Granted, WITHOUT IE, you'd have to go get another browser from somewhere else. It's very complicated.
Not really. MS is prohibited from bundling IE. Dell, Gateway, Lenovo, etc. can put anything they want on the machines they ship. Further, MS can also include IE, provided they also include every other browser that requests it, on equal footing.
There is absolutely no reason on God's green earth a web application should be constrained in what it can and can not do with it's GUI simply because it is hosted ina browser.
Allow me to translate: Lalalalalala... I'm not listening. I refuse to hear that applications running in a Web browser are in any way different and I refuse to acknowledge the existence of said browsers when creating software.
Should a Web app then be able to run in fullscreen mode. Should it be able to start fullscreen mode when it is run, just like other programs can? Should the user be unable to navigate away from the page in which it is hosted? Sorry, the browser is an integral part of the experience. Denying that does not aid your usability. Denying that the intermediate program that hosts your program exists is the same as building an application you know will be running in an emulator, but refusing to acknowledge that when you design it.
The browser is just another development platform, period. Wherever possible it should not have hard and fast rules that govern what is OK and what is not in terms of it's interface to the user.
Yeah, but java developers take into account the platform and JVM. Web application developers need to take into account browsers. Pretending a usability issue dozens of people just pointed out as annoying does not exist is just stupid.
Microsoft has never been convicted of a "crime", and so are not "criminals"
Antitrust law is criminal law, not civil. MS was convicted of violating it in both the US and Europe (among other places).
and you have no evidence of "paying huge bribes"
Microsoft donated more than a million dollars in campaign contributions to both parties in the 2000 elections, right before the Justice department decided MS punishment (after they had already been convicted) would be... nothing. YUp, they were found guilty and punished with nothing, right after donating huge amounts of money. What a coincidence.
I didn't bother reading the rest of your drivel. And what buffoon modded your garbage as "insightful"?
Probably someone who read my post and thus can make an informed decision instead of your obvious and admitted ignorance. Why don't you go back to Digg, and let the grownups talk here?
The problem is that "monopoly" has been redefined and distorted.
How so?
You keep saying "their product" and that's my point. This isn't a finite resource. There is room for competitors--nothings stopping them except their own conformity.
Monopolies are defined by markets. MS has a monopoly in the desktop OS market. Several companies have tried to enter that market, with superior products and could not make a profit due to MS's illegal actions. Further, MS is gaining market share in additional markets by illegally leveraging the first monopoly. When an inferior product that costs more gains market share, the market forces are failing.
There is no reason for Microsoft to set the standard. And even then they should not be punished for success.
They aren't. It is perfectly legal for them to have a monopoly. It is illegal for them to use that monopoly to gain market share in other markets, despite having an inferior product to others in that market.
Especially when your goal is to build your success off of their success--that, to me, sounds like pure greed and laziness.
No one is trying to build off of their success. In the server market MS has the slowest, least secure, most expensive product. It fails to multitask well and is inferior in almost every way. It communicates with their monopolized desktop product via secret protocols. Those protocols are not innovative or new, they are intentionally broken version of existing standards. So they have an inferior product and have not innovated. In a free market, that means they will lose market share to cheaper, better competitors. That is not happening though, because they have bypassed the free market forces. Everyone has to use Windows. It dominates the desktop, a separate market. MS, however, has tied the desktop to the server with secret protocols. Thus, anyone not using MS's server product is placed at an artificial disadvantage. The result, consumers pay more and end up using an inferior product, even though it is the right business decision because they need to interoperate with the Windows desktop. Do this a hundred times in a hundred markets and you end up with one company with a hundred monopolies, all by providing inferior products at inflated prices. Capitalism fails. That is why it is illegal.
The other OSs need to step up to the plate...
They cannot, without another monopoly. You see, no one can successfully enter the desktop OS space because the barrier to entry is to high. They all had to move to other markets to make money.
If Microsoft is truly so bad, make something better.
A hundred companies have better offerings than MS in a given market. It does not matter. Abuse of their monopoly, unchecked allows MS to win with an inferior product. You should really do some research on monopolies and antitrust law. Try wikipedia.
Here's one who disagrees (after a fair amount formal and informal of study).
I think you might need to hit the books again on this issue.
The only justifiable use of anti-trust laws is to regulate government-created monopolies (the telcos, for example). They created that mess, it's only right that they should clean it up. For private, unsubsidized organizations, however, even potential competition is sufficient to avoid "market failure" over the long term.
I fundamentally disagree with this. Market models and historical examples show that this is just not true.
Sure, a few billion dollars in cash reserves can hold real competition off for a fair amount of time, even without the government's assistance, but those reserves must eventually be exhausted.
You're missing the point. Monopolies allow companies to gain money disproportionate to the amount of work they do. Unregulated, this applies to every market they abusively enter and allows them to extend one monopoly into many. They don't lose money by abusing a monopoly, they gain it.
In the meantime consumers benefit from the below-cost pricing and other marketing incentives.
You're talking about dumping, but dumping only lasts as long as there is a competitor and then moves on to price gouging to compensate while customers have no other options. You're assuming enough people will force them to use dumping over and over again, knowing that most of them will fail and go out of business, to deplete their monetary reserves. This is not the way business works and dumping is only one of many abuses.
Besides bribing the government for increased regulation (raising the long-term legal and financial barriers to entry for the market), all of the efforts of the incumbent organization to hold off competition can only serve to gradually undermine the incumbent's position.
MS bundled IE with Windows. Now they have two monopolies instead of one and it is very, very hard to attack them in the application space since they cut off the Web as a platform. The only reason anyone has any potential to do so is because of regulation. How has this weakened them in the long-term?
Similar principles apply to such "undesirable" monopoly practices as bundling, price-fixing, and horizontal and vertical market integration; none of these methods can save an inefficient company from competition in the end, and they can all be used by efficient producers (even monopolies) to the benefit of the consumers.
How do bundling and tying weaken a monopoly in the long term? They bring the monopoly additional monopolies to exploit and, sans regulation, guarantee growth into new markets and eventual domination of them until checked by another monopoly. Please explain how you think an unregulated monopoly using bundling and tying would weaken themselves over time due to unregulated market forces.
What, exactly, is the "illegal action" in this case? Creating a non-open network protocol between windows clients and windows servers? Thats it?
