do plants. Or excise cancers.
Hey buddy, guess what? The world is not run on capitalism. Now I'm not advocating communism (naive at best - Russia was more of a fascist dictatorship, not communist at all) or socialism.
But economic systems are here to serve people. Capitalism is the best of the lot because it pretty accurately follows how human beings actually behave and how our freedoms are used. But it's not perfect. Monopolies are the giant failure of capitalism.
And capitalism is just how we happen to do things. Lord knows the law takes precedence over capitalism as long as it doesn't impact on human rights (which are a seperate matter; it's unlikely that property is a human right if you actually think about it seriously)
Please tell me how a single entity with no incentive to compete against anyone (they can squish them instead; this is not competition) and no incentive to do anything for their customers, only to protect their monopoly is capitalist. It is not. Monopolies hinder competition, and competition is at the heart of capitalism.
This is why we have laws which regulate the economy. Because when the economy begins to harm people the people must necessarily win. There's no other tolerable solution.
Futhermore you should turn in your Nobel Prize for Economics, because you'd realize that a monopoly doesn't have to be 100% in order to be a monopoly. It need only have such a commanding presence that it is unassailable. Think of a guy with a stick trying to invade a castle. It's not going to happen.
Linux is getting better all the time. But it's not a big player yet in most of the fields that MS is a big player in. MS's monopoly has not been successfully challenged yet in the market, because the market is broken as long as MS is around. (or any other monopoly; IBM was about the same many years ago. MS wouldn't be here if not for IBM being forced to tone things down)
Besides... you're apparently fond of the idea that if you don't like the rules you don't have to play at all. Well the rules have been on the books for a century and MS agreed when it decided to do business in the US. No one made them.
The govt is (suprisingly) acting in a way that is pro-freedom (protecting ours from MS), pro-competition (making MS get off their fat asses and compete for a change) and actually quite moral. MS is amoral anyway, by definition.
I don't want them to suffer. I just want MS to stop befouling the industry. MS has harmed innovation a hell of a lot more than the government ever has.
Really? I'm sure I remember hearing him on NPR around Super Tuesday and he was virtually reading off of an MS-written speech. It had all the usual language (innovation being the big one - MS wouldn't know innovation if it bit them in the ass)
Course I loathe Bush and Gore. I don't like greens much, but I may vote for Nader. This country really could use a 'Sensible Party' instead of all these jerks.
If a judge is biased there's still some leeway - he must still be as fair as possible. You're NEVER going to get unbiased judges. You think the Supremes sit in underground meditation rooms all day and only get hauled out when something happens?
But from what I understand, what judges really really hate is when one side tries to fool them. I heartily encourage you to go read the early Slate reports about the case (these are from winter '98). They're really excellent. Of course as soon as MS found out (they own Slate) they tried a different reporter (who also fell asleep; this is boring stuff, you'd fall asleep too) and then a true Microsoftie. Then they quit altogether.
Wish I still had a copy hanging around.
Anyway, the big stumbling block is the Findings of Fact. If you can read that and still claim MS is not guilty then you're truly weird. I don't think that it will be overturned in the end.
I'm sorry but you're way off base. I'm a Mac and Linux user, and I've followed non-Wintel stuff for years. If you think that MS is not a monopoly you're clearly not looking around.
What OS do ~90% of all microcomputers come with? Who's applications are bundled with it? Who's browser?
It ain't Linux, buddy.
Being a monopoly does NOT mean you have no competitors. Even at it's height, there were US phone companies other than Bell (which was as clear an example of a monopoly as you get). What it means is that you have no competitors who can have enough of an impact on your monopoly that you need to give a rat's ass.
MS could burn hundred dollar bills to heat their offices and still not worry about Linux, the Mac, BeOS, etc. It's actually worse because they do. (they don't need to, they do anyway)
The government understands the industry better than many insiders do. Half of them just want to usurp MS and take over themselves. Many others have a naive faith in the market, despite this attitude having lent a hand in the creation of MS.
Capitalism isn't perfect - monopolies are both a frequent end product and yet not at all capitalistic themselves; economies serve people, not the other way around. We don't have to put up with it. Not that there are better systems yet, just that raw capitalism isn't good enough for human consumption.
Remember, IBM was nearly broken up. When it was under the government's eye, it inadvertantly permitted the entire microcomputer revolution to occur. MS owes it's power to govt. antitrust action against IBM. Just think about all the cool stuff we're missing out on because MS is hindering innovation, as all monopolies do.
Well I'm thinking baseball here, and the single best thing that can possibly happen to baseball is to take away their monopoly. (who the hell came up with that bright idea?)
;)
No monopoly means that the major leagues would be open to everyone, professional and amature alike, provided that the team could demonstrate some consistant level of skill. (hopefully this would not exclude the Red Sox
So I'd expect to see the number of teams explode. Here in Seattle, rather than having the Mariners we might have the Seattle Mariners, the Redmond Monopolies, Renton Airplanes, Mercer Island Snobs, Freemon Communists, etc. I'd find that rooting for an actual home team a lot more fun. Especially if seats didn't cost much.
This is why the minor leagues are fun, and the major leagues suck ass. I don't care how good the team is so much as I want to have a good time.
Currently teams justify getting public money by threatening to move out. With low barriers to entry, any team that left would probably get replaced fast. It wouldn't work anymore. Teams could build their own stadiums and charge what they liked, or use public facilities and charge no fee for seats instead using merchandise as a revenue source.