Ah, but you've missed the point. I told you already that privacy only exists when you take active measures to ensure it exists. For example, you should assume that every email you send is public, unless you choose to encrypt it. Why? Because you're sending that email through a few hundred or thousand different people all of whome can easily listen in. Likewise, if i'm having sex with my doors wide open and the windows and blinds open, I should assume that people are watching and listening in. Now if I close and lock my doors, and shut the windows and shades, then that's another matter. But why should people assume that their transactions with someone elses money, their conversations across someone elses property and their purchaces from someone elses stock are private unless they take explicit action to make it private.
In otherwords, it's bad now because the information is more accurate? Remember that expansive collections of data are double edged swords, especialy when anyone can access it. Take for example the current rape case from Duke university. The same data that might be used to frame the players being accused is being used to poke thousands of holes in the prosecutions case (i.e. because of movement tracking between ATM, taxi, and access card records, defence shows that one of the accused was at the party during th ealledged rape for a grand total of 10 minutes. Digging further into cell phone records shows that he accused was making phone calls to his girlfried and the taxi company during those 10 minutes.)
It still is a natural law. It's just we've removed ourselves from that sort of communication. Back then if you wanted to have a conversation, you had to meet the person explicitly. These days we use phones, IM, email etc, all of which are analogous to shouting your conversation accross the room in a particular language and being suprised that anyone you understands that language and is within ear shot (all hundred some miles) can listen in.
Let's take a way back machine a little bit. Way back before big faceless corporations, people shopped at corner stores, where the manager knew them by name, knew what their regular order was, and for the habitual customers even had the order ready before the customer came in the store. You couldn't get yourself into too much trouble because everyone in town knew you on sight and all of your local relatives. More often than not the cops knew you by name, and not because you were in trouble but because they were as much a part of the community as you were. Privacy hasn't gone anywhere. If anything the world today has given us MORE privacy than ever before. The difference is not the level of privacy but the range of interested people. Before you worried about the local cops. These days, you only wory about them because they can pass the information to the feds whom you're really worried about. Privacy really honestly does not exist, unless you act in a way to preserve it. In the old days that meant shutting your blinds and not leaving your house. Well you have to do the same thing these days, just electronicaly. Sorry, you can't have a credit card if you want privacy because it isn't your money, it's theirs, and so they have an interest in what you buy. Likewise for your internet and phone connections, use a public service, expect it to be public. The only way to have privacy is to keep to yourself. People don't keep to themselves because it's anti social and destructive. But like it or not, there really wasn't ever any such thing as privacy.
More time between replacements. Basicaly the mouse can operate for x ammount of time on one battery and 2x time on two. So if your batteries die and you can only find one replacement in your bag, that's good enough. Actualy, a lot of devices can do this which is why (even though you shouldn't) you can only replace one or two batties in an electronic device and still have it function.
The policy is not that you can't put anything in right clicks, but that anything that you put in right clicks should be easily accesable from the menus as well. Compare this to windows (or even some of Apple's pro apps) where some functionality is ONLY availible via right click. You can't just browse the menus to see what you can do.
But that to me is what creates new competition. THe more microsoft kills itself, the lower the barrier to entry is, and the harder it is for microsoft to maintain it's power. What it takes though are people willing to compete and innovate. You have to exist beyond your competition's market space. And even better because microsoft would be killing it's own market, it would be pushing people to seek out competitors and actualy make choices in the market.
But we've kind of traveled off the path that we started on. Even if I conceede that threatening to withold your product is bad and should be stopped, it doesn't change my original premise that bundling is bad.
And to the idea of splitting microsoft up, I don't think that would have worked too well. Case in point, the Bells are still in control all over the country.
In the end, what you call extortion, I call business. Every business engages in anti competative behaviors. It's stupid (and potentialy illegal) to engage in behaviors which help your competition. Competition is good because it weeds out the week and forces development. Monopolies occur when one business is good enough at what they do that their competitors can't succeede without special treatment. Naturaly without competition a monopoly will slow. The slower and more stagnant a monopoly gets the lower the barrier to entry becomes and the sooner new and better competition comes along. Government intervention does nothing but prolong the influence and power of the monopoly.
