WMP is not free from Microsoft. They just charged you more for windows in the first place. Windows has an 80% profit margin. The price has gone up with each new version ahead of inflation.
How does a monopoly hurt consumers? It maintains the monopoly and charges what it likes. As an example - your memory chips. Everyone makes SDD RAM, and its cheap. Look for Rambus RAM - "hey, this memory is hideously expensive".
I don't think it should be public money. I think the senators who sponsored the bill should be personally liable. Then they might spend a bit more care in thinking through the bills they pass. They swear that they will faithfully uphold the constitution when they take office, after all.
Because the really organised ones who would move abroad are spaming you on behalf of someone else in the same country. If they did go, they wouldn't get the business, as the companies who employ them are not generally the sort of multinationals that do business with companies from abroad - so they would need a local presence, and then they would become fair game for the US courts again.
And also because they don't want to live in the sort of country that allows their sort of behaviour. You look at any known spammer, and they get very pi$$y when some has a go at them in return. Hypocrites.
Who cares - when you win the case, you don't need to sign anything. If they had settled out of court, it might be part of the agreement, but to try it on after they had already lost?
We do the same thing - generally, if you have people out in the field that don't have access to your handy neighbourhood compiler, then it's nice to have a "work around" scripting language that's powerful enough to cope. We build in C++ and VB, and script in TCL, and the company has standardised on those. Given the API the company provides with the scripting language set up, I could recode almost our entire product line if I had to (it wouldn't run as fast though)!
And whether it's readable is nothing to do with scripting vs. programming. It's to do with writing it properly. Your next job may be as a maintenance coder. Or, if you are really unlucky, you move to a new job and you end up supporting software used by the team you left, who will curse you to your face (true story - the guy's only comments were his initials and the word hack).
Writing code that is unmaintainable is a reason to get fired, not to get retained. Unreadable code just makes you look unprofessional. Always remember that "irreplaceable" employees have to be replaceable - what happens if they get hit by a bus! Truely irreplacable employees are insured for millions. Ask yourself - has your company issued itself specifically against your loss;)
> The DOJ findings, IIRC, only stated that OEMs couldn't change the default Windows desktop.
I was refering to findings 213-229 (no changing boot sequence and limitations on desktop/start menu). They weren't prevented from installing the additional software per-se, but it was made intentionally difficult for an OEM to set up a machine such that non-MS applications were defaulted for the user.
> Everyone here seems to miss the point that for the *vast majority* of consumers...
While I will agree with you that the mom and pop (M&P) users want a kitchen sink, and that this is what they perceive windows to be, this lets microsoft basically declare any application to be "part of the OS". What this leads to is that Microsoft can tie in any product they feel like, and get paid in advance for it as part of the OS price. This means there is no incentive for anyone to compete against these applications (seen as free by the M&Ps) and so there is no incentive to improve these products - no market force competition.
Unfortunately, since Microsoft have such a dominant position in the marketplace as to be an effective monopoly (finding 33). This means that Microsoft cannot use it's position to force purchase of additional products as a condition for purchase of the Windows product. The argument that every minor application they produce is part of the OS is therefore disingenious in this respect.
Look at the Dell website. It's seemingly quite possible for the M&Ps to be offered (and cope with) a choice of pre-installed software: window versions, a choice of office versions - why can't there be a choice media kit (containing a browser, IM, and media player)? The current answer is because contractually Microsoft would charge Dell more per copy of windows if they offered it.
It would not be illegal at first. But if you continued to do it, after being told not to, it's called harassment, and is illegal. It would also invalidate the terms and conditions of your agreement with the phone company regarding making nuisance calls.
> Which is all Microsoft do. Please explain why Microsoft should be forced to bundle competitor's products with theirs. That is the job of the OEM.
Except of course, the OEMs are prevented from doing so by their contracts with Microsoft. See the DOJ findings.
What makes something not part of the OS is if I can get it separately, and install it. The trouble is that most people buy (at home), or have at work, a ready built machine - so the common user's view is that the "OS" is an all encompasing "everything on their PC to do what they want". This is not really a sensible position to defend in the "What is an OS" question stakes. You could probably ask a novice user who had office bundled, and they might even consider Word to be part of "Windows" and therefore "in the OS".
