You do realize how rediculous[sic] that statement is, right? It just makes you look stupid.
Ahh, the ad hominem attack. Yeah, that will really convince someone that your arguments are worthwhile. Here's a little quiz. Which organization has the most programming resources and money to spend? Is it Apple, the Firefox Project, Opera, or Microsoft. Now, which one of those has been able to build a browser that reads the standard formats we are discussing properly? So we have only one company failing at it is the one with the most resources. I think it is pretty reasonable, therefore; to conclude that either they are tragically incompetent or they are acting maliciously.
If you have a bug, post a sample of the HTML here along with a screen shot (or detailed description) of the behavior your seeing.
I could go to the effort of recreating the several, obvious failings of IE7 beta3 with regard to XHTML and CSS2 and posting the associated code here, but since I already sent it to MS I don't think I'll bother. It is not like this is something that is not blatantly obvious anyway. It simply can't display any formatting when defined as a XHTML tag and CSS style pairing, even when that code validates and displays properly in all other browsers. Anyone writing CSS2 and XHTML following the W3C guidelines will almost certainly run into one or more of them.
If the problems are corrected before IE7 leaves beta, I will be greatly surprised. When that does happen, I seriously doubt I'll have to stop making special provisions to let my code degrade gracefully for IE's shortcoming. I'd like very much for that not to be the case.
I've tried it and it seems to work OK for me. Why not post a URL of the page that you're having problems with?
Because of the NDA I signed.
In my experience, the vast majority of people moaning about how IE7 is very broken and behaves just like IE6 simply don't understand DOCTYPES...
It validates. It works in every other browser. It results in a degraded version for the IE beta because IE borks the XHTML.
If there's a bug - report it using the bug reporting tool instead of moaning about it on slashdot. It's beta remember.
I've reported it as several bugs for every version of IE I've ever used - to date. I don't expect this time they will fix it either. It is not like this is advanced functionality here, it is pretty simple. The only reason I have to believe it is still not working is because either IE engineers are absurdly incompetent or MS does not want it to work.
It is only suicide for Apple if this law does not also effectively break MS's ability to tie Windows Media player and their DRM to Windows. Unfortunately, this likely will not do that. France decided to make illegal the one thing allowing Apple's DRM to stop MS's from taking over the entire market with their monopoly abuse. Brilliant move huh?
France should not back down on this, but take it all the way. Ban all undocumented file formats and enforce interoperability. Then, MS would have to let Apple implement their DRM and Apple would have to let MS do the same. The DRM would quickly become pointless and everyone would win.
standardizing on one form of DRM would be good, like standardizing on one form of video tape, of laser disk format, of width of cars, of voltage for household electrical current, and so on.
If not for the fact that that standard is owned by one company, is patented, and is a gatekeeper preventing access to our artistic heritage due to unethical copyright laws. So if MS's DRM is the only one and they refuse to let Macs or Linux machine s play it, or charge $1000 per machine to let them, you think that would be a good thing?
Just because they didn't fix the bugs that affect you doesn't mean they did nothing at all.
They have not, given years to work on it, brought their browser up to a normal level of compliance with Web standards. Every other browser I can find works, but MS's doesn't. If you think that is because they tried really hard but couldn't quite manage it, I have a wonderful, historic bridge you might be interested in for a very reasonable price.
It's about time that someone otyher[sic] than Microsoft was forced to play nice with their competitors.
MS's conviction for monopoly abuse with their music player and DRM format was basically nothing. So the EU did little. They have done nothing about Apple thus far.
France, however, has done nothing about MS's monopoly abuse with their music player software and DRM, but they have passed this law targeting Apple (who may or may not have a monopoly).
Really, Apple is trying to get its own little monoploy for its player, mayber if they played fair this wouldnt happen to them.
Apple is getting close to a monopoly with their player, but certainly not due to any unfair business practices.
I use Creative MP3 players because I can use at least napster or yahoo, maybe even some others.
There are three choices for mainstream, DRM music downloads. Apple's is bundled with the iPod and if the iPod becomes a monopoly this is illegal. MS's is bundled with their Windows OS monopoly. This is illegal and they have been convicted of it, but the punishment was basically nothing. RealMedia's is rather crappy and their brand is poised by their spyware days.
So you've chosen to go with Microsoft brand DRM, the convicted monopolist abusing their position and unfairly disadvantaging the other two as determined by the EU courts. And you think they have the ethical high ground over Apple? Get a clue.
If the manufacturer forces him to use product A only with product B, the customer cannot make this decision. If he is forced to use product A if he wants to use product B, this violates the laws of free trade.
Not really, since other companies are free to offer an alternative bundle of Product A and product B. Usually, the only time this is illegal is when Either product A or product B is a monopoly, at which point it runs afoul of antitrust law.
In this particular instance, there are really four products involved:
songs
DRM restictions
music downloading and discovery
portable, digital, players without removable media
The first is "monopolized" by a cartel. The second is bundled with MS's monopoly OS and tied to Apple's iPod (which may or may not be a monopoly). The third is bundled with DRM by both parties. The fourth is possibly monopolized by Apple, but no court has yet determined that and they are hovering around the 70% market share.
The EU courts convicted MS of bundling their DRM and digital jukebox with their OS, but have not stopped them from continuing to do so, or taken any effective measures to mitigate the abuse. With France mandating DRM being interoperable, this may or may not be able to effect both Apple and MS. If it forces both of them to open up the DRM, we are all winners. If, on the other hand, it stops Apple, but not MS, it will pretty much guarantee that MS's monopoly abuse will allow them to be the gatekeepers for music for the foreseeable future, via leveraging their Windows monopoly. It also further creates a barrier for alternatives to that OS monopoly as Linux will not be able to play mainstream music within a few years time.
...the Acid 2 Test covers a wide set of functionality and standards, not just from CSS2.1 and HTML 4.01, selected by the authors as a "wish list" of features they'd like to have.
This is incorrect. It is not a "wish list" of desired features. It is a test for compliance with often missing parts of several standards, like graceful handling of certain incorrect code.