You are deluding yourself if you don't think that AMD tries to sweeten the pot to get vendors to go exclusively with AMD just like Intel does.
Being that the government is supposedly an extension of the will of the people, the government acts to protect the people. In telling Microsoft how to act, they are actually, I dunno, trying to protect you. Yes, you may not need their protection, but by the time you do, it will be too late seeing as Microsoft ALREADY had (at the time) 90% of the desktop OS, 90%+ of the web browser market, and 90% of the office productivity market, and had already shown they were willing to take advantage of those strengths to manipulate the market.
And the government stepping in did what exactly? Who's shipping computers without IE? Everyone agrees the government's approach was a slap on the wrist that did little if anything to change microsoft's practices. Instead, microsoft started losing precisely because they had that much strength and power. Microsoft is a slow lumbering beast now, and it's more agile competitors are springing up. The government didn't stop microsoft, real competition is stopping them, and it's doing so without bundling.
The market. If they sold their machines without an OS, it would mean their consumers would have to pay an additional $100+ for an OS on top of that, meaning their machines would minimum be $100+ more expensive than their competitors. This of course would put them at a severe disadvantage over Dell, HP, IBM, and Gateway, at the time. If this continued long enough, then Compaq would have been forced out of the market as no one would buy their systems. Come on, do you really have to ask that?
It seems to be working awfuly well for apple.
The fact that Compaq had no expertise in manufacturing Motorola/IBM PCs? The fact that their core competency was in COTS IBM PCs? The fact that Apple's licensing terms may have been more difficult? The fact that Apple at the time was only a 20% market player? The fact that even then it was apparent that Apple was declining in marketshare, compared to Windows?
So basicaly the fact that Compaq was trying to compete in a market which was already over saturated. Being in business does not guarantee that you can continue your business in the same way you did in the past.
Agreed. However, if ALL business cannot thrive without another company's product, it does mean the government can/will/should step in. This has been demonstrated for over 100 years now. It wasn't just Compaq, it was the fact that all PC manufacturers were held hostage by Microsoft's tactics that put them in the government's sights.
Except not ALL business could not thrive. Just the razor thin margin PC clone market. In other words a small segment of a larger market. No one except the people that wanted to be in the business of selling microsoft systems was held hostage by microsoft. And none of them were held hostage by micorosoft, they were held hostage by the fact that the market was saturated to the point where profits were too low to succeede any other way.
The market, like the ecosystem, is resilient. The purpose of government interference is to prevent consumers from being hurt or people from being killed. Sure, the market would have survived, Apple would have carved out a niche, and Linux would have thrived, but until that happened, until the market corrected itself, Microsoft would have continued it's strong arm tactics, would have exerted continuing pressure on other companies, and ultimately hurt the market and economy before it could be corrected by the market and economy.
But nothing the government did actualy changed anything. Any machine that comes with windows still comes with IE. Microsoft is still the dominate player. No one is shipping with firefox pre bundled. In the end, it was the linux community, Apple and FireFox actualy getting off their asses and competing that brought about a change in the market. The government's intervention was useless.
The concept of surgically intervening before your body has a chance to heal in order to accelerate healing means something to you,
And personaly I find it stupid. Who is the government to tell microsoft that they can't dictate the terms of their licensing to companies? What prevented compaq from selling their machines without an OS? What stopped compaq from approaching Apple about clone licensing (Apple was doing that then). Just because your business can't thrive without another companies product doesn't mean you get to get the government to make the other company give you favorable licensing terms. Furthermore, don't you think this was damaging to the competative market as a whole. Instead of companies being forced to find new ways to compete or develop competing products, everyone basicaly caved in to microsofts demands and then got the government to make it easier on them.
Imagine what the computer landscape might look like today if compaq and IBM teamed up on OS/2 or even better if IBM jumped on the linux train much much earlier. Just because you don't like something doesn't make it wrong or illegal, and I personaly think the laws were wrong in this regard.
Actualy, they will threaten you with deadly force because most people confronted with deadly force will give in. Which are you more likely to give in too. The guy that steps in front of you and says "gimme your wallet" or the guy that steps in front of you brandishing a knife or gun and says "gimme your wallet".
