Microsoft is a corporation. Corporations exist in order to earn a profit for their shareholders. Of course most of Microsoft's moves are money-related.
However, I do think that Microsoft would serve their profit-motive much better if governments, corporations, and even small businesses and home users felt a little more confidence in the quality of the product.
It's a great idea: a simple-to-use graphical system that allows the technologically disinclined to make use of complex equipment in an efficient manner. What's missing is the assurance that strong efforts have been made to eradicate threats. While you happy click along, achieving your goals, the product of your labor is subject to the potential for harm that, while it can never fully extirpated, could be greatly reduced.
Microsoft is all about hand-holding. So it doesn't make sense that they don't apply that philosophy toward security. AutoUpdate was a good start - one of the more major steps that could have been taken. A fully configurable software firewall that comes pre-set for maximum security for home broadband users would be another.
Anyone have any other ideas? (besides 'dont write bad code' ?)
Reaction to fear of losing market position is exactly why Microsoft, or any other company, for that matter, cannot maintain an *abusive* monopoly. Consumers start complaining, and to avoid leaving a hole open to competitors, corporations adapt themselves to better serve those consumers. Free markets work. Microsoft is a huge (and slow, but steady) example of this.
Agreed. Microsoft took the appropriate actions. They recognized the problem, and released a fix far before any damage was done. They even made AutoUpdate enabled by default, to cover the rear ends of lazy/unknowing/careless users. I think Microsoft is making steps forward - small but important steps, such as ahead-of-time patches, offering a foundation for cooperation with 3rd party IM client producers, and admitting to and showing indications of intention of addressing security and stability problems.
Microsoft has a long way to go. There's no doubt about that. But *some* of the recent news concerning Microsoft has surprised and pleased me.
If users would leave AutoUpdate on, or take the time to check for patches once every week or two themselves.. and MS doesn't bloat 2004 and instead focuses on security/stability... I think things will be just fine.
This assumes two things. First, that anti-trust laws are *proper*. And second, that 'competition' includes piggy-backing on MS hardware/bandwidth/etc for free in order to turn a profit. Let's take them one at a time, shall we?
Anti-trust seems like a good deal on the surface. Consumers get protection from overbearing companies, entreprenuers get a chance at improving an existing produce or service, and government gets to expand and exert more and more control over the actions and properties of citizens (companies are owned by citizens - a fact that people tend to forget.)
Now, the 3rd 'benefit' I listed is obviously not a benefit at all. The very fact that government grows and becomes more regulatory/coercive should alarm anyone with common sense. Then there's that little side issue of Constitutionality. Sure, the feds have the power, written into the Constitution, to "regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States" (Art. 1 Sec. 8 Clause 3). But Jefferson said that all future interpretations of the Constitution should be limited to the language and usage and definitions in use at the time of the framing. Which means that to regulate commerce between the states is exactly that - to prevent the sovereign States from enacting trade legislation that would disrupt the economic cohesion of the nation. It does *not* mean that the Federal government has the power to interfere with the operations of companies. Therefore, anti-trust is unConstitutional. Not to mention free-market principles, and the fact that the 10th Amendment limits the powers of the Federal government to only those specifically listed, and reserves all other powers to the States and the people.
Having cleanly decapitated the Sherman Act of 1890, there is no logical necessity to remark on the free ride you're claiming 'competitors' have been granted by the settlement between Microsoft and the Federal government. However, it will be an entertaining exercise, so here goes:
First we must address the term 'competitor'. You label free-riders as competitors. A sports analogy will serve to disabuse you of that notion. On the football field, a runner is sprinting across the yard markers. He is pursued by a member of the opposing team who wishes to bring his gainful exertion to an end. If he wishes to be competitive, he must rely on the strength of his own muscles and of his own will - he cannot draw ability or aptitude from his intended target. Regardless of his wishes, desires, hopes, or whims, he can only be *competitive* if he has worked hard enough to gain for himself the resources necessary to achieve his goal. If he begged for his opponent to slow down, he would simply be a supplicant.
Giving a company a free lunch at Microsoft's expense is not only unConstitutional, it is the very 'anti-competitiveness' anti-trust reactionaries shriek about.