It's pointedly not a compliance test (emphasis added) (from the Test Guide: "Acid2 does not guarantee conformance with any specification").
That is because it does not test all of any given specification, just common pain points.
As a wish list, it is really important and useful to my team, but it isn't even intended, in my understanding, as our priority list for IE7."
They probably should not be focusing on the ACID2 test. Instead they should be trying to get CSS1, CSS2, CSS3, XHTML, etc. basics implemented, which it "looks like" they failed at. Of course they did not really fail, they just never intended on doing it because they are intentionally avoiding both being standards compliant and advancing the state of the art for Web technologies (which could undermine their platform dominance).
Suck my balls, IE developers, developers, developers you lying, unethical scum.
It's not perfect, but it's a major improvement in basically every way over IE 6.
Wow, seven different press releases/comments from MS. Well, someone just installed it on a test box, so let me take a look at the HTML I'm outputting. Golly looks just the same as IE6. IE fails to show either the CSS or XHTML formatting it failed to before. Now lets take a look in some other browsers. Firefox works. Opera works. Safari works.
They can talk all they want, but they still haven't managed to do anything. Talk is cheap. Luckily, as this is content that only network security experts will be looking at, nobody cares is it is unformatted for IE users since none of them would touch the bloody thing.
It's good that MS is taking a more serious approach to security with IE and Windows Vista. But really, how much can they do when 2 security holes open up for every one they patch?
If they were serious about security they would spend some of their billions of dollars on hiring really good security people and implementing their suggestions. Little things like making the browser run in userspace. Implementing zones or jails, and not requiring local services to run on the network for normal operation. These are fundamental security improvements that could be made. Implementing them would reduce the number of functional exploits, instead of just trying to patch them all. MS is not interested in doing any of this. Instead, they plan to start making money selling antivirus signatures to remove the malware their holes let into your system. Just because a press release says, "we're serious about security" does not mean it is true in any way.
only a 'webmaster' would deride having to program for different situation.
There is a difference between having to have different versions of a program for different platforms and different versions of data for different platforms. Especially when all platforms "claim" to conform to a standard, but one obviously does not.
Since the poster already mentioned CPU, I suspect they know enough to look at the basic utilization stats. Most likely, however, the limiting factor is either the hard drive speed or the fact that Windows explorer is a piece of crap.
If the Corporate customer doesn't have a pressing reason to make a new purchase right now, maybe they can sit back for another 6+ months while AMD preps its next chips.
Or they can wait another 12 months until Intel starts shipping their 45nm chips (according to the roadmaps). Any way you slice it, Intel seems to be a year or more ahead in their ability to bring die size improvements to their fabrication, but we all new Intel was ahead in that department anyway. The issue is, AMD has thus far been unable to compensate for that advantage with architectural improvements as they did in the past.
AMD is unlikely to hold the speed crown consistently for the foreseeable future. Right now they may or may not be the winner for a desktop machine, but they are falling behind for portables and servers.
How can it be wiretapping if there's no wire being tapped?
How can the patriot act be called what it is? Why is it that if I wear a pistol in a holster on my belt, in plain view, covered with blinking LEDs, while wearing a t-shirt that reads "I carry a firearm" I'll be arrested for "carrying a concealed weapon." The names of laws often have nothing to do with what the laws say.
Why is it a crime to monitor what our public servants are doing?
Because the police are criminals and they follow the orders of the corrupt politicians who pass these laws. I know quite a few cops, but I've never known one who did not flaunt the law and brag about how they don't have to follow it since they are cops. I've never known one who does not have a "funny" story about how they abused their power for their own personal ends. If you haven't noticed this by now, you haven't been paying attention.
Is there anything in the EULA that allows them to get away with this?
Sure, lots of crap... not that it matters. The EULA contains plenty of enforceable clauses that conflict with federal and start laws. Eventually someone will probably take them to court and five years later they will win and get a settlement. Of course what that means then will be a whole different ball game, since by then the market will have completely changed. MS may well be providing applications only as online services, and Windows as an OS will be irrelevant to their monopoly.
The court systems are too slow, too corrupt, and too much affected by money to act effectively against MS. They should have busted them up into multiple, competing companies years ago.
"Deconstruction" is almost universally understood to refer to a specific sort of literary analysis.
In the US and France this is true. In other places, however, the more archaic usage is more common. It is often used to refer to "demolition" or "dismantlement," but with an orderly, methodical connotation. Since this article is about Finland, I suspect they probably repeated the usage they heard from sources there.
I suspect a more appropriate word in the title would have used a form of the verb "to erode,"...
I disagree. Erosion implies a natural process, whereas this was a directed use of technology. That seems an inappropriate connotation to me.
Please educate yourselves.
Please get over yourself and realize your interpretation of something is not the only one. Language is fluid and varied. On a forum devoted to technology it is inappropriate and off topic to complain about spelling, grammar, or word usage that does not prevent you from understanding the meaning of the writing. Besides, you wouldn't want anyone to sit here and rip apart your every word and phrase, despite it being immaterial to the topic at hand. I hope the moderators mark you as "offtopic" for you certainly are.
I've always had the view that every project was a wild animal. Worse yet, it's a wild animal in sheep's clothing. And you approach the sheep with a shepherd's hook. When the veil is lifted and you see man eating marsupial with alligator teeth and a scorpion's tail, you have no choice but to throw the shepherd's hook at them and give it all you've got.
The point is: not all monopolies are bad for consumers; artificially creating competition where none naturally exists may make things worse rather than better.
No one said they were. The point is that the monopoly abuses that are illegal according to antitrust law are bad for consumers, as as been repeatedly shown in the market. That is why they were banned everywhere.
The practice of dumping is beneficial to consumers in the short term, and cannot harm long-term competition; the competitors, with their lower (and perhaps non-existant) costs, can wait out the incumbent for as long as it takes.
What are you talking about? Dumping happens only when there is competition and then price gouging happens when the competitor is driven out of business. You're assuming a company can afford to make a product but not bring it to market until dumping stops, but you can't pay employees for that time for free, or store product. Also, an existing monopoly usually has accumulated a large reserve of funds with that monopoly so they can almost always afford to wait out a newcomer.