The law makes it illegal for Microsoft to bundle a browser with their OS. It is not illegal for Dell or Gateway or HP to bundle Windows and IE or Windows and Firefox or Linux and Opera. End users don't have to download anything.
And you don't think the law is wrong in this respect?
Taking that choice away from Dell and HP and Gateway or in any way using their monopoly to make sure IE is the one they choose over better alternatives is what is illegal.
Why? Unless they do it through illegal means (and threatening to not sell your product is not illegal) why shouldn't Microsoft be able to dictate terms of sale like that. Neither Dell, nor HP or Gateway were forced to not bundle or install anything else, the only reason they didn't was because they were afraid.
Have you ever noticed that most people use IE, even though it has long been inferior in many obvious ways to Firefox? This is because IE is bundled. Thus most people never have a chance to vote with their dollars for the best browser.
But firefox is inferrior in the one place that counts: support. Furthermore, nothing prevented consumers from getting any other browser by choice, they merely did not choose.
Some would choose one browser and some a different browser. Say Gateway decided to bill their machines as "more secure than Dell" because they pre-installed Firefox. At this point consumers buy computers and tell others and eventually the market decides which is better for different parts of that market. And here's the important part. Because consumers are making this decision, both the Firefox team and the IE team are motivated to make a better product to compete. Consumers gain choice and innovation.
What prevented Dell HP or Gateway from doing this before? Nothing.
If you have no competition why lower prices or work to improve?
Because someone else comes along to steal your thunder (see Ubuntu, OS X and fire fox)
It may interest you to know then that the video iPods support 44.1 Khz stereo recording. Granted you still need an imput device but they do support it.
That's because you're a geek, by contrast I meet people every day who think the new commercials are spot on and very funny and entertaining. But these people aren't geeks. Their everyone else. The ones that don't know how to get rid of MSN Messenger on a default windows install. The ones that don't even know how to do a default install. They're the ones that think that burning a CD by nessesity must be a 14 step process. These are the folks that the ads are targeted at, not you or me.
Right now I see people on just about every tech site that will tear into Microsoft for packaging a browser with Windows, but praise Apple for packaging an OS with every PC, and dozens of applications with every OS. If Apple takes a large chunk of the market, we're going to have to hold them to the same standard we do Microsoft, meaning that we should be demanding an end to their anticompetitive practices of bundling their own software.
I never understood this. What is wrong with bundling software? Here's a hint for you, if windows didn't come with IE or [Other Bundled Browser] people would find it awfuly hard to go dowload the latest version of firefox. Budling software is not wrong, evil or bad. Making the bundled software hard or impossible to remove IS. And please note there is a distiction between the bundled software, and the actual back end technologies (i.e. Safari != WebKit)
There's a sig floating about slashdot somewhere that says something to the effect of "There are 4 boxes to change the government, soap, ballot, jurror and ammo. Use them in that order."
The point being that while violent revolution should not be a first resort, it should always be an option and the people should always be capable of doing such. Voting and lawsuits are fine, but in the end, the government does have guns, and therefore are capable of rendering voting and lawsuits irellevant. While I don't think it's likely in the near future it's still a possibility, and the easier we make it to get rid of arms for civilians now, the harder it will be in the future should the government decide votes and laws mean nothing to them.
Actualy, from the USDOJ crime statistics. You are more likely to get hurt doing a violent crime (including mugging and robbery) complying or passively resisting than you are trying to defend yourself or actively resisting.
Because most muggers aren't looking to get anything other than the loot. They don't want a fight, they don't want to kill you, they want you to give them teh stuff and they want to run. An FBI study I read once found that of violent felons in jail, ~60% said they specificaly would avoid targets they knew to be armed (gun, knife etc) and 40% said they avoided targets they thought might be armed.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, but you've missed the point. I told you already that privacy only exists when you take active measures to ensure it exists. For example, you should assume that every email you send is public, unless you choose to encrypt it. Why? Because you're sending that email through a few hundred or thousand different people all of whome can easily listen in. Likewise, if i'm having sex with my doors wide open and the windows and blinds open, I should assume that people are watching and listening in. Now if I close and lock my doors, and shut the windows and shades, then that's another matter. But why should people assume that their transactions with someone elses money, their conversations across someone elses property and their purchaces from someone elses stock are private unless they take explicit action to make it private.