So, what *is* the OS? I would say the majority of people who are computer savvy would say "The software that allows you to run your applications on your machine". So what is an application? And what is data? Hey, I'm not running computers 101 here! But let's remember that the older versions of the windows "OS" didn't include WMP, IE, WIM, etc. So these have been added to the OS. Doesn't this suggest to you that they are NOT part of the OS, but applications, added to run on on the OS.
I personally like Office/Excel (I have OpenOffice at home, Office at work) and find Windows 2000 a good platform to run all my games (and my lap top is an Apple, and I write software for Sun boxes). I just think that their products would be even better if they had to compete honestly in the market place.
And in other news, the US has instated a royal family, and converted to the euro, in order to harmonise with the EU. Mod this poster up.
The real issue with this judgement, as per Mr Lessig's fine blog and others comments therein, is that while the SCOTUS for the most part agreed that the extention was in principle against the constitution, they incredibly ruled that the SCOTUS did not have the right to overrule congress in this matter. Their ruling also included the view that the extension still meant that copyright was for 'limited times', and that congress was not deliberately trying to circumvent the limited time provision with multiple extensions.
It's only when you read the disenting opinion that you might think that some of the SOTUS justices are actually on this planet. My favourite point is when it is pointed out that the bill is named after someone who proposed that copyright should be forever.
If it wasn't for money, we'd still be in a barter economy. No one has come up with a better system of measuring what things are worth for comparison purposes - create a common scale, and value everything against it - voila! Money. Of course, once people can compare the values of their goods, and communications allow almost instant transmission of these values, then we can start making complex objects, knowing that the parts involved will require us to have an equivalent amount of goods in the form of "wealth"... money. Don't cheapen money (ignore the pun) just because some people came up with ways of tricking it out of people who created (earned) it. There will always be shysters, thieves, and taxmen.
All real money is backed by work done by someone (natural resources are worthless unless mined, goods have value added through manufacturing). So people work to add value to themselves and their society. This work is measured indirectly in money terms, since it's the commonly accepted scale for value. If the star trek universe has no money, why do people have holodeck "privileges". They've earned something, and it has value to both them, and others. And why do they keep refering to gold pressed latinum all the time. If there is no money, the federation must be a totalitarian state.
Put the space station in one of the LaGrange points where it will stay for a long time, without requiring millions to keep it from burning up. Spend the money on cheapening the cost of launches with newer technology shuttle replacements, that have a bit more range. Lets aim for what we really want - giant space stations where colonies can live, and moon cities! Factories on the moon, and in space producing space goods. By the time they are ready, we'll probably have built the space elavator.
Read the CA HST literature - it actually requires $25B. They've past a bill to provide $10B of it.
The answer is that these days you can't just "hop on a plane". You wait, for at least an hour, while they determine whether any of the passengers are terrorists, and whether any of the luggage is a bomb. And you've got to get to the airport. And back from the airport on the other side.
As long as the terminals are in resonable locations (compare Union Station and LAX for example) it makes more sense to use a HST than a plane.
A UK bank offered a free filofax for joining - 30 pounds opened the account. Well, I used the account for many months, and eventually changed to a different bank when I went to college (different on-campus bank - and I had got a free bag from the other bank with another 30 pounds;) so go figure.
I ended up having 60 pence in the bank, and couldn't get back to the actual branch to close the account, and they wouldn't close it for me and send a cheque. So they had to mail me a statement every month for six years, on an account 0.60 in credit.
You probably want to read up on the proposed "Fair Tax Bill" which pretty much consolidates this whole line of thinking. The idea is that you only ever pay sales tax. Sure the big ticket items cost more - but you've got more in your pocket to start with because you aren't paying income tax.
The main issue with this is when you sell big ticket second hand items (such as your house). Insurance is also an issue (only pay tax on the service part, not the part that is used to pay claims). Finally, how you deal with welfare is also worth careful thinking.
The real benefit is actually that you eliminate the need to file tax every year, and that eliminates much of the IRS (there are 5 IRS officers for each FBI officer) which is a massive government saving, and a massive "not having to pay an accountant every year" saving for everyone else.
As for you "evading" tax by getting better prices, you are just doing better business. Of course, if the only source of tax was sales tax, you can guess the IRS officers (or the states - let them collect it for you for a percentage) that are left are going to look real close at companies not collecting sales tax correctly.
