You can't have two competing monopolies - it's no longer a monopoly once you have 2.
True, but you can have two companies, each with one or more monopolies, competing against one another. That is, I believe, what the previous poster intended to write.
For example, MS can have a monopoly on desktop OS's while Google has a monopoly on Web search tools.
And I'd argue that having two companies, even if they are both evil, competing is WAY better than having one monolothic company with a strangelhold on the market. It's the difference between a monopoly (worst possible scenario) and an oligopoly.
The worst case is a very subjective idea, only really able to be judged by the results. If MS has a monopoly on desktop OS's and forces everyone who wants to use a computer to pay them exorbitant fees and use their crappy products in other markets since they've driven all the good creators out of business, well that sucks. If Google has a monopoly on online applications and forces anyone who wants to use the Web to use their search and a bunch of crappy websites they've created after driving the good websites out of business, well that sucks to. If they both do this, well it sucks even worse. Now if there is some overlap between them, maybe consumers will benefit, but it is by no means a foregone conclusion.
As for the whole "Google is evil" thing; I don't see where that comes from.
Nor I, they've been pretty responsible as a company, much better than the average.
As long as it works with even one sound card for which Open Source drivers exist, this DRM scheme is defeatable, just the same as any other DRM scheme that has ever existed or will ever exist.
Ahh, but it still "works" in that it makes it harder for you to play old files on a new device, especially a device that only supports playing some particular DRM'd format. The point is not to stop pirates, everyone knows that is not possible with DRM. The point is to charge paying users for the same song multiple times. Buy the song for you car, your phone, your stereo, your newer stereo, your new phone, your new car stereo, etc.
A same tired canard about it being ok to STEAL music because you're not STEALING from the artists, but from the record companies and that's ok because they RIP OFF artists.
You must be watching those "captain copyright" cartoons. Maybe English is not your first language, but you're using the word "steal" completely inappropriately. How about it is okay to FORNICATE music instead? It makes the same amount of sense.
No artists was ever forced to sign with a recording company. They partnered. Most artists LOSE money for the recording company and, hell, the purpose of the recording company is to make money so what's wrong with that?
First, copyright law is unconstitutional as written, but only exists in its current form because of inappropriate, ambiguous wording in the bill of rights. Even the Supreme court stated that it is obvious to them that the current laws are not upholding the intent of the constitution, but that because of the ambiguous wording and the fact that congress claims they are being incompetent instead of malicious the courts have no ability to act. Imagine if the freedom of speech amendment said congress shall uphold freedom of speech and then congress passed laws declaring talking about the democratic party was illegal, but claimed they were trying to uphold free speech, but could not come up with a better set of laws to do it.
Second, most musicians do not lose money for the RIAA. Most musicians music takes in money, but the musicians lose money in exchange for giving their copyright to musicians. The problem is, contrary to your apparent beliefs, most musicians are not in it for the money. They want to be heard and want to be famous and the RIAA is a cartel that can allow or prevent them from reaching all of the major distribution chains for music. If they want to be heard they have to agree to be financially reamed in the ass.
Don't take my word for it. The RIAA has already been legally declared a cartel and convicted of price fixing numerous times. They, along with other copyright wielding cartels, have changed the laws to institute a system that is exactly what the founders of copyright law designed the laws to prevent as evidenced by numerous writings they produced on the subject. Civil disobedience is a time tested tradition in the US. Breaking unjust laws is sometimes the only way to draw attention to how unjust they are. I don't think you realize the extend of the damage copyright laws are enabling. They are not only costing people money, but allowing for the legalized destruction of our artistic heritage. The chances are the last copy of greatest book written in the last 40 years will disappear with only a handful of people having read it. That costs us more than all the dollars the RIAA has ever funneled to them.
Copyright law is fundamentally broken and no boycott scheme will fix it. Civil disobedience might. Heck, violate their copyright, steal their cars, and burn down their buildings if you want. They have done much worse to us all.
They are, for the first time in a very long time, the underdog and actually have to compete on price again.
Competition does wonders for a market. Actually, Intel is competing on more than price right now though. Their laptop processors have leapfrogged AMD and now provide more bang using less power. Their 65 nm migration is way ahead of AMD and they look to be a year ahead in the next die shrink as well. Things are closer in the the server and desktop space, but it looks like AMD is actually in trouble in the near future for all of them. They are in a tight spot. They are behind on die sizes and have a much smaller manufacturing operation and less capital. They may have a hard time competing at cut throat prices. Hopefully, they will weather it and stay in all these markets to continue providing real competition.
Been done with what is called "engines". Many games are based on the physics/graphics engines of, say, Unreal, or Half-Life. What else could you include except for the graphis and the "feel" of a game to not just produce games that all are alike?
There are several ways just using an engine is different. First, it has to be licensed, often for a pretty high cost. This means it likely reduces costs and risk, but only by as little as the company you are licensing from can get away with. It loses the advantage of the open source model. Second, each game still ships with an entire, modified version of the engine. Thus, there is a little more room for easier customization, but all that customized code is not reused so that cost is paid for by every company instead of just once.
Second, while a given game may include advertising and even a way to purchase further products, it is usually not worth it. A company only puts out a few games a year, if that. Users want a wider selection. By reusing the same base for games from a wide range of developers, who reuse more code and can thus create games more quickly, you can offer dozens of games from multiple vendors from one interface. Better yet, making this an open platform for all comers allows the open source community to make contributions. Developers get free code and bug fixes donated by the community. Likely, developers will also get access to a range of community developed artwork, textures, models, music, and effects to supplement their own artistic team. Probably, a few complete games would even appear, which would not only allow newcomers to make a name (providing a free talent discovery tool) but also will keep users coming back to see what is available and thus providing free advertising to any company selling a game there. It would also make for an ideal forum for trading mods and allowing easier customization, some of which could even span different games.
Basically, all the advantages of open source development could be applied to the gaming space, without losing the commercial benefits of closed source development. After all, most of what they are selling is a story and artwork. That is scripting, sounds, graphics, and plot. All of that can still be protected under copyright, when applied on top of an open framework.
The problem is that Steam already ruined the game platform where you could easily buy new games and get updates. Good luck trying to get anyone to go down that route for a while.
I don't think it would be a problem. So long as it is implemented so that users don't need to connect to the online service to play, I think users would go for it. Valve pissed people off because they got in the way. Put the gamer first in this scheme and they won't mind.
The drawback is that this would require a reboot of your system - but many high-end games are the solitary program you want running while you're playing them anyhow - and besides, chat and browsing could still be included on the distro with the game.
I think this would be a deal-killer for me. I don't want to reboot my machine. Heck I don't even want to shut down my running applications. On OS X, the multitasking and resource management is usually good enough that I can leave resource hungry Adobe applications sitting idle while I play a game and not have it affect the performance. That is important to me. I usually have a dozen or more applications open, excluding all my terminals and I don't want to have to reopen all of them and find the files I'm working on again.