In otherwords, it's bad now because the information is more accurate? Remember that expansive collections of data are double edged swords, especialy when anyone can access it. Take for example the current rape case from Duke university. The same data that might be used to frame the players being accused is being used to poke thousands of holes in the prosecutions case (i.e. because of movement tracking between ATM, taxi, and access card records, defence shows that one of the accused was at the party during th ealledged rape for a grand total of 10 minutes. Digging further into cell phone records shows that he accused was making phone calls to his girlfried and the taxi company during those 10 minutes.)
It still is a natural law. It's just we've removed ourselves from that sort of communication. Back then if you wanted to have a conversation, you had to meet the person explicitly. These days we use phones, IM, email etc, all of which are analogous to shouting your conversation accross the room in a particular language and being suprised that anyone you understands that language and is within ear shot (all hundred some miles) can listen in.
Let's take a way back machine a little bit. Way back before big faceless corporations, people shopped at corner stores, where the manager knew them by name, knew what their regular order was, and for the habitual customers even had the order ready before the customer came in the store. You couldn't get yourself into too much trouble because everyone in town knew you on sight and all of your local relatives. More often than not the cops knew you by name, and not because you were in trouble but because they were as much a part of the community as you were. Privacy hasn't gone anywhere. If anything the world today has given us MORE privacy than ever before. The difference is not the level of privacy but the range of interested people. Before you worried about the local cops. These days, you only wory about them because they can pass the information to the feds whom you're really worried about. Privacy really honestly does not exist, unless you act in a way to preserve it. In the old days that meant shutting your blinds and not leaving your house. Well you have to do the same thing these days, just electronicaly. Sorry, you can't have a credit card if you want privacy because it isn't your money, it's theirs, and so they have an interest in what you buy. Likewise for your internet and phone connections, use a public service, expect it to be public. The only way to have privacy is to keep to yourself. People don't keep to themselves because it's anti social and destructive. But like it or not, there really wasn't ever any such thing as privacy.
But they do sue the gun manufacturers. And given the political climate towards computers and high tech gadgetry, I'd lean towards them suing TiVo.
More time between replacements. Basicaly the mouse can operate for x ammount of time on one battery and 2x time on two. So if your batteries die and you can only find one replacement in your bag, that's good enough. Actualy, a lot of devices can do this which is why (even though you shouldn't) you can only replace one or two batties in an electronic device and still have it function.
The policy is not that you can't put anything in right clicks, but that anything that you put in right clicks should be easily accesable from the menus as well. Compare this to windows (or even some of Apple's pro apps) where some functionality is ONLY availible via right click. You can't just browse the menus to see what you can do.
Conviction and actual guilt or innocence do not necessarily go hand in hand.
Thus you can still be innocent (and no ammount of proof will make you guilty) and still be convicted.
As a correction, I meant to say bundling is not bad. On that at least we agree.
But that to me is what creates new competition. THe more microsoft kills itself, the lower the barrier to entry is, and the harder it is for microsoft to maintain it's power. What it takes though are people willing to compete and innovate. You have to exist beyond your competition's market space. And even better because microsoft would be killing it's own market, it would be pushing people to seek out competitors and actualy make choices in the market.
But we've kind of traveled off the path that we started on. Even if I conceede that threatening to withold your product is bad and should be stopped, it doesn't change my original premise that bundling is bad.
And to the idea of splitting microsoft up, I don't think that would have worked too well. Case in point, the Bells are still in control all over the country.
In the end, what you call extortion, I call business. Every business engages in anti competative behaviors. It's stupid (and potentialy illegal) to engage in behaviors which help your competition. Competition is good because it weeds out the week and forces development. Monopolies occur when one business is good enough at what they do that their competitors can't succeede without special treatment. Naturaly without competition a monopoly will slow. The slower and more stagnant a monopoly gets the lower the barrier to entry becomes and the sooner new and better competition comes along. Government intervention does nothing but prolong the influence and power of the monopoly.