As for not doing it this way being dishonest - let's just say that the way tax is charged in multiple ways may seem that way to someone lacking in savvy. In the end though, the only person who pays tax is the man in the street. Businesses will always pass it on to the consumer as part of their costs.
That must be why London prices are the same as everywhere else in the UK! You are allowed to charge different amounts for goods in different areas, obviously, based on retail overhead (rent, wages, and so forth for shop staff).
The point is that what you can't do is stop me buying stuff from other parts of the UK (or EU for that matter) that are being offered cheaper than in my local area. You especially can't do it when the price difference is many times the cost of shipping the cheaper article to me (as the press and the Office of Fair Trading will jump all over you).
Maybe, it's because RMS is seeing the pool of coders that could work on this replacement being wittled down by bk's EULA - to wit, anyone who uses bk while doing Linux kernel work, is now not allowed to help on coding a replacement for bk (even in their spare time).
The very people who use bk, are exactly the sort of people who would possibly look to make improvements to a SCC if it were open source (since they are already proven to do open source work, and this work requires a SCC).
Unless they hid most of the profits in shell companies, continued to hold non-executive directorships (working one day a week), take unsecured loans against the company, and use share options to make millions, on top of seven figure salaries. And then retire from the company, with two years salary as "severance", and a pension in perpetuity paid for by the company.
Slashdot Mirror
WMP is not free from Microsoft. They just charged you more for windows in the first place. Windows has an 80% profit margin. The price has gone up with each new version ahead of inflation.
How does a monopoly hurt consumers? It maintains the monopoly and charges what it likes. As an example - your memory chips. Everyone makes SDD RAM, and its cheap. Look for Rambus RAM - "hey, this memory is hideously expensive".
National Association of Marlon Brandon Look Alikes?
I don't think it should be public money. I think the senators who sponsored the bill should be personally liable. Then they might spend a bit more care in thinking through the bills they pass. They swear that they will faithfully uphold the constitution when they take office, after all.
No, they've *always* been part of Oceania.
Because the really organised ones who would move abroad are spaming you on behalf of someone else in the same country. If they did go, they wouldn't get the business, as the companies who employ them are not generally the sort of multinationals that do business with companies from abroad - so they would need a local presence, and then they would become fair game for the US courts again.
And also because they don't want to live in the sort of country that allows their sort of behaviour. You look at any known spammer, and they get very pi$$y when some has a go at them in return. Hypocrites.
Who cares - when you win the case, you don't need to sign anything. If they had settled out of court, it might be part of the agreement, but to try it on after they had already lost?
We do the same thing - generally, if you have people out in the field that don't have access to your handy neighbourhood compiler, then it's nice to have a "work around" scripting language that's powerful enough to cope. We build in C++ and VB, and script in TCL, and the company has standardised on those. Given the API the company provides with the scripting language set up, I could recode almost our entire product line if I had to (it wouldn't run as fast though)!
;)
And whether it's readable is nothing to do with scripting vs. programming. It's to do with writing it properly. Your next job may be as a maintenance coder. Or, if you are really unlucky, you move to a new job and you end up supporting software used by the team you left, who will curse you to your face (true story - the guy's only comments were his initials and the word hack).
Writing code that is unmaintainable is a reason to get fired, not to get retained. Unreadable code just makes you look unprofessional. Always remember that "irreplaceable" employees have to be replaceable - what happens if they get hit by a bus! Truely irreplacable employees are insured for millions. Ask yourself - has your company issued itself specifically against your loss
That's pretty much the question, isn't it!
...
I suspect Sun will bring in the V1680 when they feel that there is a perceived need to compete on price at the 16 CPU level
> The DOJ findings, IIRC, only stated that OEMs couldn't change the default Windows desktop.
...
I was refering to findings 213-229 (no changing boot sequence and limitations on desktop/start menu). They weren't prevented from installing the additional software per-se, but it was made intentionally difficult for an OEM to set up a machine such that non-MS applications were defaulted for the user.