Here's another idea. Get your game working in stripped down environment and provide it in a different VM for each platform. Heck, you can build it to run in the JVM if you want. Better yet though, I'd like to see some company spearhead the development of a gaming specific environment that takes care of 75% percent of the coding needed for a given game style. Make it cross platform and sell smaller, cheaper "content" packages for it. The game is a file paradigm (an open standard format). Get a few different gaming houses on board and one or two companies can start selling dev tools that make games for it. You could undercut everyone since the cost of adding new features would be shared by all partners and the open source community and it would let you sell cheaper than anyone not on board. Companies could focus on content, with only a few coders to that are more than scripters to add new features and fix bugs. Tied into a P2P service or centralized server with advertising it would provide a way for people buy new games as well. Think of gamers booting up their favorite game and having a "buy other games" option including sequels, add ons, and similar games.
Instead of $60 titles you could sell $20 titles and still make just as much profit and have more variety and not have to worry about platforms. Heck, port it to the consoles too and watch your possible market balloon.
I'd be much happier to see this, than to see a bootCD game that makes it harder for me to play games.
...how many copies of Diablo, Warcraft and Starcraft were sold to Mac owners over the years who bought them largely because they were about the only Mac compatible games you could find...
How many copies were sold to PC gamers because it was the common ground for LAN parties with mac gamers? It only takes one mac gamer to motivate the sale of a lot of PC games, and since you can usually use one purchase for everyone to try it out, it makes for great free advertising.
Re:I Didn't Realize the Onus Was on Apple
on
It's No Game At Apple
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· Score: 4, Insightful
It seems to me that most games--either for Mac OS or for Windows--are made by third-party vendors (yes, I realize that Microsoft has several game titles of their own).
What is interesting is which game companies MS has acquired. Of the four I know of, two of them were the biggest mac game company at the time of their purchase and immediately stopped making timely mac released thereafter. Maybe MS sees games on the Mac as more important than Apple does?
And it also seems to me that the reason there aren't lots of games for Macs is because there isn't that much demand for them.
Actually, there are a lot of mac games. Pick the ten most popular games of 2005. How many are available for the mac? All of them are out for the mac. Five out of ten were released at the same time as the PC version. It's not that macs don't have games, it's that macs don't get unsuccessful games and game releases often lag the PC release. Many companies don't write portable games (they use DirectX because it is cheap) and then don't want to invest in porting it until they are sure it is going to be popular. When they make a lot of money, they start the port and the mac version comes out 6 months later.
Think about it from a third-party vendor's point of view: Why get into the business of making games for a platform that only has 5% of the market (or however much Apple has at the moment) when there is most certainly more money to be made creating games (or other software) for Windows-based PCs?
The answer is the same reason they make games in the first place, money. Take a look at a big company, like Blizzard or Id. They code using OpenGL and best practices. It is a minor expense to make a mac port, or a console port. They have cleaner, better code and are not as beholden to MS specific tools (DirectX) that are outside their control. Most of their porting costs are up front, but that is okay because they know their games are going to be successful. Smaller companies have less money up front and less talent. They need to get something out the door now. Many of them code using DirectX and if they are successful they port to consoles and macs with the assurance that they have money coming in already. It costs them more in total and their results are buggier on both PCs and Macs, but the initial investment is smaller. Others are not successful and never make a port to anything.
And I can't speak for all Mac users, of course, but that's part of the reason I have multiple machines at home: Macs to do actual work on, and a Windows machine for playing games.
I'd say the more common theme is macs for doing work and casual gaming. Macs for work and consoles for slightly more serious gaming. and Macs for work and everything for gaming for hardcore gamers. Of course all that might be changing soon. A mac that can run games (and other programs) with WINE or fast enough in a VM may obviate the need for a second machine for a lot of us.
Since then, I haven't bought a Intel and been using AMD because I can get similiar performance for around a hundred-two hundred dollars less than an Intel. I always read the reviews, and watch the performance charts, then decide which is the better product for the $.
Apparently you haven't been watching too closely lately. Intel is currently winning the price/performance comparison in several segments, including most of the laptop market. I usually only do comparisons before I'm going to buy something, but even I've noticed the difference.
Reading Slashdot news has become a pain in the *ss after somebody decided to use the ugliest and smallest fonts available.
It's a markup language, so fix it already. Specify your own CSS for the site, or just to always use +1 fonts sizes on this site. Another issue is that it looks like it uses a special style for IE to make up for the fact that IE breaks the font size conventions, so if you're using a decent browser, but identifying it as IE, you are probably getting smaller text than everyone else. That's what you get for lying.
...science? I'm not so sure. Having worked in science in academia and industry, all the work is done on PCs and a little on SGis.
I see a lot of replies to this talking about scientific fields that have a lot of macs. I can tell you in biological sciences and biochemistry labs my girlfriend works at, most of the machines are macs and some of the big, expensive machines can only be accessed using a mac. What surprises me, though, is that no one has mentioned computer science. I work at a company that develops specialized network security devices, and over the last few years macs have gone from maybe 5% of the machines to more like 55%. For that matter, NANOG is going on right now. What percentage of the laptops there are macs, do you suppose? I don't have numbers, but I know there are a lot of them.
The real reason Apple doesn't dive into the gaming market is because Apples don't offer any drastic advantages over PCs in that arena, and until they do, Apple doesn't have enough market share to get the big business of gaming interested in developing a game solely for Macs.
Apple, until recently, would need to make a huge investment to get gaming on the mac equal to gaming on the PC. This would be either building dev tools that made games for mac and PC using OpenGL, or an easy way to port DirectX games, and/or buying game companies and rolling their own exclusive titles. More likely, they could partner with Nintendo or Sony to get console games on the Mac. Times, however, are changing.
Game Publisher: "Hmm... I can get hundreds of millions by releasing this on PC, or I may hit two or three million by going for the Mac market." No brainer there.
Actually the choice is, develop portable code that does not rely upon MS's DirectX and reach PCs, macs, and consoles easily while having better quality code and being less beholden to MS, or develop for Direct X, using less talented coders and count on the money that comes in to hire someone else to let us port it to macs and consoles if it is successful.
The former is what most of the best game companies do, like Blizzard and ID. The latter is what cheaper operations, with less certainty of success do. There are a lot more of the latter than the former, although most you never really hear about, since their games end up in the cheap bin.
Now, however, Apple has the OpenSource WINE project as well as several VM technologies to make use of. Additionally, the new Intel chips contain hardware virtualization tech. For a much smaller investment they can provide tools to quickly port Windows software including games, or run them under OS X in a VM at reasonable speeds. Even if Apple does nothing, third parties will certainly provide both of these options. It is just a matter of time and seeing what Apple decides to build in.
