People will upgrade if they perceive something better. And for most people, CD is good enough, and it always will be.
Missing features: lyrics, accompanying video, available anywhere there is a network, more channels of sound, artist commentary, extra unreleased, songs... need I go on?
Well to me, all this excessive DRM tactics seem to be having an adverse effect on what companies like Sony are actually trying to achieve. In all honesty, what is your average file-sharing fanatic gonna think and do when they read of rootkits and vulnerabilities in CDs they might want to buy?
Or maybe you just don't understand what they are trying to do. This has nothing to do with people who download or pirate music. It does nothing to stop them. The intention of DRM is to stop regular people who obey the laws and don't download songs from P2P from being able to migrate their music to other devices and formats without paying. This is just making sure the CD debacle does not happen all over again. Sony was one of many companies who were pissed off that users could rip CDs and load that music onto mp3 players. They felt they should be paid again when users wanted to switch from CD players to mp3 players, just as they were paid again when users switched from tapes to CDs. DRM is an attempt to make sure they are paid multiple times for the same thing. So if downloading is an alternative, you're already outside their demographic.
As someone who designed webpages before, I know that the state of the art isn't in fact frozen. The truth is that you could design a website to easily scale back based on what the user is using... Web site designers are simply too lazy to implement this kind of thing.
They aren't lazy. It is not cost effective to implement a new solution (using many man hours) when that solution can only reach a small subset of the populace. You can urge people to download Firefox all you like, but the number who have the bandwidth and are willing to try some new random software is small for any given website.
The average consumer is therefore not presented with a viable alternative. Windows is a monopoly because you haven't introduced a proper product yet.
The average consumer can't go to the store and buy a computer without an OS. The average consumer can't go to a store and buy a computer without Windows. You claim this is because OEMs don't want to ship these products because the other OSs are not up to snuff. I think you're dead wrong. I've put my name on a purchase order for over a thousand desktops, each of which came with Windows. We specifically requested them without Windows, but the price was higher. None of these machines ended up running Windows. I know dozens of people who have done the same thing and I'm sure there are countless people in the same boat. Many large computer buyers have corporate licenses for Windows. They pay for two copies of Windows for each machine to make installation less painful. You don't think the number of companies with corporate licenses for Windows is a significant market? Why then can't you buy a PC without a copy of Windows you don't plan to use. Surely they can sell a computer cheaper without one, right?
The answer is all the major OEMs have contracts with MS that say they can't sell a computer without Windows (or actually a DOS based OS). The contracts are trade secrets, but this has been confirmed by numerous insiders and has been common knowledge for years. This is the same reason why you can't buy a computer with Linux as the main OS in a store. It would cost the normal price (including Windows) plus the cost of installing/packaging a Linux distro. It has nothing to do with Linux not being ready.
99% of home users run the OS that shipped with their computer, hence MS automatically has 99% of the market, regardless of how well competitors do.
Apple has okay mainstream OS's but you have to be an Apple style individual, Apple has basically packaged their OS with their hardware and their mentality. It takes a unique individual to buy into all three at the same time and most companies that don't have an explicit need to do so aren't going to, it's simply not viable.
Lots of people would love Apple to sell their OS for x86 by itself. They won't for the foreseeable future because it is too big of a risk to compete with a monopoly. Apple makes most of its money on hardware sales. They would sacrifice that market and need to make that money back on such a move. Given that no major OEM can pre-install OS X without paying for Windows at an arbitrary cost set by MS and given that no OEM can afford to abandon the Windows market, there is basically no chance that Apple could compete in that space, even with a better product. Several other companies you've never heard of have tried with superior products, including ones that ran Windows software. They were all killed and most of them have won big settlements from MS for that.
Basically since MS has illegally locked down the pre-install market the only way to compete with them is to (like Apple) sell your own pre-installs, which necessitates getting into the hardware market. Aside from that, Linux will take chunks of the market away when they are so much better than Windows that Windows is not a viable option by comparison. That day may come, but it is by no means a level playing field and it certainly is not subject to the advantages of a free market.