> Everyone here seems to miss the point that for the *vast majority* of consumers
While I will agree with you that the mom and pop (M&P) users want a kitchen sink, and that this is what they perceive windows to be, this lets microsoft basically declare any application to be "part of the OS". What this leads to is that Microsoft can tie in any product they feel like, and get paid in advance for it as part of the OS price. This means there is no incentive for anyone to compete against these applications (seen as free by the M&Ps) and so there is no incentive to improve these products - no market force competition.
Unfortunately, since Microsoft have such a dominant position in the marketplace as to be an effective monopoly (finding 33). This means that Microsoft cannot use it's position to force purchase of additional products as a condition for purchase of the Windows product. The argument that every minor application they produce is part of the OS is therefore disingenious in this respect.
Look at the Dell website. It's seemingly quite possible for the M&Ps to be offered (and cope with) a choice of pre-installed software: window versions, a choice of office versions - why can't there be a choice media kit (containing a browser, IM, and media player)? The current answer is because contractually Microsoft would charge Dell more per copy of windows if they offered it.
So he used a social engineering attack to illegally enter a computer system, and manipulated the data therein for his own profit.
...
If this was in the US, they'dd be locking him up for 30 years as a hacker terrorist
It would not be illegal at first. But if you continued to do it, after being told not to, it's called harassment, and is illegal. It would also invalidate the terms and conditions of your agreement with the phone company regarding making nuisance calls.
IANAL.
> Which is all Microsoft do. Please explain why Microsoft should be forced to bundle competitor's products with theirs. That is the job of the OEM.
Except of course, the OEMs are prevented from doing so by their contracts with Microsoft. See the DOJ findings.
What makes something not part of the OS is if I can get it separately, and install it. The trouble is that most people buy (at home), or have at work, a ready built machine - so the common user's view is that the "OS" is an all encompasing "everything on their PC to do what they want". This is not really a sensible position to defend in the "What is an OS" question stakes. You could probably ask a novice user who had office bundled, and they might even consider Word to be part of "Windows" and therefore "in the OS".
So, what *is* the OS? I would say the majority of people who are computer savvy would say "The software that allows you to run your applications on your machine". So what is an application? And what is data? Hey, I'm not running computers 101 here! But let's remember that the older versions of the windows "OS" didn't include WMP, IE, WIM, etc. So these have been added to the OS. Doesn't this suggest to you that they are NOT part of the OS, but applications, added to run on on the OS.
I personally like Office/Excel (I have OpenOffice at home, Office at work) and find Windows 2000 a good platform to run all my games (and my lap top is an Apple, and I write software for Sun boxes). I just think that their products would be even better if they had to compete honestly in the market place.
The difference is in the pricing structure - before this box came out, you had to jump to a "midrange" server, and pay a massive premium:
...
V880 - 8CPU @ 900 MHz, 16GB - 100k
V1280 - 12CPU @ 900 MHz, 24GB - 174k
4800 - 12CPU @ 1.2 GHz, 48GB - 450k
6800 - 16CPU @ 1.2 GHz, 64Gb - 743k
6800 - 24CPU @ 1.2 GHz, 96Gb - 1,000k
Prices c/o http://store.sun.com
So, if you didn't quite fit on an 8 CPU box, watch the prices jump
They've got wheels - easy to move. However, try plugging it in - those three power supplies will overload your circuit easy ...
And in other news, the US has instated a royal family, and converted to the euro, in order to harmonise with the EU. Mod this poster up.
The real issue with this judgement, as per Mr Lessig's fine blog and others comments therein, is that while the SCOTUS for the most part agreed that the extention was in principle against the constitution, they incredibly ruled that the SCOTUS did not have the right to overrule congress in this matter. Their ruling also included the view that the extension still meant that copyright was for 'limited times', and that congress was not deliberately trying to circumvent the limited time provision with multiple extensions.
It's only when you read the disenting opinion that you might think that some of the SOTUS justices are actually on this planet. My favourite point is when it is pointed out that the bill is named after someone who proposed that copyright should be forever.
I think the idea is that the airport/sports stadium will bring in additional business, and hence additional revenue for the government through taxes.