All I see around here is dumbasses with too much money buying front-load LG and Samsung washing machines. There's your disaster.
Lets see, front loading washers can be used by anyone Top loading washers are difficult or impossible for people in wheelchairs. The percentage of the population in wheelchairs is rising or falling? I believe my point is made.
It seems to me as if the author is vastly over-rating the Apple's "ethical" stance on its products. Does anyone for a moment believe that if the US military gave Apple an exclusive contract to, say, supply the servers for, to take a silly example, America's Army, that Apple wouldn't snap it up?
Apple does focus a lot on marketing, more so than most companies. They try hard to control the public perception of their product as a sales tool. This is not the same thing as ethics. Apple does and for a long time has supplied various branches of the military.
Occam's razor suggests that the reason Apple doesn't concentrate on games has been that traditionally, with a different CPU architecture and a fraction of the market, it simply wasn't worth the effort to woo game developers to do a difficult task for which the results would be mediocre at best.
Occam's razor suggest that Apple has not been convinced that concentrating on games is practical or likely to generate as much additional sales as less expensive markets. Processors have little or nothing to do with it.
Add to that the lagging speeds and specs of Apple's consumer level offerings (I refer to the G4 based systems), Apple's actually *couldn't* play fashionable games that well.
Heh, I take it you've never seen the average specs for a gaming machine. The target platform for the average game is well below the capabilities of any mac on the market. Aside from a few graphics powerhouses, most games aim at an average two year old machine. Take a look at the requirements for 2006's top sellers so far. I think you'll be surprised.
Mr Jobs announced that OS X had been running on Intel for five years previous to the unveiling of Mac OS X for x86. So if Apple *knew* it had an Intel version under the hood, why would it spend any effort at all persuading game developers to write, or port to PowerPC? Only to shaft them later by announcing OSX86?
The PPC chip was not holding back gaming on the mac. Optimization for the chip set was a minimal concern. Several industry experts have already testified it mostly amounted to a recompile with a few different options. The cost comes from porting to a new interface and in most cases porting away from MS's proprietary DirectX. Take a look at the major games out there today. Those that develop using OpenGL tend to release for the mac at about the same time as Windows. Think Blizzard and ID. Companies that develop using DirectX (which is completely dependent upon the Windows OS), generally hire a specialty firm to help them port to the Mac and OpenGL. This is a significant expense and thus they usually wait until they know the game is successful before even starting. OpenGL versus DirectX is the single biggest consideration for making Mac gaming lag Windows gaming and has nothing to do with the processor.
I suggest we wait and see. Now that the biggest hardware block has been removed, there should be no reason why fashionable games do not become available on the Mac.
The hardware change will make a difference, but not because companies write for a processor. Intel chips will do one of two things. If Apple builds in a Windows virtualization/reimplementation environment it will let macs run native Windows games and developers will probably do very little differently except be more careful about activation schemes, even though Macs will now play games. If Apple does not build in such technology, many companies will use the WINE technology to make quick and dirty ports, much faster and with less expense, thus shortening the lag time between releases, but also possibly reducing quality.
If you were asked by someone in your Linux-only organization to clean up their machine after they had installed every single program they ever ran across, including several rootkits and Gnome, you'd correctly identify the problem as a PBKAC. Same thing here with Ballmer's friend's bride's father's computer.
You probably think this is funny, but the expected behavior for a computer, for most normal users, is that they should be able to run whatever programs they want without the computer "screwing up." Hmmm, here's some random game that may or may not really be a game. I'll run it and find out. If it is a game it should run. If not, well the computer should tell me if it tries to do anything funny, like send spam, or erase my files.
Windows computers have not advanced to give customers this functionality yet (although strengthening user vs. admin separation is a start) because MS has a monopoly and doesn't have to respond to customers. Some Linux based systems have rudimentary technology that allows this, or at least limits the damage, but for the most part the users are educated enough to not need it and malware is uncommon for the platform so the demand is small.
The truth is, I should be able to install every program I ever find, including rootkits, and the OS should guide me through letting them do what I want them to and nothing else. When I install a rootkit the OS *should* ask me if I want to give complete control of my computer to it, or if I want to run it in a VM and just let it think it has control. Now, I know this ideal may never happen, but it would not be all that hard to get us 95% of the way.
However, the link above specifically says: "the proposed blanket license covers all intermediate copies (e.g., server, cache and buffer copies) necessary to facilitate the digital delivery of music and applies to streaming and limited downloads."
This quote is misleading. It applies to only a subset of works, changes the rules governing streaming media form performance to distribution (removing our rights in the process) and strongly implies a license of some sort is needed for incidental copies (by granting one in some cases) when these are now considered covered by the fair use provisions of copyright law.
Now I don't buy into everything the original article says, but neither do I buy into what the copyright office says. There are several, fairly well respected groups out there that have a good handle on both the law and our rights. Take a look at what the EFF has to say.
...the initial link is so blatantly political that it's hardly an objective source for ANY information and is easily proven wrong by a casual read at the facts.
I think what you're saying is that you don't find the same things when you casually read the document, with your own less than expert view of the law. That is different than a casual reading finding the "facts" to be different, unless you're claiming to be an expert at interpreting the law? It is a good thing to read how this proposed bill is viewed by different groups, but don't be fooled into thinking that just because you can't see how a bill changes something that the change is not there. Otherwise, you're the one spreading factually incorrect information and misinforming others.
Like the parent post, I agree that digital rights require vigilance, but just because some blog says something is horrible is no reason to believe it.
I don't trust "some blog" to do my lawyering, but I do have some trust in the EFF. Did you read what they had to say about it? Included in this bill is language that states incidental copies of some works are granted a compulsory license. That strongly implies they need a license, instead of being fair use as the courts consider them in most instances now, and thus places more restrictions on fair use rights. They are explicitly granting a subset of the rights you have now and applying it to a subset of works, in the hopes that they can use this to show the intent of copyright law in general is that you need a license for incidental copies.
Additionally, it treats streaming audio as distributions instead of performances in an attempt to remove the rights normally associated with radio. Basically it says internet radio is not the same thing as over the air radio and strips listeners of rights they would otherwise have.
Maybe you should rethink your sources and opinion on this bill.
Contrary to what that article says, democracy is not tyranny of the majority; protecting minority rights is an essentical part of democratic government...
I take some issue with this. Democracy itself has no inherent protection for minority rights. The US government set up the bill of rights so that it would take a super-majority to overturn what they saw as basic civil rights, but that does not make it a principal of democracy, per se. Democracy, by itself, quite often is a tyranny of the majority. I'd also like to make sure it is clear that this speed bump of the constitution does not make it any less true, it just makes it harder to act upon. It is quite possible that in the near future a constitutional amendment will allow the christian majority in the country to make a religious based belief in inequality a fundamental part of our law by making marriage only available to a man and a women, thus denying equal rights to homosexual partners. This applies across a huge body of our legal system denying medical visitations, inheritance rights, adoption processes, tax laws, etc. to people solely based upon the fact that both have the same gender. Make no mistake; this is one group imposing their will on another, and telling another group that if they don't follow a purely religious prohibition, they will be given fewer rights. How is this not a tyranny of the majority?