Yup that's it, but some of us understand and have to deal with the far-reaching consequences of that act, and we'd like to not have to deal with the even worse consequences that will result if it is not stopped.
Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill; you guys act like...
Do you subscribe to the "we're not as bad as China" philosophy that says any wrong act can be excused by claiming it isn't as bad as some other, worse act? I don't buy it.
Get some perspective.
This coming from someone who took time out of his day to complain that other people are complaining about a criminal act that effects their everyday lives.
Most people don't realize what a time-consuming and labor intensive task (proper) documentation can be.
If I had 2.5 million a day in budget, I think I could get it done if that is what they really wanted to do.
I imagine it must be quite a daunting task in this case if MS is offering source code instead of documentation and then taking this financial hit...
Offering the source code under the same license they do in the US would mean they don't do anything differently at all, and is thus cheaper no matter what. More importantly, due to the restrictive license it effectively prevents their most pressing competitors from using it, thus negating all of the real advantages of the agreement. Remember the point is to make it a fair and competitive market for servers. Documenting the APIs is the method for doing that, not the purpose itself.
How exactly are they criminals, even if they've lobbied governments?
They tied their monopoly OS to their office suite, media player, server, IM, web services, web browser, and dozens of other markets. Each is a violation of criminal antitrust law.
I'll never understand the animosity directed at Microsoft--unless it is just jealousy.
We have to deal with all the damage they did to the computing industry. Every time we have to work around MS's horrible partial implementation of decade old standards so that something that works in every browser made by a dozen different groups also works in their browser we get mad. Every time we see really cool functionality in a product they buy and kill, we get mad. Every time we waste an afternoon working around something broken in their products that we have to use to interoperate despite the fact that they are junk, we get mad. The state of the industry is a shambles and it is mostly because of a single company's actions.
Are these same complainers building their products to work on Mac and Linux? I doubt it. Maybe progress is stagnant due to laziness?
Sure most of us do. Lack of progress in the industry due to laziness is easily overcome with greed. Capitalism works because people will work hard to make a pile of money. The problem is, because MS bypasses market forces with their monopoly, even working hard and making a better product will not let you win in the market, and thus make money. The incentive for people to spend time and money to innovate and make better things is gone, thus the industry stagnates except for people working for other motivations (which are much rarer than greedy people).
You'd think some genius would go and build an alternative instead of continued attempts at making them open up to competitors.
Take a look at Firefox. It is faster, is six years ahead in standards support, has much better plugin features, is more secure, has had UI innovations for years, has good pop-up blocking, is cross-platform, and is free. It kicks IE's butt all around the block. It has about 1/8 IE's market share. Now apply this to every market. Making a better alternative does not allow you to out-compete an abusive monopoly, so most people don't try. Market forces don't act on a monopoly, which is why abusing a monopoly is illegal.
You simply build a better product and their reign would be over.
Please. OS X kicks Window's butt. BeOS kicked Window's butt Next kicked Window's butt. In a hundred other markets products are superior to what MS offers, but they still don't gain market share. Maybe you don't understand how a monopoly works.
Furthermore, if MS stopped supporting European businesses, it would be incredibly harmful to the european economy...
What makes you think this?
For instance, say that MS didn't allow European IPs to download their latest patch.
So, MS machines in business environments are already considered insecure and firewalled away. Third parties would provide patches, made much easier by the free availability of the source code.
Before long, this would lead to massive system instability.
Please. Third parties already beat MS to releasing patches much of the time. With the source, patches would come out first for the EU and likely the massive exploits from the opened code would make "official" versions of Windows the more hacked one.
Market forces will work this out.
Go read up on monopolies and antitrust law. The whole point is it provides a way to avoid market forces. They won't work it out since MS will not be subject to them unless antitrust laws are enforced.
You != eveyone. Most people don't "customize their right click menus", and most people expect the context menu in an application to provide contextual information...
But you're talking about running an application within another application. Since you can't possibly know which application your "Web app" is running in, or what tasks they are trying to accomplish and since a right-click menu should always be a secondary access control, I think it is perfectly reasonable to assume that the intermediary layer might have controls it wants to impose that are more useful and pervasive than a secondary access to something you already provide access to.
if you aren't surfing the web the majority of items in a browser's context menu are anything but contextual.
Hmm, lets see, language translations, dictionary/thesaurus lookups, view source, back and forward, useful scripts... all seem to apply to Web apps as much as anything else. Anyone running Firefox or a number of other browsers and even OS's will have similar functions. Thus, you're catering to Windows+IE, which is where that functionality is lacking.
I stil get nothing relating to the application I am accessing.
Because you are not counting the browser as an application, which you are running whether you like to acknowledge it or not.
the web browser knows nothing about the application it is running, it is up to the developer to instruct it as to what is relevant contextual information for the application.
You're assuming that you, as a developer, know more about what I want to do than I do and that you should be able to override my choices by forcing your own either in addition (breaking mine) or as a replacement. Seeing as you don't know what I'm doing, while I do, I reject your argument.
I think you need to fire yourself and get a real job at a real company - the right click menus of course are not the only route to functionality in the application.
You wrote, "...It [lack of support for a right-click menu] pretty much excludes KHTML/Konqueror from ever running our application." And then you claim it is not the only route to that functionality? You are contradicting yourself.
But in the real world, any piece of functionality that does not work 100% across all browsers means that the application is unsupportable on that browser, because it can't pass through the QA cycle.
So you're saying your QA process is so rigid and can't handle a simple conditional and somehow that is my fault? Between your shoddy UI policies and your incompetent QA, maybe you should tell me just what product you're working on so I can be sure to avoid it. Apparently you've never heard of another Web standard called "gracefully dealing with differing feature sets."
ok so how do you explain the opening of the source.. sure you have to register/pay for it but it is there.
The source was not as easy to use to create a fresh re-implementation as the API docs. In fact, the licensing pretty much made it legal suicide to try to re-implement after viewing the source. Further, the license made it so MS's biggest competitors, Solaris and Linux could not have integrated the code since it purposely excluded software with their licenses. How exactly does that make for a level playing field in the server OS market, which is, after all, the point of the punishment?
when you look at linux.. and the documentation for some of the stuff - well it just isn't always there.. sure you can find support and answer your questions.. if mabey[sic] the competition started working with it and messing around and trying instead of getting the EU to do there job then they could make it work..