Who cares if MS decides what software is the best for the end user or if Dell does?
The end user. If Dell and HP and Lenovo all decide you can bet some will make different choices, then the market can decide the best product. If MS decides they all have to use the same solution and the people are stuck using it. If Dell and HP and Lenovo are looking at a variety of choices, the producers of those choices will try to cater to their desires, which are to sell more computers, which is one step removed from the customer deciding. If MS decides there is no incentive to make better products or give the customers what they want.
Like Dell or Gateway or HP ever packaged superior products with their PCs, they haven't.
But if they are given the choice to do so, then consumers can vote with their dollars and buy from the company that gives them the best, or least annoying software. When MS decides, no one has a choice.
Besides, I bet people like Dell would prefer MS anyway, because then they can offer anti-spyware packages and upgrades when people only got spyware because their browser sucked to begin with. There is nothing more fun to a computer vendor than to sell a computer novice superfluous crap.
"Hey Bob, how's that new HP computer working out?" "Well, it's a lot better than that Dell which got viruses and I had to keep buying add ons for. I'm glad my cousin bought one and told me or I'd never have known."
Do you see how much better the aforementioned situation is than the one we are in now, where everyone is stuck with only one option?
People have the ability to decide for themselves what they want to use on the computer, the fact that they aren't aware of this ability just shows how disgustingly uneducated the populace is, and further illustrates that if you aren't going to educate yourself about technology then you probably deserve what you get.
When people buy any product, whether it is a car or a computer, a smart shopper looks at several options, then buys the one that seems like the best suited, for the best price. This works great in a free market and is how people are conditioned to shop. They don't expect a non-free market where they are only given the option of one substandard product. As a result, most of them assume, incorrectly, that there are no other option. After all if there were, wouldn't they be available in stores?
They should be available in stores and trying to shift the blame from the company that breaks the law to make sure they aren't to the deceived shopper is just blaming the victim.
I also don't understand why people, outside perhaps the tech support industry, get irritated by MS at all. Nowadays they have plenty of competition for the aware user. I use firefox almost exclusively and does it really matter how many other people use my same browser?
Yes, it does matter. First, because websites are crap compared to what they could be if the state of the art was not frozen, through this anti-competative behavior. Second, because their is no way to compete with a monopoly many companies don't bother to try, which further retards progress. Finally, there is plenty of other fallout from a massive user based trapped on a single, insecure product. The majority of automated worm traffic that clogs up the internet and slows everything down is the result of automatically propagating worms exploiting Windows, IE, and Outlook.
Firefox and other companies also stink at ad campaigns and making people aware of their superior product.
Firefox isn't a company. Companies can't compete against a monopoly so there are basically none left with significant market share. The Firefox team does a great job marketing considering they are just a bunch of guys working on donations. But no marketing campaign that does not cost many millions is going to have any affect compared to forcing everyone to have a copy of your program.
IE always came bundled with Windows, but Netscape came installed too. When IE surpassed Netscape (which I believe it did before the advent of spyware and the exposure of all of its security holes), Netscape no longer needed to be packaged.
Ahh, but it was not when IE surpassed Netscape, but when IE became good enough that customers did not complain about it.
Netscape was a purchase product and MSIE simply came with Windows.
Except Netscape was free. Do you deny that being bundled is an advantage? If not, then IE has an unfair advantage, thus the monopoly was abused. If so, can you honestly tell me that if Firefox was bundled with all computers and IE was not, you don't think the market shares would change drastically?
If users who don't know anything about computers manage to download and install all kinds of other garbage, you'd think that if they wanted to, they would be able to download competing products.
The problem is that they don't know that they can, need to, or that there is any advantage in so doing. Most people just assume that Dell either includes the best product, or to get a better one will cost money. Clueless users don't install specific things, just ones they happen upon.
Are you saying that on a standard MS windows install you should have no browser? That is hardly an alternative. No media player? MS applications to me at least allow a gateway with which I can get the alternatives.