True, Microsoft is exercising its monopoly power in both cases (illegally, I will submit)
And you don't think this is sufficient cause for Adobe to start legal proceedings?
In the case of the PDF feature, Microsoft made no modifications (that I am aware of) to the PDF standard-- it couldn't in order to get the PDFs to display properly everywhere else.
They didn't change HTML at first either. First they gain market share, then they break compatibility. In this case I have read their PDF is not completely up to spec, but I agree they are less likely to try to corrupt it and more likely to just remove support in favor of XPS once everyone is using their tools.
I can understand adobe being upset over XPS being bundled into Office and Vista, it's a clear abuse of their monopoly power. But PDF support... Microsoft isn't ruining anything, they're contributing to Adobe's monopoly on the format.
Adobe doesn't have a monopoly on the format, everyone can and does implement it from Apple to Quark. Adobe is not so shortsighted that they can't see Microsoft owning the PDF generation tools market will give them the ability to smoothly move everyone over to XPS in the future.
If MS wants to own the space, let them provide it separate from their monopoly and products tied to it. If it can't win on even ground, it doesn't deserve to.
It's not as if they only included support for XPS.
Of course not, they'll wait till they have market share and then ween people off PDF by first making it read only and then automatically converting PDF files to XPS.
...and if PDF is a truly open standard, there shouldn't be much they can do about it.
What does PDF being an open standard have to do with prosecuting people for breaking the law using it? Since PDF is an open standard does that mean I can break the law and send death threats to the president in that format? Hell no! It just means they can use it however they want that is not breaking some other law.
So why is Adobe mad?
Because a competitor is in the process of breaking the law and using their monopoly to cut them out of a market and is unlikely to play nice once they've done that.
...despite the fact that it's illegal, Adobe wouldn't care if they weren't scared of something.
Only an idiot would not be frightened of being placed in a situation where they are competing with MS's monopoly. It can't be done if the laws aren't enforced. PDF will die if MS is not stopped and not going after them for this first instance of breaking the law will just make it that much easier. It is not as though MS has not done this a dozen times already. Adobe knows what is coming.
Not to be disrespectful, but where do you get that idea from? I saw no mention of that in TFA, and while it did elude to talks between Adobe and Microsoft, I got the idea that there was nothing formal.
Apparently, according to some article I read but don't have a link handy for, MS and Adobe made some sort of a deal to use Adobe code in earlier version of Word. All of this was very shaky and no one seems to know what the deal was.
so why should they need a contract?
Because they got Adobe to write some of it for them.
Besides, if the real issue is that it's illegal to distribute the PDF support because of their monopoly, then how does a contract with Adobe make it any better? Doesn't it make it worse?
We don't know what the terms of the contract are, so we don't know now do we? It might say MS agrees not to implement any PDF in MS Office until 2009 unless they contract with Adobe to write it for a sum not yet negotiated, or some such foolishness. All we do know is MS announced they expect to be sued.
True, Microsoft won't be taking market share only from Adobe-- the usage of free apps like CutePDF will decline too-- but like I mentioned, the Joe User demographic
hey aren't bundling it with the OS they are (or were) including it with Office.
They are bundling XPS and PDF print with their OS. They also claim they are including the PDF functionality with Vista for "some OEMs." Finally, Office is illegally tied to Windows via the built-in.doc reader and the exchange protocol, thus they are bundling it with a product already illegally tied to Windows.
Do you have any doubt that MS will own the portable document space in 5 years unless legal action against them succeeds? Will that be because they have made better software, or just because they bundled that software with their monopoly and rolled the costs into Windows, which they force everyone to pay for?
It does work, but it does not have all the functionality of some other tools.
This is silly for Adobe to not let MS use pdf functionality.
MS can use PDF functionality all they want provided they are not breaking any previous contracts they signed and are not breaking any laws. What we have here is not MS creating PDF tools and a PDF competitor and marketing them against Adobe. We have them bundling them with their monopoly OS, a clear violation of antitrust law.
I wonder if MS is spinning "the breakdown of talks" so that they don't need an actual useful standard in office, so they can push their "pdf killer". The only thing that will kill PDF is a big old EMP...
I disagree. If MS can manage to provide an easy transition and they bundle the tools, they will take over the market, just as they have many other markets. Bundling is illegal, but it works provided the authorities don't do their jobs.
My guess would be that in typical Microsoft style, they are probably wanting to create their own incompatable extensions to PDF and Adobe has stepped-in and said no to them.
I doubt that has come up yet. MS usually waits until they have a large market share to introduce incompatibilities and to do so would void their license to use PDF and get them into a pretty clear cut court case, pronto.
Rather, I suspect this is more about antitrust law. MS is not just creating a PDF generator and competing format generator, it is bundling them into their OS and into MS Office which is illegally tied to their OS. To comply with antirust law MS has to offer these products only as stand alone applications, or bundled with products they do not have a monopoly upon, so that the market can choose which product is better.
Microsoft's attempt must use features that are not part of the standard, such as Layers or advanced color features.
I haven't seen a single word that indicates Adobe is suing them over using PDF aside from some sketchy information that MS signed some sort of contract long ago with Adobe that they are breaking. What I have seen is that MS is breaking antitrust laws by bundling these tools into Windows Vista and possibly by bundling them with MS Office (due to illegal tying with Windows).
Adobe doesn't care if the relatively small percentage of Mac and OOo users has access to PDF support (as everyone is supposed to, if it truly is an open format), but if Office implements the technology, Microsoft has just started cutting into their Average Joe User market share-- which is where they make the most of their money I'm sure.
Why? Why does Adobe automatically lose a lot of market share and MS gain it? Did MS make a better PDF generator or did they just leverage their existing monopoly? Are MS and Adobe competing on equal footing to provide a PDF generator or is MS gaining an unfair advantage that lets them gain market share even without a better product?
So what do they do? They try to pull a Microsoft-style monopoly move and say "Oh, yeah, that whole thing about open standard? That doesn't apply to you. We really own it."
What are you talking about? Adobe hasn't said anything of the sort. Two things have been strongly implied. First, apparently MS signed a contract with Adobe about MS's use of PDF and they are breaking it somehow. What it says or how, no one knows.
Second, MS, like any other company is free to make PDF generation tools. MS, however, being a monopolist cannot legally bundle those tools with their existing monopoly and thus bypass the free market. It is against the law. MS seems to be saying that they are bundling it with their OS for some OEMs and they are building it into MS Office (which is illegally tied to the Windows OS). Further, they are bundling a competitor to PDF in their OS. All of these things violate antitrust law, regardless of the fact that PDF is open. HTML is also open, but MS lost in many courts when it was found they illegally bundled Internet Explorer. Would you claim the Netscape developers said, "Oh, yeah, that whole thing about open standard? That doesn't apply to you. We really own it."???