(Incidently, why would the government declare something it wanted to do "illegal" in the first place?)
The government does not have a hive mind and often factions within it directly oppose one another, as is the intended design of the balance of powers.
I disagree on the point that monopolies can continue to exercise active anti-competitive influences indefinitely. Even if they can manage to retain their cash reserves, doing so will reduce their flexibility and raise their costs, making their target market even more attractive to (potential) competitors and increasing the costs of maintaining the monopoly -- a self-defeating cycle.
Anti-competative monopolistic actions make more money than they cost. That is why businesses do them. Raising of costs is more than offset by raising of profits. If you make 50 million with 50% of a market you can make 400 million with the whole market.
Businessmen realize this, thus the cost of competing with a company is and has been making 400 million for the benefit of grabbing 50 million is lower than the benefit of entering a market against a non-monopoly for the same size market share. Further, it is usually a lot easier.
I also find it ironic that you would have the government -- the ultimate monopoly power -- step in to eliminate its economic competition and take control of the market.
Antitrust law specifically does not do this. It takes no action against a company maintaining a monopoly, only one using that monopoly to make more monopolies in new markets.
Even assuming that this is not contradictory, I would still conclude that application of antitrust law to unsubsidized private organizations is both unjust and unjustified.
As I said before, you need to hit the books again. Take a look at an unregulated monopoly in a free market. It expands until it hits another monopoly. You end up with a small number of competing monopolies and no room for smaller or specialized business. There is a reason abusing a monopoly is illegal almost everywhere.
Laws are passed so that justice will be preserved; living better is only a side effect, contingent on our own individual and collective efforts. I would not want to "live better" in an unjust society; I doubt many humans truly would.
What is just about a company taking over a market despite having an obviously inferior product to others who worked hard and made something better? If one person works hard, innovates, and creates something that betters all of mankind, don't you think it is fair that they should be protected from losing in the market simply because someone is leveraging an existing monopoly in a completely separate market? Like it or not, the laws are about more than ethics, they are about preventing a violent, desperate type of living. The rich are not taxed proportionally more than the poor because it is just.
Most people are not going to go to these extremes. Windows works out of the box. This is how it has to be.
The pre-installed OS market is probably 90%+ of the total market. MS has others locked out and I don't foresee this changing.
If it's a simple matter of pre-installing or even including a CD (as opposed to brokering some deal with MS) I don't see why companies like Dell don't offer this as an option.
Did you read my previous post? If Dell decides to add Linux as a normal, pre-install option for their computers the chain of events that follow will be like this:
1. Dell offers new option.
2. Dell saves $70 per Linux box by not paying for Windows, but breaks their OEM license with MS by shipping a machine without a DOS compatible license.
3. Dell loses the ability to put a Windows ready logo on that line of computers, costing them marketing dollars.
4. For each sale Dell does not get the $20 in kickbacks by installing spyware and crippleware.
Lets assume that is $70-$20-$5 so far. Dell is making an additional $45 per machine they sell. These sales make up maybe 5% of their sales at this point.
5. Three months later Dell has to negotiate a new Windows licensing agreement with Dell, since theirs is expiring.
6. MS makes an example of Dell and starts charging them $150 per Windows license.
7. Dell computers with Windows (which make up 90% of their sales) are now $70 more expensive than Gateway or Dell. On a $300 consumer desktop, that is 25% more expensive for the same machine.
8. Dell loses huge numbers of sales on Windows machines since they are being out-priced by everyone else.
The net result, Dell complies or goes out of business, unless they can get by just selling Linux, which no one has been able to. Users need Windows since most software only runs on it and until there are sufficient numbers of users for other OS's this will continue to be the case (a chicken and egg problem).
That is the fault of the companies producing software, not MS. That's what I call laziness.
Software is made mostly for profit. It is business. If you don't make enough sales on Linux to pay the developers to port it, then you don't do it. And that is fine. Having a monopoly is not a problem, it is perfectly legal. What MS is doing wrong is abusing that monopoly to sell more of their inferior products. Since everyone needs Windows (for the most part) MS can do whatever they want and it will still sell. This includes charging twice as much as people would pay if there was free competition. So they can pay twice the developers they need and include for "free" other software, thus driving anyone who makes that type of software out of business. You can't compete with nothing for a price so long as the software is just barely good enough for most people (not necessarily better than other offerings or innovative in any way). Now MS has two monopolies. They jack up the price again to cover what they spend making the other software and hire additional developers to enter yet another market. The end result is MS owning every market with an inferior product. Consumers have only one option and it is sub-par and expensive. Capitalism has failed.
Because this monopoly abuse makes capitalism fail, it is illegal almost everywhere. The problem is, MS has enough lawyers and money for bribes that they pay less in fines and settlements than they make in profit by doing it. Thus, the fines and punishments need to be made more harsh.
The only real and lasting solution to this is going to be to split MS into multiple companies and make them compete against one another. That was, in fact, the originally proscribed punishment for MS by the US courts right before MS donated millions of dollars and that judge was removed for bias for saying what MS had done was wrong (after the judgement had been pronounced). Since then MS has not been punished at all for their crimes in the US.
With approximately 70% and 50% market share respectively the former is close and being investigated and the latter is nowhere near.
Are they next on the hit list?
Well, if they gain a monopoly and if they are shown to be abusing that monopoly via tying and bundling and they don't immediately stop. For example, should Apple gain a monopoly on portable music players, it would then be illegal for them to ship a copy of iTunes with every iPod unless they also included any competitors that asked as well. I'm not sure what actions of Google you could consider to be an illegal abuse, even were they declared to have a monopoly. Possibly the new Paypal competitor would count.
Naturally their stuff works seamlessly on their stuff.
There is nothing natural about it. They took open standards an intentionally broke them in secret ways so others would not work seamlessly with their products. It was deliberate and malicious and they knew it was illegal.
They shouldn't be limited in what they want their OS to be, especially when those enhancements benefit consumers.