Do you think any computer retailer is going to sell a computer these days without a browser or a media player? I don't. How can you still not be getting this. When you buy a computer from Dell it will come with a browser and a media player. The problem is Dell should be the one choosing which one of those is installed, not MS. By forcing Dell to include IE and WMP to get Windows is a blatant violation of the law. MS gains market share by bundling, which is illegal for them, because they are a monopoly. Nothing is stopping Dell from selling a computer with Windows, IE, and WMP on it, but the law should be stopping MS from forcing Dell to sell that if they want to sell Windows. Vendors should include a browser pre-installed and on installer disk with your computer, just like they used to.
And here's another point, if the user doesn't even know what program they are using then does it really matter to them which program it is anyway?
Yes, because they are given an inferior product with security holes, and lacking features. In a free market, without bundling they would be given whichever program the retailer wanted to include and then the free market would decide which one was right. As it is now, they are all given an inferior solution because MS has forced it upon them.
The target audience for software these days I believe should incorporate the average user but target the high end user. Because as people get more and more tech savvy it will no longer go on what program was packaged with their Gateway, but what program is the most useful.
The evidence from the field does not agree with you. IE has been significantly behind in functionality to other products for many, many years, and yet they still have most of the market. Most users just use what comes with their computer and most people never know anyone who uses something else. As a result, users don't buy a HP computer that comes with the better browser and doesn't get viruses, because all the vendors ship the same thing, so there is no real competition for them to use to make a choice.
So, what you're saying, is that I should have to individually purchase every tool with my system, from the computer (even down to it's seperate pieces?) to the kernel to the command line tools, to the GUI, to the email program, the web browser, etc?
How can you possibly interpret my previous comment to say this? Individuals have no restrictions on what they can buy. Companies that don't have monopolies (like HP) have no restriction on what they can sell. The only companies that have restrictions are monopolies, and then only in what they can sell bundled together, based upon existing markets. HP obviously wants to sell a fully functional computer so they will probably put together hardware, OS, applications, etc. and sell them, which is fine. MS is free to sell them that OS, the applications, and even the hardware, so long as they are separate sales, not bundled together.
The belief that a product has to be BETTER to be accepted is how the market is SUPPOSED to work. It's all screwed up though because people just don't care. That's what seems to make this particular capitalism work so well though.
Capitalism breaks when it encounters monopolies. That is why there are laws to deal with that situation. End users shouldn't have to care. End users are used to dealing with free market products, and when there is not a free market the government is supposed to ensure that the companies involved behave as if there were. Customers can't be blamed for buying the only thing available in the store and they can't be blamed for not doing research and finding out they are being screwed. Half the posters on Slashdot can't seem to grasp what a monopoly is and what its affects are.
What the government is supposed to be ensuring is what MS is doing does not adversely affect customers or the industry, but they have been paid off. The courts keep finding MS guilty and MS keeps settling lawsuits and paying out millions, but it is still not as much money as they are making by breaking the law. What the courts should be doing is preventing MS from bundling any products together. Failing that (as they have) they should separate the company into competing organizations and let capitalism work again. If they split the company and gave both rights to the source code developed to date we'd have competition near instantly and none of this would be a problem.
Let's face it, generic soda is just as good as Coke or Pepsi, but people buy Coke and Pepsi in mass amounts compared to these products. Some of MS's advantage is its name recognition. People outside of the software community know who MS is, and for whatever reason, they trust it as a decent name in software.
You're overestimating their market influence. The truth is much of the popularity of IE is due to the fact that it is bundled. If that was not the case and most people bought computers that came pre-installed with Firefox, most would neither know or care that it was not an MS product. Most people making purchasing decisions decide to buy from Dell or HP because of the name recognition. They don't decide not to download Firefox, because they've never heard of Firefox. A good percentage don't even know what IE is and couldn't tell you if they are running Windows or something else. The fact that people have to take an extra step to get Firefox is the problem and it is the result of bundling.