I would make my own free client that accessed all networks. I would make MS Trillian, basically. If I made it high-quality, and bundled it with Windows, I would eliminate Trillian entirely, and if I provided a binary install for Linux and maybe even BSD, I could even eat at gaim perhaps (hah, I can see some IRC kid saying 'brb lemme install msn linux 3.01 so i can holla at mah h0ez!').
Then I could say to Yahoo and AIM and all the others: Hey guys, our network is open - how bout yours? Our client works with everything - does yours? Hurry up and write your own before our install base grows too large for you to compete.
I haven't used MSN Messenger in a couple of years now, so correct me if I'm wrong... but doesn't Microsoft pay for the service, at least in part, through advertisements routed through their official client? And doesn't the client provide access to additional features which also generate ad revenue? And isn't MSN Messenger also a way to invite users to make use of other Microsoft products and services, which *are* fee-based? Seems to me that the Messenger service is a marketing tool, one they have spent a lot of time and money on, and which they should have full property rights to.
I agree. Their network, their hardware, their systems... They can do whatever they want, regardless of how some may feel.
The question of charging for access licenses for totally free clients is an interesting one, however. On the one hand, you have the fact that the developers are making no money (unless they accept donations), and paying for the licenses may be difficult or impossible. (One might speculate that this is exactly the point: to squash competing free clients.) On the other hand, you have the fact that regardless of the lack of profit-motive in these free clients, they are still accessing and utilizing resources which cost money.
One solution would be to require that the free clients have built-in functions to cycle the ads that the IM service provider uses to pay for the resources. The obvious problem with this would be that these clients are mostly open source, and could be modified to disallow the ads. Reworking the entire IM system structure to prevent this would be expensive and, ultimately, futile.
Another idea might be to pass legislation either through Congress or the FCC, to allow the tracking and prosecution of the use of such ad-cleansed clients, or to allow civil suits, or whatever. However, this would be somewhat reminiscent of the DMCA, at least in the minds of users who are less respectful toward property rights. (The rights of creators and owners are something I strongly support!) This would also give IM service providers a free hand to close their networks and protocols, which is something the FCC has already opposed by suggesting that the service providers should interoperate with each other and not try to monopolize the market.
On a side note, this is also vaguely familiar in another way. Telephone service, and to a lesser extent, cable television service. Company X owns the lines and equipment, but is *forced* by law to provide access to competitors, albeit at a price. While this is usually good for consumers, it denies Company X's shareholders' fundamental property rights, in that their resources are not truely and fully theirs to dispose of as they see fit. The important thing to note about property is that you only truely own it if you are in complete control of its use. There is a label for a system under which an individual or company may 'own' a resource, but must abide by regulatory edict in regards to its utilization. That label is Fascism.
Re:More links, and a serious offer
on
MIT Roofnet
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· Score: 1
Offtopic but oh well. Your site is one of the funniest I've ever seen, and I'm still not sure whether you're a fan of Rand or not... gotta really love her, or really hate her... to put that much time into it.
Or.. you couldn't possibly care less about *her*, and are instead, a fan or foe of her ideas. Interesting, either way.
The prison officials should be concerned with this. Not the general public who were harmed by the malicious coder's actions.
Yes, life and liberty are higher on the scale - but property crime *is on that same scale*. A lower degree of wrongness does not nullify the fact that it was in fact wrong, and that innocent people were deprived of *their* data, bandwidth, money, and freedom to make use of their own equipment and resources. I have almost no tolerance or patience for those who do not respect the equal rights of others.
I never said that it was ok to attack him or rape him in prison - I simply meant to state that I would have little or no sympathy for the malicious ignorant bastard. If he had no respect for the rights and properties of others... why should we concern ourselves with his well-being?
As for Libertarians... well, I'm not a middle-of-the-road type. "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" and all that - so what is 'happiness'? Happiness is the general feeling of well-being associated with the knowledge that you are secure in your possessions and your person and your fundamental rights. When someone else forcibly removes the product of your labors, your effort to apprehend happiness in a material form has been retarded. Much like the people who can't seem to understand that property crime is every bit as bad as life and liberty crime.
...on usage of the customer webspace? Does it have to be a full site, or can it be a storage place for images/files linked to from another site? Consumers are paying for the AOL service, and getting AOL webspace as part of the deal - are there limitations on its utilization?