Do tell, how does implementing exchange and AD instead of pop, imap, and LDAP benefit customers? They both provide the same functions but the former forces users of the desktop OS to use only MS's server, instead of having a choice of MS's or any other vendors. How does forcing users to have fewer choices benefit them?
Even if MS has a majority and you want your product to work on something consumers already have access to. It is still their product and you should consider yourself lucky, IMO.
Yeah, developers are lucky when MS obeys the law instead of breaking it.
I know I would purchase an alternative, if the price was good... But I would have considered a laptop with say Linux preinstalled or any other functioning OS if it were easily obtainable.
It isn't easily available because MS has a monopoly. Along with that monopoly come a lot of laws they must follow to insure the operation of the free market. If not for those laws, MS would not exist and IBM PCs would not have interoperated with Windows.
If all of these OS are free why aren't they more readily available? I'm sure it would cut the cost of PCs by at least a few hundred dollars.
OS X is tied to Apple hardware. Linux, Solaris, OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeDOS, BeOS, and a pile more are free for download and installation. There are a number of reasons, however, why these are not available in stores. (Walmart does sell some machines with Linux on their online store.) First, every major OEM and retailer needs to sell Windows, or they go out of business. Most consumers want or need Windows to use mainstream software. MS requires companies to sign illegal agreements in order to get a reasonable deal on Windows. Dell, for example, pays $70 or less for each copy of Windows they pre-install. This allows them to undercut any competition who does not have a similar agreement by $130 per PC, thus driving them out of business. All major retailers and OEMs have to have an agreement like this. Part of the agreement usually says that MS gets paid $70 for every PC sold, not for every copy of Windows shipped. In the past, they were getting paid when retailers sold Macs and Linux machines. Thus, a retailer had no monetary incentive to install Linux instead of Windows since they had to pay for Windows anyway. More recently, these agreements have become less obviously illegal (they are all sealed trade secrets). Now companies have to include a DOS compatible OS with every computer sold and pay for every copy of Windows. This means retailers can sometimes get away with shipping machines with FreeDOS (but not Linux). The problem is, they have to negotiate their OEM agreement periodically and MS can pick the price. Anyone they are not happy with, like anyone selling computers with Linux or something else pre-installed, might have to pay another $10 or another $100 per copy of Windows, thus making them more expensive than the competition and killing their sales. MS has retailers and OEMs by the balls and they use that to stop alternate OS pre-installs. Since most people don't know they can get another OS for free and since they already paid for Windows, there is little incentive to move to Linux or anything else. On top of all this, most retailers and OEMs are now getting kickbacks for installing spyware and crippleware versions of software on their computers. Since most of this software only works on Windows, they have a further monetary incentive to only pre-install Windows.
With the new Windows Vista coming out people will have to get used to a new UI so there's no reason why, IMO, more PCs can't be made available with these alternative OSs.
No reason except that any company that tries it will be betting their whole company on it, since they won't be able to compete when MS jacks up their price for Windows. They will live or die by the other OS, and it is just too big of a gamble for any current company.
Microsoft dominates the OS market. It isn't a monopoly because, as you yourself mentioned, it is not the only option. And, there are arguably superior products.
Antitrust law deals with making sure the free market operates properly. Thus, monopolies for legal and in economic modeling are defined not by products, but by markets. So tell me, who else is making money selling desktop OS's? Apple sells hardware with an OS bundled and upgrades for that hardware and tied to it. Redhat sells service and support but gives their OS away fro free. Sun gives their OS away for free and makes money on hardware. IBM sells hardware, support, and services and gives Linux away for free. Maybe you're noticing a pattern here. Microsoft is the only one that makes money selling a desktop OS. Thus, they are a monopoly.
The US, EU, and several other courts have recognized this as have pretty much all reputable economists.
And so they build products to compliment their OS.
There is nothing wrong with that, so long as they are not tied to the OS as defined by antitrust law. You see, product need to stand on their own against competition in the free market. They have to be better than the competition or cheaper, or both. Since everyone is striving for this the market is efficient. Customers get the best and cheapest products.
When products are tied, however, it is often in the customer's best economic interest to use a product that is not innovative, better, or cheaper because the disadvantages brought by not having the tie-in with the monopolized product overweight the advantage of having a product that is better or cheaper on its own. In this case the free market has failed. Thus, it is illegal.
I don't know what illegal actions you're referring to.
Then you obviously haven't done any research on this matter. MS has been convicted of several counts of illegal tying. In the EU case they used secret protocols that communicate between the Windows desktop (monopoly) and Windows server. These include Exchange and Active Directory. Neither protocol is innovative; both are intentionally broken copies of existing open standards. They have, by changing Windows desktop, brought Windows server an unfair advantage in the market. Windows Server is the only one that can talk properly using these built in features and protocols. Windows server is slower, less secure, more expensive, can't multitask well, and less reliable than the competitors. The only real advantage it has is this illegal tie-in. It is gaining market share. That is the market failing. It is also blatantly illegal in almost every country. MS knew it was illegal when they did it, but they figured they could bribe their way out of it or would pay less in fines than they make with the monopoly. So far, they have been 100% right. The US found them guilty but took no action to even stop the law breaking. MS lost lawsuits to hundreds of companies they harmed by doing this, but the pay-out is still less than the profit. Their business plan is to break the law, and it's working.
Unless it's just that you don't like MS.
I don't like the effects of MS's illegal actions on various computer markets and fields. Monopoly abuse removes the capitalist incentive towards innovation and brings it to a crawl. It is basically holding back the state of the art for profit. In the server example, companies are no longer motivated to make server OS's better. Why should they if they can't make money, even with a superior product? All of their illegal market abuses are also linked with lock-ins to make it hard for customers who have switched to go to another option later. This provided a momentum for the status quo, rather than for innovation.
So look at another fields MS has illegally entered. The Web browser market is ruined. 85% of all people use the worst browser on the market, which lacks full support for standards 7 years old and has not added support for any of the Web standards since. It has brought adva
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You do realize how rediculous[sic] that statement is, right? It just makes you look stupid.
