And that's not just for internet or even computer business. The most powerful force the consumer has is the ability to demand and make use of labelling. It doesn't necessarily need to be enforced.
If an independant body(no not M$, their standards are only ever going to be self serving) rates products on relevant features - for software, say privacy, reliability, advertising issues etc. - and allow manufacturers to display their logo if they display the relevant labelling.
A critical point is that the logo must be heavily advertised in order to make it well known. Once consumers get into the mindset that they can only trust software with that logo then everyone has to get it on their product. If everyone gets it on their product they are forced to disclose the fact that their software is spyware etc. or become an untrusted and quickly unprofitable company.
This is simple, you don't need to know what a.dll is or a registry setting, you just need to know that your chosen piece of software was cleared as a reliable install.
This is not just good for consumers because it gives them confidence in the software they install, it would be a massive boon to the shareware/small commercial software industry. I work for someone who takes every opportunity to pay through the nose for MS software simply because he trusts it. Breaking the MS monopoly relies on consumers being able to have confidence in non-MS software - what I'm saying is that good software vendors would find it in their interest to support and even pay for such a standard. And no doubt their already exist a number of shareware standards of practice but they need to achieve visibility and credibility and then things could be different.
So if you're trying to install software from a company that stubbornly tried to bypass the internet standards on domain names why should you be surprised if they throw all standards to the wind, implied or explicit, relating to an application install?
They shouldn't be producing their software in the first place, let alone installing it badly.
I agree with the above. I can't believe the number of people who believe that this case is going to "hurt the economy"... obviously the never explain how, that's the mistake the first post in this thread made. The money that is spent on this trial goes fairly directly into the economy, money paid to umpteen different lawyers firms and professionals and their associated aides etc. is GOOD, that's money that's going to "trickle down" in capitalist jargon. Sure lawyers won't spend all of it supporting small businesses, paying for their groceries and so on, but the will spend some. Now seriously, where do you really think the money MS puts into this trial would otherwise go? It comes straight out of profits - profits that go to shareholders, they'll pay company tax on it(if the US is anything like.au) rather than lawyers paying income tax on it. The tax is important because that is cash that is recycled into the public purse and to a reasonable degree, used for the public good.
The point is that the businesses that are most in the public interest, and to whom we should direct cash, all other things being equal, are the ineffecient ones, ie. the small ones. It is always so ridiculous to see govt. looking to big business to "create jobs". Barring the creation of a new industry(about the only thing for which big business is necessary) and ofcourse the running of industries that by nature rely on big corporations(eg. shipping) big business tends towards the destruction of jobs.
How? One McMegaChain fast food purveyor moves into a new area and opens one store employing 1.5 times the number of staff of other stores in the area. However it services 45% of the market in that area. Some of the 9 other stores around (say 4) have to close because with 9 stores sharing about half of their previous market the can't stay afloat. So 4 times the staff of an average store and 2.3 times the staff of the McMegaChain are now out of work. And note here that McMegaChain hasn't even employed monopoly power, except in the indirect sense that's its saturation advertising is an unfair advantage of its size.
Now Linus Torvalds makes it pretty clear that there is no need for a mega corporation to produce an operating system, as does Microsoft's plethora of other applications. Software development can be done by small to medium sized businesses, if it was made possible by the government this would benefit the economy immensely and in fact a single industry being freed up this way could probably produce it's own economic boom, much like the open internet market did for a while, until the competition stopped and money going towards jobs was spent more efficiently, leaving more to go towards investors.
The money that goes towards investors is money that is unproductive. It only pays rental on start up capital for business. The width of your average profit margin is the proportion of the country's goods that goes towards supporting necessary but unproductive services.
Microsoft is about making those margin's as wide as possible and people concerned about jobs should be looking to make them reasonably small.
You seem to be opposed to taxing corporations. This doesn't make a lot of sense. The way it was done the govt. got a big settlement and continued receiving regular taxes from tobacco sales including a slice of the increased prices. That's a big chunk of the cash that would otherwise go to investers with the moral bankruptcy to profit from addicting consumers to cancer causing products - a big chunk of cash that go's into the _public_ purse and is more or less efficiently used for the public good.
Money for nothing from the perspective of the renter. They do no work and get paid, ie. they make money because they are rich enough to already have resources to rent, not because they have contributed to the good of society by any effort of their own.