My point is that nobody cares that MS bundles some things, but yet gets out of joint about others. As long as the MS product is so inferior it doesn't capture any percentage of the market, nobody notices or cares. Then as soon as the bundled application gets a bit better and takes off, everyone gets irritated.
If a bank robber tries to rob a bank, but accidentally locks themselves in their own closet for six hours no one knows or cares either, because they have not successfully caused any damage. It is when MS bundles products which take over markets based not on their own merits, but upon that bundling that other software producers and consumers are damaged.
There is nothing stopping any PC manufacturer from bundling additional software that does not come with Windows along with their PC products.
First it takes effort to add software to an OEM machine. OEMs know they need a web browser, but since MS has already included one bundled with their monopoly product, they now need an additional incentive to choose anything other than IE. Thus IE is given preferential treatment because it is bundled. That is called unfair competition and it is the result of a monopoly bundling a product with it's existing monopoly product, something specifically illegal according to US anti-trust laws. In fact, bundling is the first example listed in anti-trust legislation. Additionally, OEMs are prohibited from removing IE or other MS implemented software before it reaches the customer.
Second, due to their monopoly position, MS has an excessive amount of power over computer manufacturers. They can put any company out of business simply by raising the price of Windows for that customer. They already charge different prices to different vendors. There have been reliable reports of MS both officially (in contracts) and unofficially (over dinner) telling manufacturers that if they include products from other vendors the price of their windows purchases will go up.
Web browsing has stagnated for more than half a decade because web developers choose to not use functions that IE has not implemented.
I agree with this.
Even if IE had been updated in the last 5 years, we'd STILL be in the same place
I disagree. Most Web developers (I've done a bit myself) code to deal with the majority of users. That means the most common 90% or so. Now Web technologies are mostly designed to degrade gracefully. That is to say, if I implement new features using CSS2, that does not mean the site is unusable for those without support for that protocol. It costs money, however, to implement new features and if 90% of users can't see them, then it is just not cost effective. If, however, 50% or more can see them, the situation changes drastically. IE's continued stagnation at a feature set that includes a partially implemented, buggy version of five year old technology has personally cost me at least a month worth of work time, versus just coding to the standards. It has also held back the implementation of dozens of new technologies.
Your argument predicates that a new feature/technology must be so much better than what IE offers that people will upgrade to something else, but that very belief indicates an unfair market, where one party has to be significantly better in order to achieve the same results.
IE was almost always bundled with Windows, IE didn't become a problem until it had most of the features that Netscape did.
So here's a question for you. If IE "became a problem" and took over a big chunk of the market when it had "most of" the features of Netscape, then you have just provided an example of an inferior product taking over a market from a superior one. The main "advantage" that IE had at the time was that it was bundled with Windows. Since MS has a monopoly with their Windows product they are legally prohibited from bundling other products with it. They have chosen to ignore the law in this case and pay off politicians and lawsuits.
Now do you really think dozens of judges in multiple countries have all ruled against MS, despite the fact that they have done nothing wrong?
If instead, people innovated and created products that address concerns that MS's products do not, and consistently did so, then they wouldn't have so much to whine and take legal action on.
Your proposal requires that other companies reach a higher standard that MS, in order to achieve the same results. That is called "unfair competition" and it is due to MS's monopoly position and bundling.
MS has provided a platform in which you can easily download a different browser, a different media player, etc. The fact that most people don't is simply telling the competition that the average user sees no advantage over running your software instead of the stuff that they have already without expending any effort.
A more eloquent person than I once said, "They need only create a product just 'good enough' that people don't trouble themselves to see if something better exists." That is what MS does. They make products that are inferior to those already on the market, but are just "good enough" that it is not worth the trouble and/or price to get a better solution. And that is what people use today. Web browsing without tabs, spell checking, translation, real pop-up blocking, ad blocking, secure defaults, support for the HTML, CSS, and XHTML standards written in the last five years, or dozens of other features available in other browsers. I don't know a single person with an understanding of Web technologies that would claim IE is superior to, say, Firefox; and yet IE holds 90% of the market. That is bad for consumers and bad for the industry and it applies to dozens of other fields as well. Do you really think it is a good thing that IE is the main browser despite its obvious shortcoming, just because it is the on MS forced Dell and other companies to bundle?