Ahh, the ad hominem attack. Yeah, that will really convince someone that your arguments are worthwhile. Here's a little quiz. Which organization has the most programming resources and money to spend? Is it Apple, the Firefox Project, Opera, or Microsoft. Now, which one of those has been able to build a browser that reads the standard formats we are discussing properly? So we have only one company failing at it is the one with the most resources. I think it is pretty reasonable, therefore; to conclude that either they are tragically incompetent or they are acting maliciously.
If you have a bug, post a sample of the HTML here along with a screen shot (or detailed description) of the behavior your seeing.
I could go to the effort of recreating the several, obvious failings of IE7 beta3 with regard to XHTML and CSS2 and posting the associated code here, but since I already sent it to MS I don't think I'll bother. It is not like this is something that is not blatantly obvious anyway. It simply can't display any formatting when defined as a XHTML tag and CSS style pairing, even when that code validates and displays properly in all other browsers. Anyone writing CSS2 and XHTML following the W3C guidelines will almost certainly run into one or more of them.
If the problems are corrected before IE7 leaves beta, I will be greatly surprised. When that does happen, I seriously doubt I'll have to stop making special provisions to let my code degrade gracefully for IE's shortcoming. I'd like very much for that not to be the case.
I've tried it and it seems to work OK for me. Why not post a URL of the page that you're having problems with?
Because of the NDA I signed.
In my experience, the vast majority of people moaning about how IE7 is very broken and behaves just like IE6 simply don't understand DOCTYPES...
It validates. It works in every other browser. It results in a degraded version for the IE beta because IE borks the XHTML.
If there's a bug - report it using the bug reporting tool instead of moaning about it on slashdot. It's beta remember.
I've reported it as several bugs for every version of IE I've ever used - to date. I don't expect this time they will fix it either. It is not like this is advanced functionality here, it is pretty simple. The only reason I have to believe it is still not working is because either IE engineers are absurdly incompetent or MS does not want it to work.
But that's suicide for Apple.
It is only suicide for Apple if this law does not also effectively break MS's ability to tie Windows Media player and their DRM to Windows. Unfortunately, this likely will not do that. France decided to make illegal the one thing allowing Apple's DRM to stop MS's from taking over the entire market with their monopoly abuse. Brilliant move huh?
France should not back down on this, but take it all the way. Ban all undocumented file formats and enforce interoperability. Then, MS would have to let Apple implement their DRM and Apple would have to let MS do the same. The DRM would quickly become pointless and everyone would win.
standardizing on one form of DRM would be good, like standardizing on one form of video tape, of laser disk format, of width of cars, of voltage for household electrical current, and so on.
If not for the fact that that standard is owned by one company, is patented, and is a gatekeeper preventing access to our artistic heritage due to unethical copyright laws. So if MS's DRM is the only one and they refuse to let Macs or Linux machine s play it, or charge $1000 per machine to let them, you think that would be a good thing?
Just because they didn't fix the bugs that affect you doesn't mean they did nothing at all.
They have not, given years to work on it, brought their browser up to a normal level of compliance with Web standards. Every other browser I can find works, but MS's doesn't. If you think that is because they tried really hard but couldn't quite manage it, I have a wonderful, historic bridge you might be interested in for a very reasonable price.
It's about time that someone otyher[sic] than Microsoft was forced to play nice with their competitors.
MS's conviction for monopoly abuse with their music player and DRM format was basically nothing. So the EU did little. They have done nothing about Apple thus far.
France, however, has done nothing about MS's monopoly abuse with their music player software and DRM, but they have passed this law targeting Apple (who may or may not have a monopoly).
How do you consider this fair?
Really, Apple is trying to get its own little monoploy for its player, mayber if they played fair this wouldnt happen to them.
Apple is getting close to a monopoly with their player, but certainly not due to any unfair business practices.
I use Creative MP3 players because I can use at least napster or yahoo, maybe even some others.
There are three choices for mainstream, DRM music downloads. Apple's is bundled with the iPod and if the iPod becomes a monopoly this is illegal. MS's is bundled with their Windows OS monopoly. This is illegal and they have been convicted of it, but the punishment was basically nothing. RealMedia's is rather crappy and their brand is poised by their spyware days.
So you've chosen to go with Microsoft brand DRM, the convicted monopolist abusing their position and unfairly disadvantaging the other two as determined by the EU courts. And you think they have the ethical high ground over Apple? Get a clue.
If the manufacturer forces him to use product A only with product B, the customer cannot make this decision. If he is forced to use product A if he wants to use product B, this violates the laws of free trade.
Not really, since other companies are free to offer an alternative bundle of Product A and product B. Usually, the only time this is illegal is when Either product A or product B is a monopoly, at which point it runs afoul of antitrust law.
In this particular instance, there are really four products involved:
The first is "monopolized" by a cartel. The second is bundled with MS's monopoly OS and tied to Apple's iPod (which may or may not be a monopoly). The third is bundled with DRM by both parties. The fourth is possibly monopolized by Apple, but no court has yet determined that and they are hovering around the 70% market share.
The EU courts convicted MS of bundling their DRM and digital jukebox with their OS, but have not stopped them from continuing to do so, or taken any effective measures to mitigate the abuse. With France mandating DRM being interoperable, this may or may not be able to effect both Apple and MS. If it forces both of them to open up the DRM, we are all winners. If, on the other hand, it stops Apple, but not MS, it will pretty much guarantee that MS's monopoly abuse will allow them to be the gatekeepers for music for the foreseeable future, via leveraging their Windows monopoly. It also further creates a barrier for alternatives to that OS monopoly as Linux will not be able to play mainstream music within a few years time.
Those aren't press releases. They're developers actually doing the work on IE 7.
And this makes it not a press release how? It is all public relations bullshit.
As far as the rendering looking the same as IE 6, I would say you're probably full of crap.
Try it yourself. Just write up a XHTML definition and a few CSS2 styles.
This is incorrect. It is not a "wish list" of desired features. It is a test for compliance with often missing parts of several standards, like graceful handling of certain incorrect code.
It's pointedly not a compliance test (emphasis added) (from the Test Guide: "Acid2 does not guarantee conformance with any specification").