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You can't have two competing monopolies - it's no longer a monopoly once you have 2.
True, but you can have two companies, each with one or more monopolies, competing against one another. That is, I believe, what the previous poster intended to write.
For example, MS can have a monopoly on desktop OS's while Google has a monopoly on Web search tools.
And I'd argue that having two companies, even if they are both evil, competing is WAY better than having one monolothic company with a strangelhold on the market. It's the difference between a monopoly (worst possible scenario) and an oligopoly.
The worst case is a very subjective idea, only really able to be judged by the results. If MS has a monopoly on desktop OS's and forces everyone who wants to use a computer to pay them exorbitant fees and use their crappy products in other markets since they've driven all the good creators out of business, well that sucks. If Google has a monopoly on online applications and forces anyone who wants to use the Web to use their search and a bunch of crappy websites they've created after driving the good websites out of business, well that sucks to. If they both do this, well it sucks even worse. Now if there is some overlap between them, maybe consumers will benefit, but it is by no means a foregone conclusion.
As for the whole "Google is evil" thing; I don't see where that comes from.
Nor I, they've been pretty responsible as a company, much better than the average.
As long as it works with even one sound card for which Open Source drivers exist, this DRM scheme is defeatable, just the same as any other DRM scheme that has ever existed or will ever exist.
Ahh, but it still "works" in that it makes it harder for you to play old files on a new device, especially a device that only supports playing some particular DRM'd format. The point is not to stop pirates, everyone knows that is not possible with DRM. The point is to charge paying users for the same song multiple times. Buy the song for you car, your phone, your stereo, your newer stereo, your new phone, your new car stereo, etc.
A same tired canard about it being ok to STEAL music because you're not STEALING from the artists, but from the record companies and that's ok because they RIP OFF artists.
You must be watching those "captain copyright" cartoons. Maybe English is not your first language, but you're using the word "steal" completely inappropriately. How about it is okay to FORNICATE music instead? It makes the same amount of sense.
No artists was ever forced to sign with a recording company. They partnered. Most artists LOSE money for the recording company and, hell, the purpose of the recording company is to make money so what's wrong with that?
First, copyright law is unconstitutional as written, but only exists in its current form because of inappropriate, ambiguous wording in the bill of rights. Even the Supreme court stated that it is obvious to them that the current laws are not upholding the intent of the constitution, but that because of the ambiguous wording and the fact that congress claims they are being incompetent instead of malicious the courts have no ability to act. Imagine if the freedom of speech amendment said congress shall uphold freedom of speech and then congress passed laws declaring talking about the democratic party was illegal, but claimed they were trying to uphold free speech, but could not come up with a better set of laws to do it.
Second, most musicians do not lose money for the RIAA. Most musicians music takes in money, but the musicians lose money in exchange for giving their copyright to musicians. The problem is, contrary to your apparent beliefs, most musicians are not in it for the money. They want to be heard and want to be famous and the RIAA is a cartel that can allow or prevent them from reaching all of the major distribution chains for music. If they want to be heard they have to agree to be financially reamed in the ass.
Don't take my word for it. The RIAA has already been legally declared a cartel and convicted of price fixing numerous times. They, along with other copyright wielding cartels, have changed the laws to institute a system that is exactly what the founders of copyright law designed the laws to prevent as evidenced by numerous writings they produced on the subject. Civil disobedience is a time tested tradition in the US. Breaking unjust laws is sometimes the only way to draw attention to how unjust they are. I don't think you realize the extend of the damage copyright laws are enabling. They are not only costing people money, but allowing for the legalized destruction of our artistic heritage. The chances are the last copy of greatest book written in the last 40 years will disappear with only a handful of people having read it. That costs us more than all the dollars the RIAA has ever funneled to them.
Copyright law is fundamentally broken and no boycott scheme will fix it. Civil disobedience might. Heck, violate their copyright, steal their cars, and burn down their buildings if you want. They have done much worse to us all.
They are, for the first time in a very long time, the underdog and actually have to compete on price again.
Competition does wonders for a market. Actually, Intel is competing on more than price right now though. Their laptop processors have leapfrogged AMD and now provide more bang using less power. Their 65 nm migration is way ahead of AMD and they look to be a year ahead in the next die shrink as well. Things are closer in the the server and desktop space, but it looks like AMD is actually in trouble in the near future for all of them. They are in a tight spot. They are behind on die sizes and have a much smaller manufacturing operation and less capital. They may have a hard time competing at cut throat prices. Hopefully, they will weather it and stay in all these markets to continue providing real competition.
Been done with what is called "engines". Many games are based on the physics/graphics engines of, say, Unreal, or Half-Life. What else could you include except for the graphis and the "feel" of a game to not just produce games that all are alike?
There are several ways just using an engine is different. First, it has to be licensed, often for a pretty high cost. This means it likely reduces costs and risk, but only by as little as the company you are licensing from can get away with. It loses the advantage of the open source model. Second, each game still ships with an entire, modified version of the engine. Thus, there is a little more room for easier customization, but all that customized code is not reused so that cost is paid for by every company instead of just once.
Second, while a given game may include advertising and even a way to purchase further products, it is usually not worth it. A company only puts out a few games a year, if that. Users want a wider selection. By reusing the same base for games from a wide range of developers, who reuse more code and can thus create games more quickly, you can offer dozens of games from multiple vendors from one interface. Better yet, making this an open platform for all comers allows the open source community to make contributions. Developers get free code and bug fixes donated by the community. Likely, developers will also get access to a range of community developed artwork, textures, models, music, and effects to supplement their own artistic team. Probably, a few complete games would even appear, which would not only allow newcomers to make a name (providing a free talent discovery tool) but also will keep users coming back to see what is available and thus providing free advertising to any company selling a game there. It would also make for an ideal forum for trading mods and allowing easier customization, some of which could even span different games.
Basically, all the advantages of open source development could be applied to the gaming space, without losing the commercial benefits of closed source development. After all, most of what they are selling is a story and artwork. That is scripting, sounds, graphics, and plot. All of that can still be protected under copyright, when applied on top of an open framework.
The problem is that Steam already ruined the game platform where you could easily buy new games and get updates. Good luck trying to get anyone to go down that route for a while.
I don't think it would be a problem. So long as it is implemented so that users don't need to connect to the online service to play, I think users would go for it. Valve pissed people off because they got in the way. Put the gamer first in this scheme and they won't mind.
The drawback is that this would require a reboot of your system - but many high-end games are the solitary program you want running while you're playing them anyhow - and besides, chat and browsing could still be included on the distro with the game.