Are you joking? Most of the AD stuff was a complete copy of LDAP, which was then intentionally broken in order to stop others from interoperating. Linux and several projects have done a great job of reverse engineering most of those intentional problems and working anyway, but it is a huge effort in time and manpower and it can never be perfect since it is all a black box. The point is, MS connecting their server and desktop with these secret protocols is illegal. It is a criminal offense as MS well knew when they did it. Now, as punishment, they have been ordered to stop breaking the law and you say it is other groups' job to work around MS's illegal action?
you have to look at it from both sides.. the competition wants MS to hand everythign[sic] over on a silver plater[sic] and teach them to make software for windows.
The EU wants MS to comply with the law, the same as everyone else and not tie their monopoly to other markets. MS has a monopoly. That means they are obligated to not do anything with that monopoly product that will give them an unfair advantage in another market; in this case the server and media player markets. If MS wants to gain market share and make money in the server market the law says they have to do so by making the best server product, not by illegally tying an inferior server to their desktop product, which everyone has to use since it is a monopoly. You think it is so onerous to demand MS make a better product to compete, rather than doing so by breaking the law? You think they should be able to force everyone to use their drastically inferior server since it is the only one that can properly communicate with their desktop? I guess we fundamentally disagree then.
the comepition woln't open up their software to the extent they want MS to...
LDAP and IMAP/POP were open standards, fully documented long before MS had competing closed/obfuscated protocols.
can someone show me full documentation on how to use the real player api to make it do what i want..
No one has asked for API documentation regarding Windows Media Player, only the secret interactions of Windows server and desktop. Media player is breaking the law via bundling. That is to say, they will only sell you Windows if you buy Windows + Media Player at the same price. Thus, all consumer have already purchased one media player so it is a huge roadblock to people paying a second time for the player they really want and would have chosen in the first place except for the bundling.
sure MS has some dirty taticts[sic] but the EU is being much worse
Because they are criminals that harm everyone and the computing industry in general with their crimes and because they have participated in the corruption of the US government by paying huge bribes to both major parties campaign funds to have the case against them gutted.
Doesnt Win amp run as good as media player does on windows?
How is this relevant?
No matter what you say if microsoft withdrew all support and products from europe their[sic] would be some nasty consiquences[sic].
Yeah, but they would be nasty mostly for MS.
It would take some time for all servers and desktops to be tranistioned[sic] to linux.
So, what would be the rush? Is MS going to try to get people in Europe arrested for pirating their software? Yeah, I'm sure the EU will get right on that. They'd probably revoke all of MS's trademarks, copyright, and patents in Europe, making Windows source code available freely.
then would come trying to deal with the u.s and other countries that still use microsoft.
Do you think other countries would not follow Europe's lead when MS failed to comply there? Do you think no one could manage to save as PDF, or use open office to open Word files?
It would be very bad if microsoft took everything out of Europe.
Yeah, that 10 minutes before the emergency conference call of MS's board would be pretty bad. Then the CEO would be removed and they'd go back to complying with the law. No one walks away from 20 billion in profit to avoid paying.7 billion. No one creates a huge market for their competitors, while undermining the monopoly that lets them make those outrageous profits. No one breaks their contracts with every major multinational in the world and expects to walk away from it. MS may be wealthy, but compared to the huge companies they would be screwing over they are a minnow in the ocean.
For you video game junkies that would include the Xbox 360
It's just one more market they are trying to make headway in that they would be crushed in.
I am starting to feel the EU is just trying to extort money out of microsoft. Microsoft has been giving them what they want from what I have seen and they still are asking for money.
Stop reading the MS press releases as news. No really, I'm serious. MS has not complied and have not documented the APIs well enough to allow competitors to compete on even footing. This is as judged by the expert MS picked to make this decision. Since you haven't seen the docs and he has and given his expertise and credibility, what possible reason could you think you have for being a better judge than he is? MS press releases can say what they want, but if you believe they are true and unbiased then you are complete fool.
if i was MS i would have said fuck it by now.. and pull out of the EU completely.
I see. So you would break your agreements with thousands of international customers (like every major company in the world since they all have european offices) while at the same time abandoning 20 billion dollars in profit a year to avoid paying.7 billion in fines? And you'd do thins knowing you'd be instantly creating your own biggest competitor by handing a third of the market to other parties. You'd be fired before the day was out, since the board of directors can do math. You might be shot if they're feeling spiteful about the billions you managed to cost them in the confusion and bad PR. If nothing else you'd be a wanted criminal in so many nations the US would almost have to deport you.
the EU have been draging[sic] this out making it imposiable[sic] for MS to settle it..
The EU wants the APIs documented well enough to provide for fair competition as judged by the expert MS chose. MS hasn't bothered to do that, because they make more money breaking the law. What they have done is proposed a number of solutions that won't restore competition and spent a lot of money on press in the hopes that they can put pressure on the EU by spreading lies, like the ones you are parroting. How exactly can you think their documentation is in compliance when it has not been released and the expert MS chose says it isn't?
I only think the EU is wrong on the "failure to comply" decision. I don't know one way or the other about the validity of their anti-trust laws.
I don't think there is any doubt in the minds of MS's battalion of antitrust lawyers as to what the EU wants. They want the APIs documented so that there can be fair competition in the server OS market. The problem is, MS doesn't want their illegal actions stopped in any way so they keep providing solutions that either don't do that or which are completely different from what is asked and seem to address similar concerns, but without having any real impact on the problem. They keep trying to get away with implementing something that still disadvantages competitors in the market, but in an obscure enough way that the EU commission will not notice or will give up. If they would just hire people to actually write the documentation extensively and properly and make sure they conform to it, there would be no issue. They can easily do that for a lot less than 2.5 million a day, but they don't want to because they are making more than that by breaking the law, thus they are stalling.
MS knows what the commission wants and so does everyone else. Stop buying into their FUD press releases they are using to try to pressure the EU into not making them play fair. MS broke the law and now they're quibbling about obeying their court ordered punishment. They chose the person who has judged them failing to comply. They deserve zero sympathy here.