That is because it does not test all of any given specification, just common pain points.
As a wish list, it is really important and useful to my team, but it isn't even intended, in my understanding, as our priority list for IE7."
They probably should not be focusing on the ACID2 test. Instead they should be trying to get CSS1, CSS2, CSS3, XHTML, etc. basics implemented, which it "looks like" they failed at. Of course they did not really fail, they just never intended on doing it because they are intentionally avoiding both being standards compliant and advancing the state of the art for Web technologies (which could undermine their platform dominance).
Suck my balls, IE developers, developers, developers you lying, unethical scum.
It's not perfect, but it's a major improvement in basically every way over IE 6.
Wow, seven different press releases/comments from MS. Well, someone just installed it on a test box, so let me take a look at the HTML I'm outputting. Golly looks just the same as IE6. IE fails to show either the CSS or XHTML formatting it failed to before. Now lets take a look in some other browsers. Firefox works. Opera works. Safari works.
They can talk all they want, but they still haven't managed to do anything. Talk is cheap. Luckily, as this is content that only network security experts will be looking at, nobody cares is it is unformatted for IE users since none of them would touch the bloody thing.
It's good that MS is taking a more serious approach to security with IE and Windows Vista. But really, how much can they do when 2 security holes open up for every one they patch?
If they were serious about security they would spend some of their billions of dollars on hiring really good security people and implementing their suggestions. Little things like making the browser run in userspace. Implementing zones or jails, and not requiring local services to run on the network for normal operation. These are fundamental security improvements that could be made. Implementing them would reduce the number of functional exploits, instead of just trying to patch them all. MS is not interested in doing any of this. Instead, they plan to start making money selling antivirus signatures to remove the malware their holes let into your system. Just because a press release says, "we're serious about security" does not mean it is true in any way.
only a 'webmaster' would deride having to program for different situation.
There is a difference between having to have different versions of a program for different platforms and different versions of data for different platforms. Especially when all platforms "claim" to conform to a standard, but one obviously does not.
Since the poster already mentioned CPU, I suspect they know enough to look at the basic utilization stats. Most likely, however, the limiting factor is either the hard drive speed or the fact that Windows explorer is a piece of crap.
If the Corporate customer doesn't have a pressing reason to make a new purchase right now, maybe they can sit back for another 6+ months while AMD preps its next chips.
Or they can wait another 12 months until Intel starts shipping their 45nm chips (according to the roadmaps). Any way you slice it, Intel seems to be a year or more ahead in their ability to bring die size improvements to their fabrication, but we all new Intel was ahead in that department anyway. The issue is, AMD has thus far been unable to compensate for that advantage with architectural improvements as they did in the past.
AMD is unlikely to hold the speed crown consistently for the foreseeable future. Right now they may or may not be the winner for a desktop machine, but they are falling behind for portables and servers.
How can it be wiretapping if there's no wire being tapped?
How can the patriot act be called what it is? Why is it that if I wear a pistol in a holster on my belt, in plain view, covered with blinking LEDs, while wearing a t-shirt that reads "I carry a firearm" I'll be arrested for "carrying a concealed weapon." The names of laws often have nothing to do with what the laws say.
Why is it a crime to monitor what our public servants are doing?
Because the police are criminals and they follow the orders of the corrupt politicians who pass these laws. I know quite a few cops, but I've never known one who did not flaunt the law and brag about how they don't have to follow it since they are cops. I've never known one who does not have a "funny" story about how they abused their power for their own personal ends. If you haven't noticed this by now, you haven't been paying attention.
Is there anything in the EULA that allows them to get away with this?
Sure, lots of crap... not that it matters. The EULA contains plenty of enforceable clauses that conflict with federal and start laws. Eventually someone will probably take them to court and five years later they will win and get a settlement. Of course what that means then will be a whole different ball game, since by then the market will have completely changed. MS may well be providing applications only as online services, and Windows as an OS will be irrelevant to their monopoly.
The court systems are too slow, too corrupt, and too much affected by money to act effectively against MS. They should have busted them up into multiple, competing companies years ago.
"Deconstruction" is almost universally understood to refer to a specific sort of literary analysis.
In the US and France this is true. In other places, however, the more archaic usage is more common. It is often used to refer to "demolition" or "dismantlement," but with an orderly, methodical connotation. Since this article is about Finland, I suspect they probably repeated the usage they heard from sources there.
I suspect a more appropriate word in the title would have used a form of the verb "to erode,"...
I disagree. Erosion implies a natural process, whereas this was a directed use of technology. That seems an inappropriate connotation to me.
Please educate yourselves.
Please get over yourself and realize your interpretation of something is not the only one. Language is fluid and varied. On a forum devoted to technology it is inappropriate and off topic to complain about spelling, grammar, or word usage that does not prevent you from understanding the meaning of the writing. Besides, you wouldn't want anyone to sit here and rip apart your every word and phrase, despite it being immaterial to the topic at hand. I hope the moderators mark you as "offtopic" for you certainly are.
I've always had the view that every project was a wild animal. Worse yet, it's a wild animal in sheep's clothing. And you approach the sheep with a shepherd's hook. When the veil is lifted and you see man eating marsupial with alligator teeth and a scorpion's tail, you have no choice but to throw the shepherd's hook at them and give it all you've got.
I agree. You can code much better on LSD.
The point is: not all monopolies are bad for consumers; artificially creating competition where none naturally exists may make things worse rather than better.
No one said they were. The point is that the monopoly abuses that are illegal according to antitrust law are bad for consumers, as as been repeatedly shown in the market. That is why they were banned everywhere.
The practice of dumping is beneficial to consumers in the short term, and cannot harm long-term competition; the competitors, with their lower (and perhaps non-existant) costs, can wait out the incumbent for as long as it takes.
What are you talking about? Dumping happens only when there is competition and then price gouging happens when the competitor is driven out of business. You're assuming a company can afford to make a product but not bring it to market until dumping stops, but you can't pay employees for that time for free, or store product. Also, an existing monopoly usually has accumulated a large reserve of funds with that monopoly so they can almost always afford to wait out a newcomer.