I think this would be a deal-killer for me. I don't want to reboot my machine. Heck I don't even want to shut down my running applications. On OS X, the multitasking and resource management is usually good enough that I can leave resource hungry Adobe applications sitting idle while I play a game and not have it affect the performance. That is important to me. I usually have a dozen or more applications open, excluding all my terminals and I don't want to have to reopen all of them and find the files I'm working on again.
Here's another idea. Get your game working in stripped down environment and provide it in a different VM for each platform. Heck, you can build it to run in the JVM if you want. Better yet though, I'd like to see some company spearhead the development of a gaming specific environment that takes care of 75% percent of the coding needed for a given game style. Make it cross platform and sell smaller, cheaper "content" packages for it. The game is a file paradigm (an open standard format). Get a few different gaming houses on board and one or two companies can start selling dev tools that make games for it. You could undercut everyone since the cost of adding new features would be shared by all partners and the open source community and it would let you sell cheaper than anyone not on board. Companies could focus on content, with only a few coders to that are more than scripters to add new features and fix bugs. Tied into a P2P service or centralized server with advertising it would provide a way for people buy new games as well. Think of gamers booting up their favorite game and having a "buy other games" option including sequels, add ons, and similar games.
Instead of $60 titles you could sell $20 titles and still make just as much profit and have more variety and not have to worry about platforms. Heck, port it to the consoles too and watch your possible market balloon.
I'd be much happier to see this, than to see a bootCD game that makes it harder for me to play games.
How many copies were sold to PC gamers because it was the common ground for LAN parties with mac gamers? It only takes one mac gamer to motivate the sale of a lot of PC games, and since you can usually use one purchase for everyone to try it out, it makes for great free advertising.
It seems to me that most games--either for Mac OS or for Windows--are made by third-party vendors (yes, I realize that Microsoft has several game titles of their own).
What is interesting is which game companies MS has acquired. Of the four I know of, two of them were the biggest mac game company at the time of their purchase and immediately stopped making timely mac released thereafter. Maybe MS sees games on the Mac as more important than Apple does?
And it also seems to me that the reason there aren't lots of games for Macs is because there isn't that much demand for them.
Actually, there are a lot of mac games. Pick the ten most popular games of 2005. How many are available for the mac? All of them are out for the mac. Five out of ten were released at the same time as the PC version. It's not that macs don't have games, it's that macs don't get unsuccessful games and game releases often lag the PC release. Many companies don't write portable games (they use DirectX because it is cheap) and then don't want to invest in porting it until they are sure it is going to be popular. When they make a lot of money, they start the port and the mac version comes out 6 months later.
Think about it from a third-party vendor's point of view: Why get into the business of making games for a platform that only has 5% of the market (or however much Apple has at the moment) when there is most certainly more money to be made creating games (or other software) for Windows-based PCs?
The answer is the same reason they make games in the first place, money. Take a look at a big company, like Blizzard or Id. They code using OpenGL and best practices. It is a minor expense to make a mac port, or a console port. They have cleaner, better code and are not as beholden to MS specific tools (DirectX) that are outside their control. Most of their porting costs are up front, but that is okay because they know their games are going to be successful. Smaller companies have less money up front and less talent. They need to get something out the door now. Many of them code using DirectX and if they are successful they port to consoles and macs with the assurance that they have money coming in already. It costs them more in total and their results are buggier on both PCs and Macs, but the initial investment is smaller. Others are not successful and never make a port to anything.
And I can't speak for all Mac users, of course, but that's part of the reason I have multiple machines at home: Macs to do actual work on, and a Windows machine for playing games.
I'd say the more common theme is macs for doing work and casual gaming. Macs for work and consoles for slightly more serious gaming. and Macs for work and everything for gaming for hardcore gamers. Of course all that might be changing soon. A mac that can run games (and other programs) with WINE or fast enough in a VM may obviate the need for a second machine for a lot of us.
Since then, I haven't bought a Intel and been using AMD because I can get similiar performance for around a hundred-two hundred dollars less than an Intel. I always read the reviews, and watch the performance charts, then decide which is the better product for the $.
Apparently you haven't been watching too closely lately. Intel is currently winning the price/performance comparison in several segments, including most of the laptop market. I usually only do comparisons before I'm going to buy something, but even I've noticed the difference.
Reading Slashdot news has become a pain in the *ss after somebody decided to use the ugliest and smallest fonts available.
It's a markup language, so fix it already. Specify your own CSS for the site, or just to always use +1 fonts sizes on this site. Another issue is that it looks like it uses a special style for IE to make up for the fact that IE breaks the font size conventions, so if you're using a decent browser, but identifying it as IE, you are probably getting smaller text than everyone else. That's what you get for lying.
I see a lot of replies to this talking about scientific fields that have a lot of macs. I can tell you in biological sciences and biochemistry labs my girlfriend works at, most of the machines are macs and some of the big, expensive machines can only be accessed using a mac. What surprises me, though, is that no one has mentioned computer science. I work at a company that develops specialized network security devices, and over the last few years macs have gone from maybe 5% of the machines to more like 55%. For that matter, NANOG is going on right now. What percentage of the laptops there are macs, do you suppose? I don't have numbers, but I know there are a lot of them.
Sorry, but this article is pure drivel.
Agreed.
The real reason Apple doesn't dive into the gaming market is because Apples don't offer any drastic advantages over PCs in that arena, and until they do, Apple doesn't have enough market share to get the big business of gaming interested in developing a game solely for Macs.
Apple, until recently, would need to make a huge investment to get gaming on the mac equal to gaming on the PC. This would be either building dev tools that made games for mac and PC using OpenGL, or an easy way to port DirectX games, and/or buying game companies and rolling their own exclusive titles. More likely, they could partner with Nintendo or Sony to get console games on the Mac. Times, however, are changing.
Game Publisher: "Hmm... I can get hundreds of millions by releasing this on PC, or I may hit two or three million by going for the Mac market." No brainer there.
Actually the choice is, develop portable code that does not rely upon MS's DirectX and reach PCs, macs, and consoles easily while having better quality code and being less beholden to MS, or develop for Direct X, using less talented coders and count on the money that comes in to hire someone else to let us port it to macs and consoles if it is successful.
The former is what most of the best game companies do, like Blizzard and ID. The latter is what cheaper operations, with less certainty of success do. There are a lot more of the latter than the former, although most you never really hear about, since their games end up in the cheap bin.
Now, however, Apple has the OpenSource WINE project as well as several VM technologies to make use of. Additionally, the new Intel chips contain hardware virtualization tech. For a much smaller investment they can provide tools to quickly port Windows software including games, or run them under OS X in a VM at reasonable speeds. Even if Apple does nothing, third parties will certainly provide both of these options. It is just a matter of time and seeing what Apple decides to build in.
All I see around here is dumbasses with too much money buying front-load LG and Samsung washing machines. There's your disaster.