Well the courts MAY take that argument... although legally, they shouldn't.
Rights are rights, and rights and limitations granted by accepting agreements should stick. If the user can't be bothered to read the agreement before accepting it, the company shouldn't be bothered trying to enforce what contract law states that the cops and courts should enforce automatically.
If ignorance of law is no defense of violation of law.. how can ignorance of contract be any defense at all?
Regardless of the fact that his offense was 'non-violent', it was still a property crime. He still contributed to a family of worms that caused data and/or financial loss to innocent victims.
Smoking a joint is a non-violent victimless crime. It's only a crime in the legal sense, not in the moral sense.
Writing malicious code *is* morally wrong, in that it deprives others of the rightful fruits of their labors, which amounts to violating their 3rd basic right, the right to the pursuit of happiness. It is commonly understood by Constitutional law types and Libertarians that to pursue 'happiness' is to work to earn or keep a value, and that value is in many cases material, and so a crime against property is on the same level as a crime against an individual's life or liberty/freedom.
Therefore as he has violated the rights of others, he has diminished his own rights and the protection of them.
If he is indeed victimized in prison, the person committing the act will have done something horribly wrong - but he himself, having already victimized others, will have little moral grounds on which to erect a legitimate complaint.
I'm growing tired of the culture of blamelessness and acceptance. Many things that are not crimes are illegal - and many things that are surely criminal in nature, that is, acts that intentionally harm the well-being of others, are overlooked or treated too softly.
Personal liberty requires personal responsibility and culpability for the outcomes of the choices made under the umbrella of that freedom.
My friend Luis is a mail admin for AOL in Dulles (it's funny, I gave him his first Linux CD a couple years ago...).
He runs a server off his Comcast cable modem, and has had to remove himself and me from the block list a few times, due to entire IP ranges being blocked (he does this by adding exception rules).
He says AOL spends 20-30 million dollars a year paying for servers, storage, bandwidth, technicians, etc. related to spam. He himself works on the block lists.
When you think about the distributed nature of the internet, all that spam is eating EVERYONE's bandwidth. Tends to piss me off, and I'm glad these big guys might be getting slapped around a bit soon.
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Microsoft is a corporation. Corporations exist in order to earn a profit for their shareholders. Of course most of Microsoft's moves are money-related.
However, I do think that Microsoft would serve their profit-motive much better if governments, corporations, and even small businesses and home users felt a little more confidence in the quality of the product.
It's a great idea: a simple-to-use graphical system that allows the technologically disinclined to make use of complex equipment in an efficient manner. What's missing is the assurance that strong efforts have been made to eradicate threats. While you happy click along, achieving your goals, the product of your labor is subject to the potential for harm that, while it can never fully extirpated, could be greatly reduced.
Microsoft is all about hand-holding. So it doesn't make sense that they don't apply that philosophy toward security. AutoUpdate was a good start - one of the more major steps that could have been taken. A fully configurable software firewall that comes pre-set for maximum security for home broadband users would be another.
Anyone have any other ideas? (besides 'dont write bad code' ?)
Reaction to fear of losing market position is exactly why Microsoft, or any other company, for that matter, cannot maintain an *abusive* monopoly. Consumers start complaining, and to avoid leaving a hole open to competitors, corporations adapt themselves to better serve those consumers. Free markets work. Microsoft is a huge (and slow, but steady) example of this.
Agreed. Microsoft took the appropriate actions. They recognized the problem, and released a fix far before any damage was done. They even made AutoUpdate enabled by default, to cover the rear ends of lazy/unknowing/careless users. I think Microsoft is making steps forward - small but important steps, such as ahead-of-time patches, offering a foundation for cooperation with 3rd party IM client producers, and admitting to and showing indications of intention of addressing security and stability problems.
Microsoft has a long way to go. There's no doubt about that. But *some* of the recent news concerning Microsoft has surprised and pleased me.
If users would leave AutoUpdate on, or take the time to check for patches once every week or two themselves.. and MS doesn't bloat 2004 and instead focuses on security/stability... I think things will be just fine.
This assumes two things. First, that anti-trust laws are *proper*. And second, that 'competition' includes piggy-backing on MS hardware/bandwidth/etc for free in order to turn a profit. Let's take them one at a time, shall we?