I love it how The Slashdot GroupThink questions the validitiy and constitutionality of laws such as the DMCA, copyright laws, IP laws, etc., but when it comes down to anti-trust laws, there is NO debate, whatsoever, and people such as yourself continually just parrot "They broke the law! They broke the law!". Nice.
Why is it I have the feeling you're trolling? Maybe it is the obviously inflammatory remarks and generalizations accusing "Slashdot" as a whole of having some opinion. Or maybe you're just an idiot. I agree with some laws and disagree with others. There is no hypocrisy in that. If you have an argument as to why you think the antitrust laws being enforced are unethical, lets here it... but please, please, please make sure you actually understand the laws and their purpose rather than spewing out the uneducated, uncomprehending crap I hear so often from people here. At least make sure you are educated and have an informed viewpoint before making vocal assertions about it and making yourself look like an ignorant jackass.
What the rest of the world did or did not decide is irrelevant. What I disagree with is the "failed to comply" portion.
Then MS has only themselves to blame as they are the one who recommended and approved the person who has judged them as failing to comply. Since neither you nor I have seen the sealed documentation that has been provided, what makes you think you can better judge as to whether or not they complied than the expert MS picked who has read it?
Now THAT is a lot better... Than the limited (though enormous) fines the EU was talking about the last time. Last I recall, the total fine was around 50 million dollars.
You're a little confused. The fine has remained 2.5 million a day, but it started racking up quite a while ago, so the payment due is now well over 50 million and going up by 2.5 million a day. The EU has just delayed collection of the fine for a while.
I guess I'm looking for trouble by saying this on Slashdot, but I think the EU's reasoning on this issue is faulty, and I think it's an old-fashioned money grab.
They're breaking the law. The US convicted them of it. The EU did too. So did several other nations. They have failed to comply with their punishment. If the EU does not act, they are stating to the world that they won't or can't enforce their own laws. For a fledgling organization like the EU, this would be devastating. If you convict someone of robbery and they escape from the prison instead of serving their time and then stroll into town and tell everyone they aren't going to accept the punishment since they don't want to, the law bloody well better act if they want to be taken seriously, ever.
Good thing I'm not in charge of Microsoft. Out of spite I'd have pulled up stakes of everything in the EU, save for a distribution warehouse.
Yeah, because you'd be fired and replaced within hours.
Spread your FUD elsewhere. They are fining them what the law allows for the same crime the US just ruled them failing to comply with their punishment for. Are you claiming the US is biased against MS too?
"Microsoft must open up parts of their operating system to competitors, and change how they bundle Media Player."
This is ambiguous and misleading commentary. MS has been ordered to document the APIs of the interaction between their monopoly desktop OS and their non-monopoly server OS to allow competition. This is not "opening up" any part of their OS. They have not been asked to provide any source code and in fact they offered source code as an alternative to the documentation (under terms that would have gutted the benefits of the punishment) and it was rejected as unsatisfactory. To reiterate, MS was not ordered to open up any code, only to provide documentation on the interaction of their OS's.
Who would be liable for illegal downloads? You might be getting a $65 router for free but at the same time - you might end up with a huge hassle for usage.
To my knowledge no one in the US has yet been sued for illegal downloading. Uploading on this device, however, might be a different issue. Still, there will be logs of who was connected via any given point, since this service requires a username and password. It just makes the subpoenas slow and hard to get. I wouldn't worry about this. There are much easier targets for RIAA, etc. They can just go ask the cable company for a pile of IPs and names and sift through them when they want to get publicity for their scare campaign.
So is Fon going to blanket cover massive swathes of the globe - nah, you'll end up with lots of little clusters and big gaps inbetween.
I agree, partially. I don't see Fon covering massive swaths of the globe by themselves, but I do see Fon and hundreds of other companies and organizations covering significant amounts and agreeing to share access with one another. I see Google taking a role in making this happen. How many citywide wireless projects are going on right now? I know there is a county wide one under development here, and much of that area is fairly rural. Building a reciprocity agreement between these projects benefits everyone, especially when you get to wireless points peering with one another and completely bypassing the traditional telco's network for significant amounts of traffic.
I'm sure there will be a lot of dark spots for a long time, but I do see this sort of thing as a practical solution with no unsolvable technical hurdles.
If you don't like the ToS, that doesn't mean you can break them.
Depending upon the location and the laws there, that may be exactly what it means. It is common for unenforceable and illegal terms to be written into end user agreements. In many places regulating how many people are using a service is a violation of FCC rules for common carriers. Additionally, in many locations in the US a few companies have been granted exclusive access to the public right of ways needed to deliver service and thus have a monopoly. There are a lot of special rules and regulations for such monopolies.
And I really doubt you could find an affordable service provider that allows connection sharing.
Well, you may be right and you may not in any given location. One service provider called Speakeasy that supplies DSL lines across the US not only allows sharing at a reasonable price, but they have infrastructure set up that you can use for billing those you share with (if you so desire). If you get a DSL line they will give you advice on setting up a wireless router or series of peering routers. If you want to start signing up neighbors to use it, you can just send the names and addresses to Speakeasy and they will take care of the billing for a cut of the proceeds. You start getting checks in the mail instead of bills.
Adults can also choose to enter into contracts. Since these are students recieving athletic scholarships, my guess is that it's legal to say "if you want this free money, you can't use facebook". It's the same way that NFL teams can write contracts that forbid things like skydiving or riding motorcycles.
First, there are a lot of protected rights you can't sign away, no matter how hard you try. The majority of contract signed in this country probably have at least some unenforceable terms as a result. Second, this is a public university, is it not? That means it gets a lot of federal funding and has to follow all sorts of rules that apply to government entities, but not to private businesses. Third, retroactively changing the terms of a contract is always one of those unenforceable terms.
it seems to me that banning social network sites so your jocks don't post up the stupid shit they do is attacking the problem from the completely wrong side.
Indeed. In fact, if the terms of this policy are really what the article would have us believe then they are begging for a lawsuit. Banning students from participating in some type of social networking site is one thing, but banning only a specific site is something else entirely.
Funny you should say that, but I did give away a third of a bottle of Jim Beam to some guys sitting outside one night a few weeks ago. I don't think they were homeless though.
Slashdot Mirror
Granted, WITHOUT IE, you'd have to go get another browser from somewhere else. It's very complicated.