Lets see, front loading washers can be used by anyone Top loading washers are difficult or impossible for people in wheelchairs. The percentage of the population in wheelchairs is rising or falling? I believe my point is made.
It seems to me as if the author is vastly over-rating the Apple's "ethical" stance on its products. Does anyone for a moment believe that if the US military gave Apple an exclusive contract to, say, supply the servers for, to take a silly example, America's Army, that Apple wouldn't snap it up?
Apple does focus a lot on marketing, more so than most companies. They try hard to control the public perception of their product as a sales tool. This is not the same thing as ethics. Apple does and for a long time has supplied various branches of the military.
Occam's razor suggests that the reason Apple doesn't concentrate on games has been that traditionally, with a different CPU architecture and a fraction of the market, it simply wasn't worth the effort to woo game developers to do a difficult task for which the results would be mediocre at best.
Occam's razor suggest that Apple has not been convinced that concentrating on games is practical or likely to generate as much additional sales as less expensive markets. Processors have little or nothing to do with it.
Add to that the lagging speeds and specs of Apple's consumer level offerings (I refer to the G4 based systems), Apple's actually *couldn't* play fashionable games that well.
Heh, I take it you've never seen the average specs for a gaming machine. The target platform for the average game is well below the capabilities of any mac on the market. Aside from a few graphics powerhouses, most games aim at an average two year old machine. Take a look at the requirements for 2006's top sellers so far. I think you'll be surprised.
Mr Jobs announced that OS X had been running on Intel for five years previous to the unveiling of Mac OS X for x86. So if Apple *knew* it had an Intel version under the hood, why would it spend any effort at all persuading game developers to write, or port to PowerPC? Only to shaft them later by announcing OSX86?
The PPC chip was not holding back gaming on the mac. Optimization for the chip set was a minimal concern. Several industry experts have already testified it mostly amounted to a recompile with a few different options. The cost comes from porting to a new interface and in most cases porting away from MS's proprietary DirectX. Take a look at the major games out there today. Those that develop using OpenGL tend to release for the mac at about the same time as Windows. Think Blizzard and ID. Companies that develop using DirectX (which is completely dependent upon the Windows OS), generally hire a specialty firm to help them port to the Mac and OpenGL. This is a significant expense and thus they usually wait until they know the game is successful before even starting. OpenGL versus DirectX is the single biggest consideration for making Mac gaming lag Windows gaming and has nothing to do with the processor.
I suggest we wait and see. Now that the biggest hardware block has been removed, there should be no reason why fashionable games do not become available on the Mac.
The hardware change will make a difference, but not because companies write for a processor. Intel chips will do one of two things. If Apple builds in a Windows virtualization/reimplementation environment it will let macs run native Windows games and developers will probably do very little differently except be more careful about activation schemes, even though Macs will now play games. If Apple does not build in such technology, many companies will use the WINE technology to make quick and dirty ports, much faster and with less expense, thus shortening the lag time between releases, but also possibly reducing quality.
If you were asked by someone in your Linux-only organization to clean up their machine after they had installed every single program they ever ran across, including several rootkits and Gnome, you'd correctly identify the problem as a PBKAC. Same thing here with Ballmer's friend's bride's father's computer.
You probably think this is funny, but the expected behavior for a computer, for most normal users, is that they should be able to run whatever programs they want without the computer "screwing up." Hmmm, here's some random game that may or may not really be a game. I'll run it and find out. If it is a game it should run. If not, well the computer should tell me if it tries to do anything funny, like send spam, or erase my files.
Windows computers have not advanced to give customers this functionality yet (although strengthening user vs. admin separation is a start) because MS has a monopoly and doesn't have to respond to customers. Some Linux based systems have rudimentary technology that allows this, or at least limits the damage, but for the most part the users are educated enough to not need it and malware is uncommon for the platform so the demand is small.
The truth is, I should be able to install every program I ever find, including rootkits, and the OS should guide me through letting them do what I want them to and nothing else. When I install a rootkit the OS *should* ask me if I want to give complete control of my computer to it, or if I want to run it in a VM and just let it think it has control. Now, I know this ideal may never happen, but it would not be all that hard to get us 95% of the way.
However, the link above specifically says: "the proposed blanket license covers all intermediate copies (e.g., server, cache and buffer copies) necessary to facilitate the digital delivery of music and applies to streaming and limited downloads."
This quote is misleading. It applies to only a subset of works, changes the rules governing streaming media form performance to distribution (removing our rights in the process) and strongly implies a license of some sort is needed for incidental copies (by granting one in some cases) when these are now considered covered by the fair use provisions of copyright law.
Now I don't buy into everything the original article says, but neither do I buy into what the copyright office says. There are several, fairly well respected groups out there that have a good handle on both the law and our rights. Take a look at what the EFF has to say.
I think what you're saying is that you don't find the same things when you casually read the document, with your own less than expert view of the law. That is different than a casual reading finding the "facts" to be different, unless you're claiming to be an expert at interpreting the law? It is a good thing to read how this proposed bill is viewed by different groups, but don't be fooled into thinking that just because you can't see how a bill changes something that the change is not there. Otherwise, you're the one spreading factually incorrect information and misinforming others.
Like the parent post, I agree that digital rights require vigilance, but just because some blog says something is horrible is no reason to believe it.
I don't trust "some blog" to do my lawyering, but I do have some trust in the EFF. Did you read what they had to say about it? Included in this bill is language that states incidental copies of some works are granted a compulsory license. That strongly implies they need a license, instead of being fair use as the courts consider them in most instances now, and thus places more restrictions on fair use rights. They are explicitly granting a subset of the rights you have now and applying it to a subset of works, in the hopes that they can use this to show the intent of copyright law in general is that you need a license for incidental copies.
Additionally, it treats streaming audio as distributions instead of performances in an attempt to remove the rights normally associated with radio. Basically it says internet radio is not the same thing as over the air radio and strips listeners of rights they would otherwise have.
Maybe you should rethink your sources and opinion on this bill.
Contrary to what that article says, democracy is not tyranny of the majority; protecting minority rights is an essentical part of democratic government...
I take some issue with this. Democracy itself has no inherent protection for minority rights. The US government set up the bill of rights so that it would take a super-majority to overturn what they saw as basic civil rights, but that does not make it a principal of democracy, per se. Democracy, by itself, quite often is a tyranny of the majority. I'd also like to make sure it is clear that this speed bump of the constitution does not make it any less true, it just makes it harder to act upon. It is quite possible that in the near future a constitutional amendment will allow the christian majority in the country to make a religious based belief in inequality a fundamental part of our law by making marriage only available to a man and a women, thus denying equal rights to homosexual partners. This applies across a huge body of our legal system denying medical visitations, inheritance rights, adoption processes, tax laws, etc. to people solely based upon the fact that both have the same gender. Make no mistake; this is one group imposing their will on another, and telling another group that if they don't follow a purely religious prohibition, they will be given fewer rights. How is this not a tyranny of the majority?