You are deluding yourself if you don't think that AMD tries to sweeten the pot to get vendors to go exclusively with AMD just like Intel does.
Being that the government is supposedly an extension of the will of the people, the government acts to protect the people. In telling Microsoft how to act, they are actually, I dunno, trying to protect you. Yes, you may not need their protection, but by the time you do, it will be too late seeing as Microsoft ALREADY had (at the time) 90% of the desktop OS, 90%+ of the web browser market, and 90% of the office productivity market, and had already shown they were willing to take advantage of those strengths to manipulate the market.
And the government stepping in did what exactly? Who's shipping computers without IE? Everyone agrees the government's approach was a slap on the wrist that did little if anything to change microsoft's practices. Instead, microsoft started losing precisely because they had that much strength and power. Microsoft is a slow lumbering beast now, and it's more agile competitors are springing up. The government didn't stop microsoft, real competition is stopping them, and it's doing so without bundling.
The market. If they sold their machines without an OS, it would mean their consumers would have to pay an additional $100+ for an OS on top of that, meaning their machines would minimum be $100+ more expensive than their competitors. This of course would put them at a severe disadvantage over Dell, HP, IBM, and Gateway, at the time. If this continued long enough, then Compaq would have been forced out of the market as no one would buy their systems. Come on, do you really have to ask that?
It seems to be working awfuly well for apple.
The fact that Compaq had no expertise in manufacturing Motorola/IBM PCs? The fact that their core competency was in COTS IBM PCs? The fact that Apple's licensing terms may have been more difficult? The fact that Apple at the time was only a 20% market player? The fact that even then it was apparent that Apple was declining in marketshare, compared to Windows?
So basicaly the fact that Compaq was trying to compete in a market which was already over saturated. Being in business does not guarantee that you can continue your business in the same way you did in the past.
Agreed. However, if ALL business cannot thrive without another company's product, it does mean the government can/will/should step in. This has been demonstrated for over 100 years now. It wasn't just Compaq, it was the fact that all PC manufacturers were held hostage by Microsoft's tactics that put them in the government's sights.
Except not ALL business could not thrive. Just the razor thin margin PC clone market. In other words a small segment of a larger market. No one except the people that wanted to be in the business of selling microsoft systems was held hostage by microsoft. And none of them were held hostage by micorosoft, they were held hostage by the fact that the market was saturated to the point where profits were too low to succeede any other way.
The market, like the ecosystem, is resilient. The purpose of government interference is to prevent consumers from being hurt or people from being killed. Sure, the market would have survived, Apple would have carved out a niche, and Linux would have thrived, but until that happened, until the market corrected itself, Microsoft would have continued it's strong arm tactics, would have exerted continuing pressure on other companies, and ultimately hurt the market and economy before it could be corrected by the market and economy.
But nothing the government did actualy changed anything. Any machine that comes with windows still comes with IE. Microsoft is still the dominate player. No one is shipping with firefox pre bundled. In the end, it was the linux community, Apple and FireFox actualy getting off their asses and competing that brought about a change in the market. The government's intervention was useless.
The concept of surgically intervening before your body has a chance to heal in order to accelerate healing means something to you,
And personaly I find it stupid. Who is the government to tell microsoft that they can't dictate the terms of their licensing to companies? What prevented compaq from selling their machines without an OS? What stopped compaq from approaching Apple about clone licensing (Apple was doing that then). Just because your business can't thrive without another companies product doesn't mean you get to get the government to make the other company give you favorable licensing terms. Furthermore, don't you think this was damaging to the competative market as a whole. Instead of companies being forced to find new ways to compete or develop competing products, everyone basicaly caved in to microsofts demands and then got the government to make it easier on them.
Imagine what the computer landscape might look like today if compaq and IBM teamed up on OS/2 or even better if IBM jumped on the linux train much much earlier. Just because you don't like something doesn't make it wrong or illegal, and I personaly think the laws were wrong in this regard.
Wrong support. When was the last time you went to a website that said "This site only viewable in Fire Fox" ?
When your neighbors own the property you live on they do.