Not really. MS is prohibited from bundling IE. Dell, Gateway, Lenovo, etc. can put anything they want on the machines they ship. Further, MS can also include IE, provided they also include every other browser that requests it, on equal footing.
There is absolutely no reason on God's green earth a web application should be constrained in what it can and can not do with it's GUI simply because it is hosted ina browser.
Allow me to translate: Lalalalalala... I'm not listening. I refuse to hear that applications running in a Web browser are in any way different and I refuse to acknowledge the existence of said browsers when creating software.
Should a Web app then be able to run in fullscreen mode. Should it be able to start fullscreen mode when it is run, just like other programs can? Should the user be unable to navigate away from the page in which it is hosted? Sorry, the browser is an integral part of the experience. Denying that does not aid your usability. Denying that the intermediate program that hosts your program exists is the same as building an application you know will be running in an emulator, but refusing to acknowledge that when you design it.
The browser is just another development platform, period. Wherever possible it should not have hard and fast rules that govern what is OK and what is not in terms of it's interface to the user.
Yeah, but java developers take into account the platform and JVM. Web application developers need to take into account browsers. Pretending a usability issue dozens of people just pointed out as annoying does not exist is just stupid.
Microsoft has never been convicted of a "crime", and so are not "criminals"
Antitrust law is criminal law, not civil. MS was convicted of violating it in both the US and Europe (among other places).
and you have no evidence of "paying huge bribes"
Microsoft donated more than a million dollars in campaign contributions to both parties in the 2000 elections, right before the Justice department decided MS punishment (after they had already been convicted) would be... nothing. YUp, they were found guilty and punished with nothing, right after donating huge amounts of money. What a coincidence.
I didn't bother reading the rest of your drivel. And what buffoon modded your garbage as "insightful"?
Probably someone who read my post and thus can make an informed decision instead of your obvious and admitted ignorance. Why don't you go back to Digg, and let the grownups talk here?
The problem is that "monopoly" has been redefined and distorted.
How so?
You keep saying "their product" and that's my point. This isn't a finite resource. There is room for competitors--nothings stopping them except their own conformity.
Monopolies are defined by markets. MS has a monopoly in the desktop OS market. Several companies have tried to enter that market, with superior products and could not make a profit due to MS's illegal actions. Further, MS is gaining market share in additional markets by illegally leveraging the first monopoly. When an inferior product that costs more gains market share, the market forces are failing.
There is no reason for Microsoft to set the standard. And even then they should not be punished for success.
They aren't. It is perfectly legal for them to have a monopoly. It is illegal for them to use that monopoly to gain market share in other markets, despite having an inferior product to others in that market.
Especially when your goal is to build your success off of their success--that, to me, sounds like pure greed and laziness.
No one is trying to build off of their success. In the server market MS has the slowest, least secure, most expensive product. It fails to multitask well and is inferior in almost every way. It communicates with their monopolized desktop product via secret protocols. Those protocols are not innovative or new, they are intentionally broken version of existing standards. So they have an inferior product and have not innovated. In a free market, that means they will lose market share to cheaper, better competitors. That is not happening though, because they have bypassed the free market forces. Everyone has to use Windows. It dominates the desktop, a separate market. MS, however, has tied the desktop to the server with secret protocols. Thus, anyone not using MS's server product is placed at an artificial disadvantage. The result, consumers pay more and end up using an inferior product, even though it is the right business decision because they need to interoperate with the Windows desktop. Do this a hundred times in a hundred markets and you end up with one company with a hundred monopolies, all by providing inferior products at inflated prices. Capitalism fails. That is why it is illegal.
The other OSs need to step up to the plate...
They cannot, without another monopoly. You see, no one can successfully enter the desktop OS space because the barrier to entry is to high. They all had to move to other markets to make money.
If Microsoft is truly so bad, make something better.
A hundred companies have better offerings than MS in a given market. It does not matter. Abuse of their monopoly, unchecked allows MS to win with an inferior product. You should really do some research on monopolies and antitrust law. Try wikipedia.
Here's one who disagrees (after a fair amount formal and informal of study).
I think you might need to hit the books again on this issue.
The only justifiable use of anti-trust laws is to regulate government-created monopolies (the telcos, for example). They created that mess, it's only right that they should clean it up. For private, unsubsidized organizations, however, even potential competition is sufficient to avoid "market failure" over the long term.
I fundamentally disagree with this. Market models and historical examples show that this is just not true.
Sure, a few billion dollars in cash reserves can hold real competition off for a fair amount of time, even without the government's assistance, but those reserves must eventually be exhausted.
You're missing the point. Monopolies allow companies to gain money disproportionate to the amount of work they do. Unregulated, this applies to every market they abusively enter and allows them to extend one monopoly into many. They don't lose money by abusing a monopoly, they gain it.
In the meantime consumers benefit from the below-cost pricing and other marketing incentives.
You're talking about dumping, but dumping only lasts as long as there is a competitor and then moves on to price gouging to compensate while customers have no other options. You're assuming enough people will force them to use dumping over and over again, knowing that most of them will fail and go out of business, to deplete their monetary reserves. This is not the way business works and dumping is only one of many abuses.
Besides bribing the government for increased regulation (raising the long-term legal and financial barriers to entry for the market), all of the efforts of the incumbent organization to hold off competition can only serve to gradually undermine the incumbent's position.
MS bundled IE with Windows. Now they have two monopolies instead of one and it is very, very hard to attack them in the application space since they cut off the Web as a platform. The only reason anyone has any potential to do so is because of regulation. How has this weakened them in the long-term?
Similar principles apply to such "undesirable" monopoly practices as bundling, price-fixing, and horizontal and vertical market integration; none of these methods can save an inefficient company from competition in the end, and they can all be used by efficient producers (even monopolies) to the benefit of the consumers.
How do bundling and tying weaken a monopoly in the long term? They bring the monopoly additional monopolies to exploit and, sans regulation, guarantee growth into new markets and eventual domination of them until checked by another monopoly. Please explain how you think an unregulated monopoly using bundling and tying would weaken themselves over time due to unregulated market forces.
What, exactly, is the "illegal action" in this case? Creating a non-open network protocol between windows clients and windows servers? Thats it?