(Incidently, why would the government declare something it wanted to do "illegal" in the first place?)
The government does not have a hive mind and often factions within it directly oppose one another, as is the intended design of the balance of powers.
I disagree on the point that monopolies can continue to exercise active anti-competitive influences indefinitely. Even if they can manage to retain their cash reserves, doing so will reduce their flexibility and raise their costs, making their target market even more attractive to (potential) competitors and increasing the costs of maintaining the monopoly -- a self-defeating cycle.
Anti-competative monopolistic actions make more money than they cost. That is why businesses do them. Raising of costs is more than offset by raising of profits. If you make 50 million with 50% of a market you can make 400 million with the whole market.
Businessmen realize this, thus the cost of competing with a company is and has been making 400 million for the benefit of grabbing 50 million is lower than the benefit of entering a market against a non-monopoly for the same size market share. Further, it is usually a lot easier.
I also find it ironic that you would have the government -- the ultimate monopoly power -- step in to eliminate its economic competition and take control of the market.
Antitrust law specifically does not do this. It takes no action against a company maintaining a monopoly, only one using that monopoly to make more monopolies in new markets.
Even assuming that this is not contradictory, I would still conclude that application of antitrust law to unsubsidized private organizations is both unjust and unjustified.
As I said before, you need to hit the books again. Take a look at an unregulated monopoly in a free market. It expands until it hits another monopoly. You end up with a small number of competing monopolies and no room for smaller or specialized business. There is a reason abusing a monopoly is illegal almost everywhere.
Laws are passed so that justice will be preserved; living better is only a side effect, contingent on our own individual and collective efforts. I would not want to "live better" in an unjust society; I doubt many humans truly would.
What is just about a company taking over a market despite having an obviously inferior product to others who worked hard and made something better? If one person works hard, innovates, and creates something that betters all of mankind, don't you think it is fair that they should be protected from losing in the market simply because someone is leveraging an existing monopoly in a completely separate market? Like it or not, the laws are about more than ethics, they are about preventing a violent, desperate type of living. The rich are not taxed proportionally more than the poor because it is just.
Most people are not going to go to these extremes. Windows works out of the box. This is how it has to be.
The pre-installed OS market is probably 90%+ of the total market. MS has others locked out and I don't foresee this changing.
If it's a simple matter of pre-installing or even including a CD (as opposed to brokering some deal with MS) I don't see why companies like Dell don't offer this as an option.
Did you read my previous post? If Dell decides to add Linux as a normal, pre-install option for their computers the chain of events that follow will be like this:
1. Dell offers new option.
2. Dell saves $70 per Linux box by not paying for Windows, but breaks their OEM license with MS by shipping a machine without a DOS compatible license.
3. Dell loses the ability to put a Windows ready logo on that line of computers, costing them marketing dollars.
4. For each sale Dell does not get the $20 in kickbacks by installing spyware and crippleware.
Lets assume that is $70-$20-$5 so far. Dell is making an additional $45 per machine they sell. These sales make up maybe 5% of their sales at this point.
5. Three months later Dell has to negotiate a new Windows licensing agreement with Dell, since theirs is expiring.
6. MS makes an example of Dell and starts charging them $150 per Windows license.
7. Dell computers with Windows (which make up 90% of their sales) are now $70 more expensive than Gateway or Dell. On a $300 consumer desktop, that is 25% more expensive for the same machine.
8. Dell loses huge numbers of sales on Windows machines since they are being out-priced by everyone else.
The net result, Dell complies or goes out of business, unless they can get by just selling Linux, which no one has been able to. Users need Windows since most software only runs on it and until there are sufficient numbers of users for other OS's this will continue to be the case (a chicken and egg problem).
That is the fault of the companies producing software, not MS. That's what I call laziness.
Software is made mostly for profit. It is business. If you don't make enough sales on Linux to pay the developers to port it, then you don't do it. And that is fine. Having a monopoly is not a problem, it is perfectly legal. What MS is doing wrong is abusing that monopoly to sell more of their inferior products. Since everyone needs Windows (for the most part) MS can do whatever they want and it will still sell. This includes charging twice as much as people would pay if there was free competition. So they can pay twice the developers they need and include for "free" other software, thus driving anyone who makes that type of software out of business. You can't compete with nothing for a price so long as the software is just barely good enough for most people (not necessarily better than other offerings or innovative in any way). Now MS has two monopolies. They jack up the price again to cover what they spend making the other software and hire additional developers to enter yet another market. The end result is MS owning every market with an inferior product. Consumers have only one option and it is sub-par and expensive. Capitalism has failed.
Because this monopoly abuse makes capitalism fail, it is illegal almost everywhere. The problem is, MS has enough lawyers and money for bribes that they pay less in fines and settlements than they make in profit by doing it. Thus, the fines and punishments need to be made more harsh.
The only real and lasting solution to this is going to be to split MS into multiple companies and make them compete against one another. That was, in fact, the originally proscribed punishment for MS by the US courts right before MS donated millions of dollars and that judge was removed for bias for saying what MS had done was wrong (after the judgement had been pronounced). Since then MS has not been punished at all for their crimes in the US.
One of these two is going to win out, personally I'm hoping for OpenGL to be the absolute standard...
DirectX == Windows only. Ergo, unless all other OS's die, OpenGL will remain. Thus, it is the only option for a real standard.
So, is iPod a monopoly in the EU? Is Google?
With approximately 70% and 50% market share respectively the former is close and being investigated and the latter is nowhere near.
Are they next on the hit list?
Well, if they gain a monopoly and if they are shown to be abusing that monopoly via tying and bundling and they don't immediately stop. For example, should Apple gain a monopoly on portable music players, it would then be illegal for them to ship a copy of iTunes with every iPod unless they also included any competitors that asked as well. I'm not sure what actions of Google you could consider to be an illegal abuse, even were they declared to have a monopoly. Possibly the new Paypal competitor would count.
Naturally their stuff works seamlessly on their stuff.
There is nothing natural about it. They took open standards an intentionally broke them in secret ways so others would not work seamlessly with their products. It was deliberate and malicious and they knew it was illegal.