The increasing popularity of firefox is a testament to this statement.
The fact that IE retains 90% of the market despite being vastly inferior for half a decade belies your belief. Companies should not have to be better than MS, just to compete with them. If another product is just as good as one MS produces and at the same price than each should grab about 50% of the market. That is what is known a fair market.
Everyone has a choice as to wether to buy Microsoft or Red Hat or Novell or IBM or Sun or HP or whatever products.
MS sells desktop operating systems. Every other company you mention sells other products that happen to include desktop operating systems, or sell a very small (insignificant to the market) number of systems. Apple, IBM, Sun, and HP sell hardware that comes with an OS. Red Hat, IBM, and Novell sell services and support that come with an OS. Monopolies are defined by markets. No one else can compete in the desktop OS market. Even solutions that were arguable superior when they were released were killed. Look at BeOS, for example.
OK, so, say I want to buy a computer, I need to go to Dell to get a computer, Apple to get an Operating system, Real to get a player that will play one type of a/v, Red Hat to get a GUI, *insert more crap here*
MS does not sell PC's. When you want to buy a PC with Windows on it does that mean you have to go to MS and buy the OS and then Dell to buy the machine? No you don't. You go to Dell or any other retailer and they are happy to sell you a bundle of items, preconfigured. Dell, HP, Apple, K-mart, and Bob's computer shack are all retailers that are not monopolies. They can bundle anything they like. Now what if Dell obtained a monopoly on desktop computers? There is still no problem, because Windows is not made by them, thus they can still bundle whatever they want so long as it is not an OS they make, themselves. Get it?
And your analogy fails AGAIN when you realise that Microsoft don't provide all operating systems, but there are competitors, one of them with a FREE product.
According to every court that has ruled on the issue so far, MS is a monopoly. A monopoly is defined by controlling an entire market such that others cannot compete. Please note, that is market not product. For example if there was only one company that sold tanning booths, but there was also a house manufacturer that made there own and gave them away with every house, and people could still tan outside under the sun, it is still monopoly because neither of the second two options are competing in the market. In fact, the presence of Linux and the fact that it is made by a collective and not sold is a very good indication of the presence of a monopoly. When your strongest competitor gives their product away for free you're probably a monopoly.
You know, honestly, we've been fighting stupidity for quite some time now. More and more it seems like most of my fellow Americans want someone else to take responsibility, and someone else to take care of their problems for them.
You're entirely correct. At the same time, however, I disagree that stupidity is the main problem when it comes to this worm, or computer worms in general. Stupidity and ignorance are not the same thing. I'm not stupid, but I don't know whether or not a given concentration of sulfuric acid will eat through the roof of my car. This is something that is unimportant to me, since I have never had need of this knowledge. Despite that, I'm not too worried about acid rain eating through my car roof on any given day. I trust that the car manufacturer put a reasonable finish on it.
Many people are ignorant about computer worms, file types, and the default behaviors of their computers. As far as they know, they don't have a worm problem, or they do have a problem but can't find the source. A large percentage have been infected without any intervention on their part. To then imply that they are stupid because they don't understand the technology, is not just. There should be no links in any IM message your computer displays that will infect your computer with a virus. If you specifically download a file from another user, you should be informed if that file is an image, movie, or a program. If they send you a program, after the computer tells you it is a program, it should still have no access to the internet, your core OS, or your files unless you specifically grant it that right.
I'd say that is about the right level of diligence I'd expect from reasonably architected software given today's internet environment. The fact that people buy substandard products when they are the only products available in stores is not their fault. Most people are not interested in computers, they just want to use them to perform a few specific tasks. Ignorance about how faulty computers are is not stupidity.