Yup that's it, but some of us understand and have to deal with the far-reaching consequences of that act, and we'd like to not have to deal with the even worse consequences that will result if it is not stopped.
Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill; you guys act like...
Do you subscribe to the "we're not as bad as China" philosophy that says any wrong act can be excused by claiming it isn't as bad as some other, worse act? I don't buy it.
Get some perspective.
This coming from someone who took time out of his day to complain that other people are complaining about a criminal act that effects their everyday lives.
Most people don't realize what a time-consuming and labor intensive task (proper) documentation can be.
If I had 2.5 million a day in budget, I think I could get it done if that is what they really wanted to do.
I imagine it must be quite a daunting task in this case if MS is offering source code instead of documentation and then taking this financial hit...
Offering the source code under the same license they do in the US would mean they don't do anything differently at all, and is thus cheaper no matter what. More importantly, due to the restrictive license it effectively prevents their most pressing competitors from using it, thus negating all of the real advantages of the agreement. Remember the point is to make it a fair and competitive market for servers. Documenting the APIs is the method for doing that, not the purpose itself.
How exactly are they criminals, even if they've lobbied governments?
They tied their monopoly OS to their office suite, media player, server, IM, web services, web browser, and dozens of other markets. Each is a violation of criminal antitrust law.
I'll never understand the animosity directed at Microsoft--unless it is just jealousy.
We have to deal with all the damage they did to the computing industry. Every time we have to work around MS's horrible partial implementation of decade old standards so that something that works in every browser made by a dozen different groups also works in their browser we get mad. Every time we see really cool functionality in a product they buy and kill, we get mad. Every time we waste an afternoon working around something broken in their products that we have to use to interoperate despite the fact that they are junk, we get mad. The state of the industry is a shambles and it is mostly because of a single company's actions.
Are these same complainers building their products to work on Mac and Linux? I doubt it. Maybe progress is stagnant due to laziness?
Sure most of us do. Lack of progress in the industry due to laziness is easily overcome with greed. Capitalism works because people will work hard to make a pile of money. The problem is, because MS bypasses market forces with their monopoly, even working hard and making a better product will not let you win in the market, and thus make money. The incentive for people to spend time and money to innovate and make better things is gone, thus the industry stagnates except for people working for other motivations (which are much rarer than greedy people).
You'd think some genius would go and build an alternative instead of continued attempts at making them open up to competitors.
Take a look at Firefox. It is faster, is six years ahead in standards support, has much better plugin features, is more secure, has had UI innovations for years, has good pop-up blocking, is cross-platform, and is free. It kicks IE's butt all around the block. It has about 1/8 IE's market share. Now apply this to every market. Making a better alternative does not allow you to out-compete an abusive monopoly, so most people don't try. Market forces don't act on a monopoly, which is why abusing a monopoly is illegal.
You simply build a better product and their reign would be over.
Please. OS X kicks Window's butt. BeOS kicked Window's butt Next kicked Window's butt. In a hundred other markets products are superior to what MS offers, but they still don't gain market share. Maybe you don't understand how a monopoly works.
Furthermore, if MS stopped supporting European businesses, it would be incredibly harmful to the european economy...
What makes you think this?
For instance, say that MS didn't allow European IPs to download their latest patch.
So, MS machines in business environments are already considered insecure and firewalled away. Third parties would provide patches, made much easier by the free availability of the source code.
Before long, this would lead to massive system instability.
Please. Third parties already beat MS to releasing patches much of the time. With the source, patches would come out first for the EU and likely the massive exploits from the opened code would make "official" versions of Windows the more hacked one.
Market forces will work this out.
Go read up on monopolies and antitrust law. The whole point is it provides a way to avoid market forces. They won't work it out since MS will not be subject to them unless antitrust laws are enforced.
You != eveyone. Most people don't "customize their right click menus", and most people expect the context menu in an application to provide contextual information...
But you're talking about running an application within another application. Since you can't possibly know which application your "Web app" is running in, or what tasks they are trying to accomplish and since a right-click menu should always be a secondary access control, I think it is perfectly reasonable to assume that the intermediary layer might have controls it wants to impose that are more useful and pervasive than a secondary access to something you already provide access to.
if you aren't surfing the web the majority of items in a browser's context menu are anything but contextual.
Hmm, lets see, language translations, dictionary/thesaurus lookups, view source, back and forward, useful scripts... all seem to apply to Web apps as much as anything else. Anyone running Firefox or a number of other browsers and even OS's will have similar functions. Thus, you're catering to Windows+IE, which is where that functionality is lacking.
I stil get nothing relating to the application I am accessing.
Because you are not counting the browser as an application, which you are running whether you like to acknowledge it or not.
the web browser knows nothing about the application it is running, it is up to the developer to instruct it as to what is relevant contextual information for the application.
You're assuming that you, as a developer, know more about what I want to do than I do and that you should be able to override my choices by forcing your own either in addition (breaking mine) or as a replacement. Seeing as you don't know what I'm doing, while I do, I reject your argument.
I think you need to fire yourself and get a real job at a real company - the right click menus of course are not the only route to functionality in the application.
You wrote, "...It [lack of support for a right-click menu] pretty much excludes KHTML/Konqueror from ever running our application." And then you claim it is not the only route to that functionality? You are contradicting yourself.
But in the real world, any piece of functionality that does not work 100% across all browsers means that the application is unsupportable on that browser, because it can't pass through the QA cycle.
So you're saying your QA process is so rigid and can't handle a simple conditional and somehow that is my fault? Between your shoddy UI policies and your incompetent QA, maybe you should tell me just what product you're working on so I can be sure to avoid it. Apparently you've never heard of another Web standard called "gracefully dealing with differing feature sets."
ok so how do you explain the opening of the source.. sure you have to register/pay for it but it is there.
The source was not as easy to use to create a fresh re-implementation as the API docs. In fact, the licensing pretty much made it legal suicide to try to re-implement after viewing the source. Further, the license made it so MS's biggest competitors, Solaris and Linux could not have integrated the code since it purposely excluded software with their licenses. How exactly does that make for a level playing field in the server OS market, which is, after all, the point of the punishment?
when you look at linux.. and the documentation for some of the stuff - well it just isn't always there.. sure you can find support and answer your questions.. if mabey[sic] the competition started working with it and messing around and trying instead of getting the EU to do there job then they could make it work..