Actualy, they will threaten you with deadly force because most people confronted with deadly force will give in. Which are you more likely to give in too. The guy that steps in front of you and says "gimme your wallet" or the guy that steps in front of you brandishing a knife or gun and says "gimme your wallet".
The law makes it illegal for Microsoft to bundle a browser with their OS. It is not illegal for Dell or Gateway or HP to bundle Windows and IE or Windows and Firefox or Linux and Opera. End users don't have to download anything.
And you don't think the law is wrong in this respect?
Taking that choice away from Dell and HP and Gateway or in any way using their monopoly to make sure IE is the one they choose over better alternatives is what is illegal.
Why? Unless they do it through illegal means (and threatening to not sell your product is not illegal) why shouldn't Microsoft be able to dictate terms of sale like that. Neither Dell, nor HP or Gateway were forced to not bundle or install anything else, the only reason they didn't was because they were afraid.
Have you ever noticed that most people use IE, even though it has long been inferior in many obvious ways to Firefox? This is because IE is bundled. Thus most people never have a chance to vote with their dollars for the best browser.
But firefox is inferrior in the one place that counts: support. Furthermore, nothing prevented consumers from getting any other browser by choice, they merely did not choose.
Some would choose one browser and some a different browser. Say Gateway decided to bill their machines as "more secure than Dell" because they pre-installed Firefox. At this point consumers buy computers and tell others and eventually the market decides which is better for different parts of that market. And here's the important part. Because consumers are making this decision, both the Firefox team and the IE team are motivated to make a better product to compete. Consumers gain choice and innovation.
What prevented Dell HP or Gateway from doing this before? Nothing.
If you have no competition why lower prices or work to improve?
Because someone else comes along to steal your thunder (see Ubuntu, OS X and fire fox)
It may interest you to know then that the video iPods support 44.1 Khz stereo recording. Granted you still need an imput device but they do support it.
That's because you're a geek, by contrast I meet people every day who think the new commercials are spot on and very funny and entertaining. But these people aren't geeks. Their everyone else. The ones that don't know how to get rid of MSN Messenger on a default windows install. The ones that don't even know how to do a default install. They're the ones that think that burning a CD by nessesity must be a 14 step process. These are the folks that the ads are targeted at, not you or me.
Right now I see people on just about every tech site that will tear into Microsoft for packaging a browser with Windows, but praise Apple for packaging an OS with every PC, and dozens of applications with every OS. If Apple takes a large chunk of the market, we're going to have to hold them to the same standard we do Microsoft, meaning that we should be demanding an end to their anticompetitive practices of bundling their own software.
I never understood this. What is wrong with bundling software? Here's a hint for you, if windows didn't come with IE or [Other Bundled Browser] people would find it awfuly hard to go dowload the latest version of firefox. Budling software is not wrong, evil or bad. Making the bundled software hard or impossible to remove IS. And please note there is a distiction between the bundled software, and the actual back end technologies (i.e. Safari != WebKit)
There's a sig floating about slashdot somewhere that says something to the effect of "There are 4 boxes to change the government, soap, ballot, jurror and ammo. Use them in that order."
The point being that while violent revolution should not be a first resort, it should always be an option and the people should always be capable of doing such. Voting and lawsuits are fine, but in the end, the government does have guns, and therefore are capable of rendering voting and lawsuits irellevant. While I don't think it's likely in the near future it's still a possibility, and the easier we make it to get rid of arms for civilians now, the harder it will be in the future should the government decide votes and laws mean nothing to them.
these days it's possible
Actualy, from the USDOJ crime statistics. You are more likely to get hurt doing a violent crime (including mugging and robbery) complying or passively resisting than you are trying to defend yourself or actively resisting.
Because most muggers aren't looking to get anything other than the loot. They don't want a fight, they don't want to kill you, they want you to give them teh stuff and they want to run. An FBI study I read once found that of violent felons in jail, ~60% said they specificaly would avoid targets they knew to be armed (gun, knife etc) and 40% said they avoided targets they thought might be armed.
If you're honestly interested you may want to check out the PDF at gunfacts.info
Yes the site is biased, but at the same time all the facts they list are cited and most of them come from government studies.