But no one complains as long as the product is crummy. When the product is a real competitor, then they complain.
You're mistaken. IE is crummy and people complain very vocally about it. You're also confusing consumer complaints with legal action. For legal action there needs to be demonstrable damage (losing market share). No one sued over the calculator program because there was no calculator program market (defined by dollars exchanged). There was a media player market, an browser market, and a chat market, most of which was ad supported.
Personally I complain more when MS bundles a crappy product than a good one because I want to use a good product and when MS steals a huge chunk of the market with a crappy one competitors (not really competitors since bundling nullifies competition) are forced to raise prices to stay profitable or they go away and I end up having to make due with an old version of a good product or a crappy alternative from MS.
MS is breaking the law. Just because you don't understand the laws, or the purpose for the laws, or the concepts of monopoly and bundling does not mean you should spout off a bunch of uninformed crap. Why don't you actually read a little bit about monopolies so that you can understand what the rest of us are talking about?
I am also tired of the double standard against MS.
Please look up the term "monopoly" in the dictionary. Some laws apply only to monopolies, for good reason. The laws apply the same to everyone. If Apple every gains a monopoly, they will apply to them just as much. MS knew the laws before they broke them, they are just betting the cost in fines and settlements will be less than the profit. They chose to be fined like this as part of their business plan. There is no reason to feel sorry for them over it. Thus far they have been right.
I don't understand why MS simply doesn't tell the EU and South Korea to F*ck off. I mean, MS should at least make them aware that other competitor products like OSX and Linux don't have the same restrictions, and that if they insist on suing MS, then ALL OS'es sold in South Korea or the EU should have NO built-in functionality other then a file system.
MS does not want to lose huge markets for them to sell into. MS does not want competitors to get funding by selling into markets it abandons. MS executives do not want to go to jail and have all their assets seized for breaking the law and then violating court orders. Having no built in functionality other than the core OS would be great for the industry and users. Imagine if each OEM (Dell, HP, Lenova, etc.) got to choose what browser to install on the computers they sell without interference from MS. The majority would probably choose something other than IE, with more features and more security. End users would have a better experience and be safer. Web page authors could code to standards instead of making multiple versions of each page. Internet Explorer might even finally get some of the improvements and features that have been in all other browsers for years as an incentive for OEMs to ship it. Heck your post would probably even be spell checked since that feature would be in your default browser. I think the EU, S. Korea, and end users would all be much happier with that situation. I know I would be.
In any regard, make a product that excels past what MS build into their OS, and people will get it and install it, government forcing consumers to buy a product devoid of features imposes on the rights of consumers to make their own choice about the products they can and can't buy.
Governments aren't forcing anything on consumers, just on the seller. The government has not said you can't buy Windows bundled with Explorer, bundled with a chat program, just that MS can't sell it that way to retailers. When a company that has a monopoly bundles other products with that monopoly, the market loses all the benefits of capitalism. There is no free market price, no or advancement due to the benefits of competition. Also, it allows that company to expand the monopoly into (eventually) all other markets. That is why pretty much every country in the world makes it illegal for monopolies to bundle products.
Governments should keep their noses out of it.
If governments did not regulate monopolies you'd still be renting your telephone from Ma Bell, and the internet would not exist. Intel would have a monopoly on computers, and Windows would not exist. The laws apply the same to everyone and exist for a good reason. I take it you never took even a basic economics course?
You're dead wrong and not understanding the previous posts. This is about MS bundling. It is as if there was only one manufacturer (MS) for car engines and they were bundling a car stereo with each car engine sale to car manufacturers. Very few people buy OS's from MS directly, the vast majority of people buy computers with an OS pre-installed. The original poster mentioned OEMs picking the components, not end users.
Unbundling media player helps no-one. It just hurts the user as they have to go out and download a media player rather than having it built in.