Are you joking? Most of the AD stuff was a complete copy of LDAP, which was then intentionally broken in order to stop others from interoperating. Linux and several projects have done a great job of reverse engineering most of those intentional problems and working anyway, but it is a huge effort in time and manpower and it can never be perfect since it is all a black box. The point is, MS connecting their server and desktop with these secret protocols is illegal. It is a criminal offense as MS well knew when they did it. Now, as punishment, they have been ordered to stop breaking the law and you say it is other groups' job to work around MS's illegal action?
you have to look at it from both sides.. the competition wants MS to hand everythign[sic] over on a silver plater[sic] and teach them to make software for windows.
The EU wants MS to comply with the law, the same as everyone else and not tie their monopoly to other markets. MS has a monopoly. That means they are obligated to not do anything with that monopoly product that will give them an unfair advantage in another market; in this case the server and media player markets. If MS wants to gain market share and make money in the server market the law says they have to do so by making the best server product, not by illegally tying an inferior server to their desktop product, which everyone has to use since it is a monopoly. You think it is so onerous to demand MS make a better product to compete, rather than doing so by breaking the law? You think they should be able to force everyone to use their drastically inferior server since it is the only one that can properly communicate with their desktop? I guess we fundamentally disagree then.
the comepition woln't open up their software to the extent they want MS to...
LDAP and IMAP/POP were open standards, fully documented long before MS had competing closed/obfuscated protocols.
can someone show me full documentation on how to use the real player api to make it do what i want..
No one has asked for API documentation regarding Windows Media Player, only the secret interactions of Windows server and desktop. Media player is breaking the law via bundling. That is to say, they will only sell you Windows if you buy Windows + Media Player at the same price. Thus, all consumer have already purchased one media player so it is a huge roadblock to people paying a second time for the player they really want and would have chosen in the first place except for the bundling.
sure MS has some dirty taticts[sic] but the EU is being much worse
You are uninformed and just plain wrong.
Why is everyone so against microsoft
Because they are criminals that harm everyone and the computing industry in general with their crimes and because they have participated in the corruption of the US government by paying huge bribes to both major parties campaign funds to have the case against them gutted.
Doesnt Win amp run as good as media player does on windows?
How is this relevant?
No matter what you say if microsoft withdrew all support and products from europe their[sic] would be some nasty consiquences[sic].
Yeah, but they would be nasty mostly for MS.
It would take some time for all servers and desktops to be tranistioned[sic] to linux.
So, what would be the rush? Is MS going to try to get people in Europe arrested for pirating their software? Yeah, I'm sure the EU will get right on that. They'd probably revoke all of MS's trademarks, copyright, and patents in Europe, making Windows source code available freely.
then would come trying to deal with the u.s and other countries that still use microsoft.
Do you think other countries would not follow Europe's lead when MS failed to comply there? Do you think no one could manage to save as PDF, or use open office to open Word files?
It would be very bad if microsoft took everything out of Europe.
Yeah, that 10 minutes before the emergency conference call of MS's board would be pretty bad. Then the CEO would be removed and they'd go back to complying with the law. No one walks away from 20 billion in profit to avoid paying .7 billion. No one creates a huge market for their competitors, while undermining the monopoly that lets them make those outrageous profits. No one breaks their contracts with every major multinational in the world and expects to walk away from it. MS may be wealthy, but compared to the huge companies they would be screwing over they are a minnow in the ocean.
For you video game junkies that would include the Xbox 360
It's just one more market they are trying to make headway in that they would be crushed in.
I am starting to feel the EU is just trying to extort money out of microsoft. Microsoft has been giving them what they want from what I have seen and they still are asking for money.
Stop reading the MS press releases as news. No really, I'm serious. MS has not complied and have not documented the APIs well enough to allow competitors to compete on even footing. This is as judged by the expert MS picked to make this decision. Since you haven't seen the docs and he has and given his expertise and credibility, what possible reason could you think you have for being a better judge than he is? MS press releases can say what they want, but if you believe they are true and unbiased then you are complete fool.
if i was MS i would have said fuck it by now.. and pull out of the EU completely.
I see. So you would break your agreements with thousands of international customers (like every major company in the world since they all have european offices) while at the same time abandoning 20 billion dollars in profit a year to avoid paying .7 billion in fines? And you'd do thins knowing you'd be instantly creating your own biggest competitor by handing a third of the market to other parties. You'd be fired before the day was out, since the board of directors can do math. You might be shot if they're feeling spiteful about the billions you managed to cost them in the confusion and bad PR. If nothing else you'd be a wanted criminal in so many nations the US would almost have to deport you.
the EU have been draging[sic] this out making it imposiable[sic] for MS to settle it..
The EU wants the APIs documented well enough to provide for fair competition as judged by the expert MS chose. MS hasn't bothered to do that, because they make more money breaking the law. What they have done is proposed a number of solutions that won't restore competition and spent a lot of money on press in the hopes that they can put pressure on the EU by spreading lies, like the ones you are parroting. How exactly can you think their documentation is in compliance when it has not been released and the expert MS chose says it isn't?
I only think the EU is wrong on the "failure to comply" decision. I don't know one way or the other about the validity of their anti-trust laws.
I don't think there is any doubt in the minds of MS's battalion of antitrust lawyers as to what the EU wants. They want the APIs documented so that there can be fair competition in the server OS market. The problem is, MS doesn't want their illegal actions stopped in any way so they keep providing solutions that either don't do that or which are completely different from what is asked and seem to address similar concerns, but without having any real impact on the problem. They keep trying to get away with implementing something that still disadvantages competitors in the market, but in an obscure enough way that the EU commission will not notice or will give up. If they would just hire people to actually write the documentation extensively and properly and make sure they conform to it, there would be no issue. They can easily do that for a lot less than 2.5 million a day, but they don't want to because they are making more than that by breaking the law, thus they are stalling.
MS knows what the commission wants and so does everyone else. Stop buying into their FUD press releases they are using to try to pressure the EU into not making them play fair. MS broke the law and now they're quibbling about obeying their court ordered punishment. They chose the person who has judged them failing to comply. They deserve zero sympathy here.