This is something that never seems to get much attention. People think as long as someone makes money from it, it's a good thing as long as they don't make too much money...it almost seems like as long as someone can make money from a thing that thing provides employment...but that's not always the case.
It's important to distinguish the exchange of labour for money from the rental of a good for money. Rental always ends up being money for nothing at the end of the period. Think of all the means of maintaining a large fortune(and therby a power structure) and they all involve rental in some form. This is why it requires money to make money. The traders who make money out of markets are those who have the fortunes to swing them and the cash reserves to withstand losses. Employment itself is essentially a system where those who aren't rich rent a factory in order to convert their labour into cash.
If it was impossible/illegal to rent it would be impossible to become or stay rich.
Ofcourse this is all Red Commie crap:-) But at least I'm not going to claim that somehow we don't need people to provide the resources for everyone else, or that somehow we can have the state nobly and objectively manage them all...
Marx was always better at critiquing than providing any solution.
The scary bit is not that the Internet will grind to a halt. The apps that are being discussed are the kind of thing that rely on bandwidth...if everybody uses everybody loses - if there was a netwide go slow any new craze for some new app based of streaming audio/video would plateau. The result may be that the load is slightly higher than before(after a period of teething) but that's not such a big deal.
The big deal is when the net does go slow ignorant bandwidth chewers start to demand it go faster despite the fact that they(en masse) are largely the cause, via popular but inefficient apps mentioned above.
Note the word 'demand', where there is demand there is Bill Gates et. al. "We have the net you demand". It's all new, all fast, custom designed for you and your ignorant buddies... oh and it's all proprietary (all monitored and all pure evil too). And it'll be faster(at first)...largely because to begin with there'll be no one on it.
You begin by offering a competing network using protocols designed for specific(proprietary) apps that can keep up with streaming media and you get the majority of people off 'the' Internet as we know it... you charge more, funding vaporizes for the 'old' internet and the new internet grinds back down to the previous slow just now it only works for MS Certified apps and costs 5 times as much.
Please tell me I'm an ignorant fool and this could never happen cause I don't like the idea.
MS lost the press ages ago, there's a quiet but constant bubbling dislike of Microsoft even in the people who'd be lost without them... people don't flock to MS because they LIKE them, they use it because it's what they know and they've lost all hope of fully understanding Windows, let alone someone else's 'radical new' software.
The article doesn't seem to make a lot of sense(read: contains the steely logic of a beat up), Microsoft hasn't been hassled by a lawsuit with the United States but new moves are afoot which could cause problems by opening up lawsuits against...ordinary people...
All of this without the obvious but ignored fact that Microsoft ignores security because all of it's users do too. As fellow developers have said, 'We don't like security... it makes things hard'. Developers are stumped by permissioning problems often enough without the plebs trying to cope with them... raises the question, how secure are those other industries? How much of it is just the fact that they're older than the software industry and so we assume there's rigorous standards in place?
On the other hand as far as dangers to good hearted developers goes you've got to ask :
How much damage does dodgy software (PROVABLY) do?
What damages for 3 units of system instability...4 BSODs per month...etc. Sure mega-business can lose a lot out of one system restart but most of us just reboot, grind our teeth about that lost thesis, and continue...
The only thing that's going to kill the MS monopoly is a competitor, otherwise what are you gonna do? Sue MS out of existence and demand that everyone switch to Linux...send everyone over 30 back to Uni(US read: college) to learn how computers work and put (dan da da) THE ECONOMY on hold for 3 years? No security worries might allow the govt. to make enough demands to dampen Microsoft profits but they won't bring about the fall of the monopoly.
Disclaimer: based on sketchy bits and pieces picked up where my studies have involved law.
It's really not that surprising to have that information turned over. There's a period once a suit is filed called 'discovery' when you are supposed to turn over anything your opponent asks for. It's within reason of course but at most they'll take it to a judge who'll make a call about whether it's necessary. Michael gave the reason Microsoft gave for demanding the information and it's reasonable to think a judge would accept this, whatever Microsoft's dastardly schemes may be once Lindows has claimed they have nothing to do with Washington Microsoft has a right to any information which may show otherwise without Lindows putting up an impediment.