Anti-trust seems like a good deal on the surface. Consumers get protection from overbearing companies, entreprenuers get a chance at improving an existing produce or service, and government gets to expand and exert more and more control over the actions and properties of citizens (companies are owned by citizens - a fact that people tend to forget.)
Now, the 3rd 'benefit' I listed is obviously not a benefit at all. The very fact that government grows and becomes more regulatory/coercive should alarm anyone with common sense. Then there's that little side issue of Constitutionality. Sure, the feds have the power, written into the Constitution, to "regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States" (Art. 1 Sec. 8 Clause 3). But Jefferson said that all future interpretations of the Constitution should be limited to the language and usage and definitions in use at the time of the framing. Which means that to regulate commerce between the states is exactly that - to prevent the sovereign States from enacting trade legislation that would disrupt the economic cohesion of the nation. It does *not* mean that the Federal government has the power to interfere with the operations of companies. Therefore, anti-trust is unConstitutional. Not to mention free-market principles, and the fact that the 10th Amendment limits the powers of the Federal government to only those specifically listed, and reserves all other powers to the States and the people.
Having cleanly decapitated the Sherman Act of 1890, there is no logical necessity to remark on the free ride you're claiming 'competitors' have been granted by the settlement between Microsoft and the Federal government. However, it will be an entertaining exercise, so here goes:
First we must address the term 'competitor'. You label free-riders as competitors. A sports analogy will serve to disabuse you of that notion. On the football field, a runner is sprinting across the yard markers. He is pursued by a member of the opposing team who wishes to bring his gainful exertion to an end. If he wishes to be competitive, he must rely on the strength of his own muscles and of his own will - he cannot draw ability or aptitude from his intended target. Regardless of his wishes, desires, hopes, or whims, he can only be *competitive* if he has worked hard enough to gain for himself the resources necessary to achieve his goal. If he begged for his opponent to slow down, he would simply be a supplicant.
Giving a company a free lunch at Microsoft's expense is not only unConstitutional, it is the very 'anti-competitiveness' anti-trust reactionaries shriek about.
I would make my own free client that accessed all networks. I would make MS Trillian, basically. If I made it high-quality, and bundled it with Windows, I would eliminate Trillian entirely, and if I provided a binary install for Linux and maybe even BSD, I could even eat at gaim perhaps (hah, I can see some IRC kid saying 'brb lemme install msn linux 3.01 so i can holla at mah h0ez!').
Then I could say to Yahoo and AIM and all the others: Hey guys, our network is open - how bout yours? Our client works with everything - does yours? Hurry up and write your own before our install base grows too large for you to compete.
I haven't used MSN Messenger in a couple of years now, so correct me if I'm wrong... but doesn't Microsoft pay for the service, at least in part, through advertisements routed through their official client? And doesn't the client provide access to additional features which also generate ad revenue? And isn't MSN Messenger also a way to invite users to make use of other Microsoft products and services, which *are* fee-based? Seems to me that the Messenger service is a marketing tool, one they have spent a lot of time and money on, and which they should have full property rights to.
I agree. Their network, their hardware, their systems... They can do whatever they want, regardless of how some may feel.
.
The question of charging for access licenses for totally free clients is an interesting one, however. On the one hand, you have the fact that the developers are making no money (unless they accept donations), and paying for the licenses may be difficult or impossible. (One might speculate that this is exactly the point: to squash competing free clients.) On the other hand, you have the fact that regardless of the lack of profit-motive in these free clients, they are still accessing and utilizing resources which cost money
One solution would be to require that the free clients have built-in functions to cycle the ads that the IM service provider uses to pay for the resources. The obvious problem with this would be that these clients are mostly open source, and could be modified to disallow the ads. Reworking the entire IM system structure to prevent this would be expensive and, ultimately, futile.
Another idea might be to pass legislation either through Congress or the FCC, to allow the tracking and prosecution of the use of such ad-cleansed clients, or to allow civil suits, or whatever. However, this would be somewhat reminiscent of the DMCA, at least in the minds of users who are less respectful toward property rights. (The rights of creators and owners are something I strongly support!) This would also give IM service providers a free hand to close their networks and protocols, which is something the FCC has already opposed by suggesting that the service providers should interoperate with each other and not try to monopolize the market.