I love it how The Slashdot GroupThink questions the validitiy and constitutionality of laws such as the DMCA, copyright laws, IP laws, etc., but when it comes down to anti-trust laws, there is NO debate, whatsoever, and people such as yourself continually just parrot "They broke the law! They broke the law!". Nice.
Why is it I have the feeling you're trolling? Maybe it is the obviously inflammatory remarks and generalizations accusing "Slashdot" as a whole of having some opinion. Or maybe you're just an idiot. I agree with some laws and disagree with others. There is no hypocrisy in that. If you have an argument as to why you think the antitrust laws being enforced are unethical, lets here it... but please, please, please make sure you actually understand the laws and their purpose rather than spewing out the uneducated, uncomprehending crap I hear so often from people here. At least make sure you are educated and have an informed viewpoint before making vocal assertions about it and making yourself look like an ignorant jackass.
What the rest of the world did or did not decide is irrelevant. What I disagree with is the "failed to comply" portion.
Then MS has only themselves to blame as they are the one who recommended and approved the person who has judged them as failing to comply. Since neither you nor I have seen the sealed documentation that has been provided, what makes you think you can better judge as to whether or not they complied than the expert MS picked who has read it?
Now THAT is a lot better... Than the limited (though enormous) fines the EU was talking about the last time. Last I recall, the total fine was around 50 million dollars.
You're a little confused. The fine has remained 2.5 million a day, but it started racking up quite a while ago, so the payment due is now well over 50 million and going up by 2.5 million a day. The EU has just delayed collection of the fine for a while.
I guess I'm looking for trouble by saying this on Slashdot, but I think the EU's reasoning on this issue is faulty, and I think it's an old-fashioned money grab.
They're breaking the law. The US convicted them of it. The EU did too. So did several other nations. They have failed to comply with their punishment. If the EU does not act, they are stating to the world that they won't or can't enforce their own laws. For a fledgling organization like the EU, this would be devastating. If you convict someone of robbery and they escape from the prison instead of serving their time and then stroll into town and tell everyone they aren't going to accept the punishment since they don't want to, the law bloody well better act if they want to be taken seriously, ever.
Good thing I'm not in charge of Microsoft. Out of spite I'd have pulled up stakes of everything in the EU, save for a distribution warehouse.
Yeah, because you'd be fired and replaced within hours.
Spread your FUD elsewhere. They are fining them what the law allows for the same crime the US just ruled them failing to comply with their punishment for. Are you claiming the US is biased against MS too?
"Microsoft must open up parts of their operating system to competitors, and change how they bundle Media Player."
This is ambiguous and misleading commentary. MS has been ordered to document the APIs of the interaction between their monopoly desktop OS and their non-monopoly server OS to allow competition. This is not "opening up" any part of their OS. They have not been asked to provide any source code and in fact they offered source code as an alternative to the documentation (under terms that would have gutted the benefits of the punishment) and it was rejected as unsatisfactory. To reiterate, MS was not ordered to open up any code, only to provide documentation on the interaction of their OS's.
Who would be liable for illegal downloads? You might be getting a $65 router for free but at the same time - you might end up with a huge hassle for usage.
To my knowledge no one in the US has yet been sued for illegal downloading. Uploading on this device, however, might be a different issue. Still, there will be logs of who was connected via any given point, since this service requires a username and password. It just makes the subpoenas slow and hard to get. I wouldn't worry about this. There are much easier targets for RIAA, etc. They can just go ask the cable company for a pile of IPs and names and sift through them when they want to get publicity for their scare campaign.
So is Fon going to blanket cover massive swathes of the globe - nah, you'll end up with lots of little clusters and big gaps inbetween.
I agree, partially. I don't see Fon covering massive swaths of the globe by themselves, but I do see Fon and hundreds of other companies and organizations covering significant amounts and agreeing to share access with one another. I see Google taking a role in making this happen. How many citywide wireless projects are going on right now? I know there is a county wide one under development here, and much of that area is fairly rural. Building a reciprocity agreement between these projects benefits everyone, especially when you get to wireless points peering with one another and completely bypassing the traditional telco's network for significant amounts of traffic.
I'm sure there will be a lot of dark spots for a long time, but I do see this sort of thing as a practical solution with no unsolvable technical hurdles.
If you don't like the ToS, that doesn't mean you can break them.
Depending upon the location and the laws there, that may be exactly what it means. It is common for unenforceable and illegal terms to be written into end user agreements. In many places regulating how many people are using a service is a violation of FCC rules for common carriers. Additionally, in many locations in the US a few companies have been granted exclusive access to the public right of ways needed to deliver service and thus have a monopoly. There are a lot of special rules and regulations for such monopolies.
And I really doubt you could find an affordable service provider that allows connection sharing.
Well, you may be right and you may not in any given location. One service provider called Speakeasy that supplies DSL lines across the US not only allows sharing at a reasonable price, but they have infrastructure set up that you can use for billing those you share with (if you so desire). If you get a DSL line they will give you advice on setting up a wireless router or series of peering routers. If you want to start signing up neighbors to use it, you can just send the names and addresses to Speakeasy and they will take care of the billing for a cut of the proceeds. You start getting checks in the mail instead of bills.
Adults can also choose to enter into contracts. Since these are students recieving athletic scholarships, my guess is that it's legal to say "if you want this free money, you can't use facebook". It's the same way that NFL teams can write contracts that forbid things like skydiving or riding motorcycles.
First, there are a lot of protected rights you can't sign away, no matter how hard you try. The majority of contract signed in this country probably have at least some unenforceable terms as a result. Second, this is a public university, is it not? That means it gets a lot of federal funding and has to follow all sorts of rules that apply to government entities, but not to private businesses. Third, retroactively changing the terms of a contract is always one of those unenforceable terms.
it seems to me that banning social network sites so your jocks don't post up the stupid shit they do is attacking the problem from the completely wrong side.
Indeed. In fact, if the terms of this policy are really what the article would have us believe then they are begging for a lawsuit. Banning students from participating in some type of social networking site is one thing, but banning only a specific site is something else entirely.
Next time try giving out bottles of Jim Beam.
Funny you should say that, but I did give away a third of a bottle of Jim Beam to some guys sitting outside one night a few weeks ago. I don't think they were homeless though.