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And that's not just for internet or even computer business. The most powerful force the consumer has is the ability to demand and make use of labelling. It doesn't necessarily need to be enforced. If an independant body(no not M$, their standards are only ever going to be self serving) rates products on relevant features - for software, say privacy, reliability, advertising issues etc. - and allow manufacturers to display their logo if they display the relevant labelling. A critical point is that the logo must be heavily advertised in order to make it well known. Once consumers get into the mindset that they can only trust software with that logo then everyone has to get it on their product. If everyone gets it on their product they are forced to disclose the fact that their software is spyware etc. or become an untrusted and quickly unprofitable company. This is simple, you don't need to know what a .dll is or a registry setting, you just need to know that your chosen piece of software was cleared as a reliable install.
This is not just good for consumers because it gives them confidence in the software they install, it would be a massive boon to the shareware/small commercial software industry. I work for someone who takes every opportunity to pay through the nose for MS software simply because he trusts it. Breaking the MS monopoly relies on consumers being able to have confidence in non-MS software - what I'm saying is that good software vendors would find it in their interest to support and even pay for such a standard. And no doubt their already exist a number of shareware standards of practice but they need to achieve visibility and credibility and then things could be different.
So if you're trying to install software from a company that stubbornly tried to bypass the internet standards on domain names why should you be surprised if they throw all standards to the wind, implied or explicit, relating to an application install? They shouldn't be producing their software in the first place, let alone installing it badly.
I agree with the above. I can't believe the number of people who believe that this case is going to "hurt the economy"... obviously the never explain how, that's the mistake the first post in this thread made. The money that is spent on this trial goes fairly directly into the economy, money paid to umpteen different lawyers firms and professionals and their associated aides etc. is GOOD, that's money that's going to "trickle down" in capitalist jargon. Sure lawyers won't spend all of it supporting small businesses, paying for their groceries and so on, but the will spend some. Now seriously, where do you really think the money MS puts into this trial would otherwise go? It comes straight out of profits - profits that go to shareholders, they'll pay company tax on it(if the US is anything like .au) rather than lawyers paying income tax on it. The tax is important because that is cash that is recycled into the public purse and to a reasonable degree, used for the public good.
The point is that the businesses that are most in the public interest, and to whom we should direct cash, all other things being equal, are the ineffecient ones, ie. the small ones. It is always so ridiculous to see govt. looking to big business to "create jobs". Barring the creation of a new industry(about the only thing for which big business is necessary) and ofcourse the running of industries that by nature rely on big corporations(eg. shipping) big business tends towards the destruction of jobs.
How? One McMegaChain fast food purveyor moves into a new area and opens one store employing 1.5 times the number of staff of other stores in the area. However it services 45% of the market in that area. Some of the 9 other stores around (say 4) have to close because with 9 stores sharing about half of their previous market the can't stay afloat. So 4 times the staff of an average store and 2.3 times the staff of the McMegaChain are now out of work. And note here that McMegaChain hasn't even employed monopoly power, except in the indirect sense that's its saturation advertising is an unfair advantage of its size.
Now Linus Torvalds makes it pretty clear that there is no need for a mega corporation to produce an operating system, as does Microsoft's plethora of other applications. Software development can be done by small to medium sized businesses, if it was made possible by the government this would benefit the economy immensely and in fact a single industry being freed up this way could probably produce it's own economic boom, much like the open internet market did for a while, until the competition stopped and money going towards jobs was spent more efficiently, leaving more to go towards investors.
The money that goes towards investors is money that is unproductive. It only pays rental on start up capital for business. The width of your average profit margin is the proportion of the country's goods that goes towards supporting necessary but unproductive services.
Microsoft is about making those margin's as wide as possible and people concerned about jobs should be looking to make them reasonably small.
You seem to be opposed to taxing corporations. This doesn't make a lot of sense. The way it was done the govt. got a big settlement and continued receiving regular taxes from tobacco sales including a slice of the increased prices. That's a big chunk of the cash that would otherwise go to investers with the moral bankruptcy to profit from addicting consumers to cancer causing products - a big chunk of cash that go's into the _public_ purse and is more or less efficiently used for the public good.
Money for nothing from the perspective of the renter. They do no work and get paid, ie. they make money because they are rich enough to already have resources to rent, not because they have contributed to the good of society by any effort of their own.