If it wasn't for money, we'd still be in a barter economy. No one has come up with a better system of measuring what things are worth for comparison purposes - create a common scale, and value everything against it - voila! Money. Of course, once people can compare the values of their goods, and communications allow almost instant transmission of these values, then we can start making complex objects, knowing that the parts involved will require us to have an equivalent amount of goods in the form of "wealth" ... money. Don't cheapen money (ignore the pun) just because some people came up with ways of tricking it out of people who created (earned) it. There will always be shysters, thieves, and taxmen.
All real money is backed by work done by someone (natural resources are worthless unless mined, goods have value added through manufacturing). So people work to add value to themselves and their society. This work is measured indirectly in money terms, since it's the commonly accepted scale for value. If the star trek universe has no money, why do people have holodeck "privileges". They've earned something, and it has value to both them, and others. And why do they keep refering to gold pressed latinum all the time. If there is no money, the federation must be a totalitarian state.
Put the space station in one of the LaGrange points where it will stay for a long time, without requiring millions to keep it from burning up. Spend the money on cheapening the cost of launches with newer technology shuttle replacements, that have a bit more range. Lets aim for what we really want - giant space stations where colonies can live, and moon cities! Factories on the moon, and in space producing space goods. By the time they are ready, we'll probably have built the space elavator.
Read the CA HST literature - it actually requires $25B. They've past a bill to provide $10B of it.
The answer is that these days you can't just "hop on a plane". You wait, for at least an hour, while they determine whether any of the passengers are terrorists, and whether any of the luggage is a bomb. And you've got to get to the airport. And back from the airport on the other side.
As long as the terminals are in resonable locations (compare Union Station and LAX for example) it makes more sense to use a HST than a plane.
A UK bank offered a free filofax for joining - 30 pounds opened the account. Well, I used the account for many months, and eventually changed to a different bank when I went to college (different on-campus bank - and I had got a free bag from the other bank with another 30 pounds ;) so go figure.
I ended up having 60 pence in the bank, and couldn't get back to the actual branch to close the account, and they wouldn't close it for me and send a cheque. So they had to mail me a statement every month for six years, on an account 0.60 in credit.
You probably want to read up on the proposed "Fair Tax Bill" which pretty much consolidates this whole line of thinking. The idea is that you only ever pay sales tax. Sure the big ticket items cost more - but you've got more in your pocket to start with because you aren't paying income tax.
The main issue with this is when you sell big ticket second hand items (such as your house). Insurance is also an issue (only pay tax on the service part, not the part that is used to pay claims). Finally, how you deal with welfare is also worth careful thinking.
The real benefit is actually that you eliminate the need to file tax every year, and that eliminates much of the IRS (there are 5 IRS officers for each FBI officer) which is a massive government saving, and a massive "not having to pay an accountant every year" saving for everyone else.
As for you "evading" tax by getting better prices, you are just doing better business. Of course, if the only source of tax was sales tax, you can guess the IRS officers (or the states - let them collect it for you for a percentage) that are left are going to look real close at companies not collecting sales tax correctly.
As for not doing it this way being dishonest - let's just say that the way tax is charged in multiple ways may seem that way to someone lacking in savvy. In the end though, the only person who pays tax is the man in the street. Businesses will always pass it on to the consumer as part of their costs.
That must be why London prices are the same as everywhere else in the UK! You are allowed to charge different amounts for goods in different areas, obviously, based on retail overhead (rent, wages, and so forth for shop staff).
The point is that what you can't do is stop me buying stuff from other parts of the UK (or EU for that matter) that are being offered cheaper than in my local area. You especially can't do it when the price difference is many times the cost of shipping the cheaper article to me (as the press and the Office of Fair Trading will jump all over you).
You might want to read this:
y -p olitics.html
...
http://www.woodpecker.com/writing/essays/royalt
And ask your question again
Maybe, it's because RMS is seeing the pool of coders that could work on this replacement being wittled down by bk's EULA - to wit, anyone who uses bk while doing Linux kernel work, is now not allowed to help on coding a replacement for bk (even in their spare time).
The very people who use bk, are exactly the sort of people who would possibly look to make improvements to a SCC if it were open source (since they are already proven to do open source work, and this work requires a SCC).
Unless they hid most of the profits in shell companies, continued to hold non-executive directorships (working one day a week), take unsecured loans against the company, and use share options to make millions, on top of seven figure salaries. And then retire from the company, with two years salary as "severance", and a pension in perpetuity paid for by the company.