They shouldn't be limited in what they want their OS to be, especially when those enhancements benefit consumers.
Do tell, how does implementing exchange and AD instead of pop, imap, and LDAP benefit customers? They both provide the same functions but the former forces users of the desktop OS to use only MS's server, instead of having a choice of MS's or any other vendors. How does forcing users to have fewer choices benefit them?
Even if MS has a majority and you want your product to work on something consumers already have access to. It is still their product and you should consider yourself lucky, IMO.
Yeah, developers are lucky when MS obeys the law instead of breaking it.
I know I would purchase an alternative, if the price was good... But I would have considered a laptop with say Linux preinstalled or any other functioning OS if it were easily obtainable.
It isn't easily available because MS has a monopoly. Along with that monopoly come a lot of laws they must follow to insure the operation of the free market. If not for those laws, MS would not exist and IBM PCs would not have interoperated with Windows.
If all of these OS are free why aren't they more readily available? I'm sure it would cut the cost of PCs by at least a few hundred dollars.
OS X is tied to Apple hardware. Linux, Solaris, OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeDOS, BeOS, and a pile more are free for download and installation. There are a number of reasons, however, why these are not available in stores. (Walmart does sell some machines with Linux on their online store.) First, every major OEM and retailer needs to sell Windows, or they go out of business. Most consumers want or need Windows to use mainstream software. MS requires companies to sign illegal agreements in order to get a reasonable deal on Windows. Dell, for example, pays $70 or less for each copy of Windows they pre-install. This allows them to undercut any competition who does not have a similar agreement by $130 per PC, thus driving them out of business. All major retailers and OEMs have to have an agreement like this. Part of the agreement usually says that MS gets paid $70 for every PC sold, not for every copy of Windows shipped. In the past, they were getting paid when retailers sold Macs and Linux machines. Thus, a retailer had no monetary incentive to install Linux instead of Windows since they had to pay for Windows anyway. More recently, these agreements have become less obviously illegal (they are all sealed trade secrets). Now companies have to include a DOS compatible OS with every computer sold and pay for every copy of Windows. This means retailers can sometimes get away with shipping machines with FreeDOS (but not Linux). The problem is, they have to negotiate their OEM agreement periodically and MS can pick the price. Anyone they are not happy with, like anyone selling computers with Linux or something else pre-installed, might have to pay another $10 or another $100 per copy of Windows, thus making them more expensive than the competition and killing their sales. MS has retailers and OEMs by the balls and they use that to stop alternate OS pre-installs. Since most people don't know they can get another OS for free and since they already paid for Windows, there is little incentive to move to Linux or anything else. On top of all this, most retailers and OEMs are now getting kickbacks for installing spyware and crippleware versions of software on their computers. Since most of this software only works on Windows, they have a further monetary incentive to only pre-install Windows.
With the new Windows Vista coming out people will have to get used to a new UI so there's no reason why, IMO, more PCs can't be made available with these alternative OSs.
No reason except that any company that tries it will be betting their whole company on it, since they won't be able to compete when MS jacks up their price for Windows. They will live or die by the other OS, and it is just too big of a gamble for any current company.
Microsoft dominates the OS market. It isn't a monopoly because, as you yourself mentioned, it is not the only option. And, there are arguably superior products.
Antitrust law deals with making sure the free market operates properly. Thus, monopolies for legal and in economic modeling are defined not by products, but by markets. So tell me, who else is making money selling desktop OS's? Apple sells hardware with an OS bundled and upgrades for that hardware and tied to it. Redhat sells service and support but gives their OS away fro free. Sun gives their OS away for free and makes money on hardware. IBM sells hardware, support, and services and gives Linux away for free. Maybe you're noticing a pattern here. Microsoft is the only one that makes money selling a desktop OS. Thus, they are a monopoly.
The US, EU, and several other courts have recognized this as have pretty much all reputable economists.
And so they build products to compliment their OS.
There is nothing wrong with that, so long as they are not tied to the OS as defined by antitrust law. You see, product need to stand on their own against competition in the free market. They have to be better than the competition or cheaper, or both. Since everyone is striving for this the market is efficient. Customers get the best and cheapest products.
When products are tied, however, it is often in the customer's best economic interest to use a product that is not innovative, better, or cheaper because the disadvantages brought by not having the tie-in with the monopolized product overweight the advantage of having a product that is better or cheaper on its own. In this case the free market has failed. Thus, it is illegal.
I don't know what illegal actions you're referring to.
Then you obviously haven't done any research on this matter. MS has been convicted of several counts of illegal tying. In the EU case they used secret protocols that communicate between the Windows desktop (monopoly) and Windows server. These include Exchange and Active Directory. Neither protocol is innovative; both are intentionally broken copies of existing open standards. They have, by changing Windows desktop, brought Windows server an unfair advantage in the market. Windows Server is the only one that can talk properly using these built in features and protocols. Windows server is slower, less secure, more expensive, can't multitask well, and less reliable than the competitors. The only real advantage it has is this illegal tie-in. It is gaining market share. That is the market failing. It is also blatantly illegal in almost every country. MS knew it was illegal when they did it, but they figured they could bribe their way out of it or would pay less in fines than they make with the monopoly. So far, they have been 100% right. The US found them guilty but took no action to even stop the law breaking. MS lost lawsuits to hundreds of companies they harmed by doing this, but the pay-out is still less than the profit. Their business plan is to break the law, and it's working.
Unless it's just that you don't like MS.
I don't like the effects of MS's illegal actions on various computer markets and fields. Monopoly abuse removes the capitalist incentive towards innovation and brings it to a crawl. It is basically holding back the state of the art for profit. In the server example, companies are no longer motivated to make server OS's better. Why should they if they can't make money, even with a superior product? All of their illegal market abuses are also linked with lock-ins to make it hard for customers who have switched to go to another option later. This provided a momentum for the status quo, rather than for innovation.
So look at another fields MS has illegally entered. The Web browser market is ruined. 85% of all people use the worst browser on the market, which lacks full support for standards 7 years old and has not added support for any of the Web standards since. It has brought adva