On a side note, this is also vaguely familiar in another way. Telephone service, and to a lesser extent, cable television service. Company X owns the lines and equipment, but is *forced* by law to provide access to competitors, albeit at a price. While this is usually good for consumers, it denies Company X's shareholders' fundamental property rights, in that their resources are not truely and fully theirs to dispose of as they see fit. The important thing to note about property is that you only truely own it if you are in complete control of its use. There is a label for a system under which an individual or company may 'own' a resource, but must abide by regulatory edict in regards to its utilization. That label is Fascism.
Offtopic but oh well. Your site is one of the funniest I've ever seen, and I'm still not sure whether you're a fan of Rand or not... gotta really love her, or really hate her... to put that much time into it.
Or.. you couldn't possibly care less about *her*, and are instead, a fan or foe of her ideas. Interesting, either way.
The prison officials should be concerned with this. Not the general public who were harmed by the malicious coder's actions.
Yes, life and liberty are higher on the scale - but property crime *is on that same scale*. A lower degree of wrongness does not nullify the fact that it was in fact wrong, and that innocent people were deprived of *their* data, bandwidth, money, and freedom to make use of their own equipment and resources. I have almost no tolerance or patience for those who do not respect the equal rights of others.
is the point.
I never said that it was ok to attack him or rape him in prison - I simply meant to state that I would have little or no sympathy for the malicious ignorant bastard. If he had no respect for the rights and properties of others... why should we concern ourselves with his well-being?
As for Libertarians... well, I'm not a middle-of-the-road type. "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" and all that - so what is 'happiness'? Happiness is the general feeling of well-being associated with the knowledge that you are secure in your possessions and your person and your fundamental rights. When someone else forcibly removes the product of your labors, your effort to apprehend happiness in a material form has been retarded. Much like the people who can't seem to understand that property crime is every bit as bad as life and liberty crime.
...on usage of the customer webspace? Does it have to be a full site, or can it be a storage place for images/files linked to from another site? Consumers are paying for the AOL service, and getting AOL webspace as part of the deal - are there limitations on its utilization?
That's interesting - but can you provide me an example in relation to software licenses and EULA's?
Well the courts MAY take that argument... although legally, they shouldn't.
Rights are rights, and rights and limitations granted by accepting agreements should stick. If the user can't be bothered to read the agreement before accepting it, the company shouldn't be bothered trying to enforce what contract law states that the cops and courts should enforce automatically.
If ignorance of law is no defense of violation of law.. how can ignorance of contract be any defense at all?
Regardless of the fact that his offense was 'non-violent', it was still a property crime. He still contributed to a family of worms that caused data and/or financial loss to innocent victims.
Smoking a joint is a non-violent victimless crime. It's only a crime in the legal sense, not in the moral sense.
Writing malicious code *is* morally wrong, in that it deprives others of the rightful fruits of their labors, which amounts to violating their 3rd basic right, the right to the pursuit of happiness. It is commonly understood by Constitutional law types and Libertarians that to pursue 'happiness' is to work to earn or keep a value, and that value is in many cases material, and so a crime against property is on the same level as a crime against an individual's life or liberty/freedom.
Therefore as he has violated the rights of others, he has diminished his own rights and the protection of them.
If he is indeed victimized in prison, the person committing the act will have done something horribly wrong - but he himself, having already victimized others, will have little moral grounds on which to erect a legitimate complaint.
I'm growing tired of the culture of blamelessness and acceptance. Many things that are not crimes are illegal - and many things that are surely criminal in nature, that is, acts that intentionally harm the well-being of others, are overlooked or treated too softly.
Personal liberty requires personal responsibility and culpability for the outcomes of the choices made under the umbrella of that freedom.
My friend Luis is a mail admin for AOL in Dulles (it's funny, I gave him his first Linux CD a couple years ago...). He runs a server off his Comcast cable modem, and has had to remove himself and me from the block list a few times, due to entire IP ranges being blocked (he does this by adding exception rules). He says AOL spends 20-30 million dollars a year paying for servers, storage, bandwidth, technicians, etc. related to spam. He himself works on the block lists. When you think about the distributed nature of the internet, all that spam is eating EVERYONE's bandwidth. Tends to piss me off, and I'm glad these big guys might be getting slapped around a bit soon.