True, Microsoft is exercising its monopoly power in both cases (illegally, I will submit)
And you don't think this is sufficient cause for Adobe to start legal proceedings?
In the case of the PDF feature, Microsoft made no modifications (that I am aware of) to the PDF standard-- it couldn't in order to get the PDFs to display properly everywhere else.
They didn't change HTML at first either. First they gain market share, then they break compatibility. In this case I have read their PDF is not completely up to spec, but I agree they are less likely to try to corrupt it and more likely to just remove support in favor of XPS once everyone is using their tools.
I can understand adobe being upset over XPS being bundled into Office and Vista, it's a clear abuse of their monopoly power. But PDF support... Microsoft isn't ruining anything, they're contributing to Adobe's monopoly on the format.
Adobe doesn't have a monopoly on the format, everyone can and does implement it from Apple to Quark. Adobe is not so shortsighted that they can't see Microsoft owning the PDF generation tools market will give them the ability to smoothly move everyone over to XPS in the future.
If MS wants to own the space, let them provide it separate from their monopoly and products tied to it. If it can't win on even ground, it doesn't deserve to.
It's not as if they only included support for XPS.
Of course not, they'll wait till they have market share and then ween people off PDF by first making it read only and then automatically converting PDF files to XPS.
What does PDF being an open standard have to do with prosecuting people for breaking the law using it? Since PDF is an open standard does that mean I can break the law and send death threats to the president in that format? Hell no! It just means they can use it however they want that is not breaking some other law.
So why is Adobe mad?
Because a competitor is in the process of breaking the law and using their monopoly to cut them out of a market and is unlikely to play nice once they've done that.
Only an idiot would not be frightened of being placed in a situation where they are competing with MS's monopoly. It can't be done if the laws aren't enforced. PDF will die if MS is not stopped and not going after them for this first instance of breaking the law will just make it that much easier. It is not as though MS has not done this a dozen times already. Adobe knows what is coming.
Not to be disrespectful, but where do you get that idea from? I saw no mention of that in TFA, and while it did elude to talks between Adobe and Microsoft, I got the idea that there was nothing formal.
Apparently, according to some article I read but don't have a link handy for, MS and Adobe made some sort of a deal to use Adobe code in earlier version of Word. All of this was very shaky and no one seems to know what the deal was.
so why should they need a contract?
Because they got Adobe to write some of it for them.
Besides, if the real issue is that it's illegal to distribute the PDF support because of their monopoly, then how does a contract with Adobe make it any better? Doesn't it make it worse?
We don't know what the terms of the contract are, so we don't know now do we? It might say MS agrees not to implement any PDF in MS Office until 2009 unless they contract with Adobe to write it for a sum not yet negotiated, or some such foolishness. All we do know is MS announced they expect to be sued.
True, Microsoft won't be taking market share only from Adobe-- the usage of free apps like CutePDF will decline too-- but like I mentioned, the Joe User demographic
hey aren't bundling it with the OS they are (or were) including it with Office.
They are bundling XPS and PDF print with their OS. They also claim they are including the PDF functionality with Vista for "some OEMs." Finally, Office is illegally tied to Windows via the built-in .doc reader and the exchange protocol, thus they are bundling it with a product already illegally tied to Windows.
Do you have any doubt that MS will own the portable document space in 5 years unless legal action against them succeeds? Will that be because they have made better software, or just because they bundled that software with their monopoly and rolled the costs into Windows, which they force everyone to pay for?
Works fine and is free.
It does work, but it does not have all the functionality of some other tools.
This is silly for Adobe to not let MS use pdf functionality.
MS can use PDF functionality all they want provided they are not breaking any previous contracts they signed and are not breaking any laws. What we have here is not MS creating PDF tools and a PDF competitor and marketing them against Adobe. We have them bundling them with their monopoly OS, a clear violation of antitrust law.
I wonder if MS is spinning "the breakdown of talks" so that they don't need an actual useful standard in office, so they can push their "pdf killer". The only thing that will kill PDF is a big old EMP...
I disagree. If MS can manage to provide an easy transition and they bundle the tools, they will take over the market, just as they have many other markets. Bundling is illegal, but it works provided the authorities don't do their jobs.
My guess would be that in typical Microsoft style, they are probably wanting to create their own incompatable extensions to PDF and Adobe has stepped-in and said no to them.
I doubt that has come up yet. MS usually waits until they have a large market share to introduce incompatibilities and to do so would void their license to use PDF and get them into a pretty clear cut court case, pronto.
Rather, I suspect this is more about antitrust law. MS is not just creating a PDF generator and competing format generator, it is bundling them into their OS and into MS Office which is illegally tied to their OS. To comply with antirust law MS has to offer these products only as stand alone applications, or bundled with products they do not have a monopoly upon, so that the market can choose which product is better.
Microsoft's attempt must use features that are not part of the standard, such as Layers or advanced color features.
I haven't seen a single word that indicates Adobe is suing them over using PDF aside from some sketchy information that MS signed some sort of contract long ago with Adobe that they are breaking. What I have seen is that MS is breaking antitrust laws by bundling these tools into Windows Vista and possibly by bundling them with MS Office (due to illegal tying with Windows).
Adobe doesn't care if the relatively small percentage of Mac and OOo users has access to PDF support (as everyone is supposed to, if it truly is an open format), but if Office implements the technology, Microsoft has just started cutting into their Average Joe User market share-- which is where they make the most of their money I'm sure.
Why? Why does Adobe automatically lose a lot of market share and MS gain it? Did MS make a better PDF generator or did they just leverage their existing monopoly? Are MS and Adobe competing on equal footing to provide a PDF generator or is MS gaining an unfair advantage that lets them gain market share even without a better product?
So what do they do? They try to pull a Microsoft-style monopoly move and say "Oh, yeah, that whole thing about open standard? That doesn't apply to you. We really own it."
What are you talking about? Adobe hasn't said anything of the sort. Two things have been strongly implied. First, apparently MS signed a contract with Adobe about MS's use of PDF and they are breaking it somehow. What it says or how, no one knows.
Second, MS, like any other company is free to make PDF generation tools. MS, however, being a monopolist cannot legally bundle those tools with their existing monopoly and thus bypass the free market. It is against the law. MS seems to be saying that they are bundling it with their OS for some OEMs and they are building it into MS Office (which is illegally tied to the Windows OS). Further, they are bundling a competitor to PDF in their OS. All of these things violate antitrust law, regardless of the fact that PDF is open. HTML is also open, but MS lost in many courts when it was found they illegally bundled Internet Explorer. Would you claim the Netscape developers said, "Oh, yeah, that whole thing about open standard? That doesn't apply to you. We really own it."???