This is something that never seems to get much attention. People think as long as someone makes money from it, it's a good thing as long as they don't make too much money...it almost seems like as long as someone can make money from a thing that thing provides employment...but that's not always the case.
:-) But at least I'm not going to claim that somehow we don't need people to provide the resources for everyone else, or that somehow we can have the state nobly and objectively manage them all...
It's important to distinguish the exchange of labour for money from the rental of a good for money. Rental always ends up being money for nothing at the end of the period. Think of all the means of maintaining a large fortune(and therby a power structure) and they all involve rental in some form. This is why it requires money to make money. The traders who make money out of markets are those who have the fortunes to swing them and the cash reserves to withstand losses. Employment itself is essentially a system where those who aren't rich rent a factory in order to convert their labour into cash.
If it was impossible/illegal to rent it would be impossible to become or stay rich.
Ofcourse this is all Red Commie crap
Marx was always better at critiquing than providing any solution.
The scary bit is not that the Internet will grind to a halt. The apps that are being discussed are the kind of thing that rely on bandwidth...if everybody uses everybody loses - if there was a netwide go slow any new craze for some new app based of streaming audio/video would plateau. The result may be that the load is slightly higher than before(after a period of teething) but that's not such a big deal.
The big deal is when the net does go slow ignorant bandwidth chewers start to demand it go faster despite the fact that they(en masse) are largely the cause, via popular but inefficient apps mentioned above.
Note the word 'demand', where there is demand there is Bill Gates et. al. "We have the net you demand". It's all new, all fast, custom designed for you and your ignorant buddies... oh and it's all proprietary (all monitored and all pure evil too). And it'll be faster(at first)...largely because to begin with there'll be no one on it.
You begin by offering a competing network using protocols designed for specific(proprietary) apps that can keep up with streaming media and you get the majority of people off 'the' Internet as we know it... you charge more, funding vaporizes for the 'old' internet and the new internet grinds back down to the previous slow just now it only works for MS Certified apps and costs 5 times as much.
Please tell me I'm an ignorant fool and this could never happen cause I don't like the idea.
MS lost the press ages ago, there's a quiet but constant bubbling dislike of Microsoft even in the people who'd be lost without them... people don't flock to MS because they LIKE them, they use it because it's what they know and they've lost all hope of fully understanding Windows, let alone someone else's 'radical new' software.
The article doesn't seem to make a lot of sense(read: contains the steely logic of a beat up), Microsoft hasn't been hassled by a lawsuit with the United States but new moves are afoot which could cause problems by opening up lawsuits against...ordinary people...
All of this without the obvious but ignored fact that Microsoft ignores security because all of it's users do too. As fellow developers have said, 'We don't like security... it makes things hard'. Developers are stumped by permissioning problems often enough without the plebs trying to cope with them... raises the question, how secure are those other industries? How much of it is just the fact that they're older than the software industry and so we assume there's rigorous standards in place?
On the other hand as far as dangers to good hearted developers goes you've got to ask :
How much damage does dodgy software (PROVABLY) do?
What damages for 3 units of system instability...4 BSODs per month...etc. Sure mega-business can lose a lot out of one system restart but most of us just reboot, grind our teeth about that lost thesis, and continue...
The only thing that's going to kill the MS monopoly is a competitor, otherwise what are you gonna do? Sue MS out of existence and demand that everyone switch to Linux...send everyone over 30 back to Uni(US read: college) to learn how computers work and put (dan da da) THE ECONOMY on hold for 3 years? No security worries might allow the govt. to make enough demands to dampen Microsoft profits but they won't bring about the fall of the monopoly.
Disclaimer: based on sketchy bits and pieces picked up where my studies have involved law. It's really not that surprising to have that information turned over. There's a period once a suit is filed called 'discovery' when you are supposed to turn over anything your opponent asks for. It's within reason of course but at most they'll take it to a judge who'll make a call about whether it's necessary. Michael gave the reason Microsoft gave for demanding the information and it's reasonable to think a judge would accept this, whatever Microsoft's dastardly schemes may be once Lindows has claimed they have nothing to do with Washington Microsoft has a right to any information which may show otherwise without Lindows putting up an impediment.