MS does not sell OS's to users (99% of home sales). MS sells an OS to PC manufacturers. If MS is prohibited from bundling their media player with their OS, it theoretically it opens up the media player space to equal competition as each media player vendor has a fair chance of getting the PC maker to pre-install their software. Realistically, it probably does not do enough to stop MS from coercing the PC manufacturers into just installing their media player using differential pricing.
If you don't like media player there's nothing stopping you from installing something else so what's the problem?
If every time you buy a car (from the one monopoly car maker left) you get a free, lifetime supply of cheese you can always just throw it away and buy different cheese elsewhere, so what's the problem? The problem is you just f*cked the cheese market. The problem is most people don't know there are alternatives, or won't bother to go get them, and they have already paid for Windows media player (the cost was rolled into Windows which was rolled into the cost of the computer they bought). As a result no other media player can sell their product (all the remaining ones are free, ad supported, or supported by other companies with a vested interest in stopping MS from gaining another monopoly). Thus, instead of having a desktop OS monopoly, MS has a desktop OS and media player monopoly, which they can then leverage into a media distribution, or creation, or some other monopoly. In the mean time, the media player industry suffers since MS has no reason to improve their product since they have no one competing with them. Maybe you've noticed how much IE has improved in the last six years? Web browsing has stagnated for more than half a decade and Web developers have to code everything to really, really old standards that are not even completely implemented. Expect the same for media player technologies once MS takes over that space.
'd simply stick two fingers up at the South Korean government and dare them to pull Windows from the shelves. While most/. readers would feel this is a good thing, could you imagine the uproar from business and government when they discover that they can no longer install MS software on their machines?
There would be no uproar. The new CEO of Microsoft Korea who took over for the old on, rotting in jail for contempt of court, would comply with the court order. You can bluster all you like, but the minute you directly contravene publicly visible court orders the government has to act. You are directly challenging their authority and if they don't toss you in jail, they are screwed. Only an idiot would put them in that position and not expect to go to jail. Hell, they could go down to the MS Korea offices and tell each person in the chain of command to comply and drag off any who refuse. For that matter they could temporarily appoint a new CEO for that branch.
The reason this isn't having any effect is because there's no real alternative to Windows.
None of the courts, thus far, have made any punishments even designed to break up MS's OS monopoly. If the courts wanted to fix the problem of an abusive OS monopoly, they could certainly do so. It is easy, split the company in five parts (just like they did with AT&T). MS service, MS OS 1, MS OS 2, MS Applications 1, MS Applications 2. Both OS companies have equal rights to all the source code developed to date as well as half the dev team. They are forbidden from colluding with any other MS company and watched by an oversight group. Both applications companies have equal rights to the source to the applications yada yada. Poof! Instant competition.
All the rulings so far have been weak attempts at keeping MS from extending their monopoly into other areas such as media distribution, instant messaging, internet services, etc. That is all well and good, but just not enough when dealing with a company whose business model is built upon breaking the law and assuming the fines and settlements will be smaller than the profits.
No matter how many times someone reports that the current year is the year of Linux, there's no indication that it will be the year of Linux. And there's no indication that Linux will gain a strong position in the desktop marketplace anytime soon.
That is because the courts have never addressed MS's OS monopoly and done nothing about its anti-competative contracts that exclude competition on pre-installed OEM machines. Linux could compete just fine if it was purchasable, pre-installed on computers in the stores, and retailers would like to sell that way, but are forbidden from so doing because of MS's differential pricing that allows them to immediately crush any vendor that sells computers that way.
So no matter how many lawsuits are brought against Microsoft, there's no real alternative for your average Joe.
Well, it funnels some money away from MS to hopefully better causes and raises the price of Windows, which hopefully opens more of a market for low-end competition. Also, just because no government has implemented an effective solution against MS does not mean it can't be done. It certainly can be done. If MS OS company 1 and MS OS company 2 both have to renegotiate with Dell, do you think Dell will accept the same prices/features? Hell no, they will go with whichever company gives them the better price/feature set. This would drive both companies to have to try to sell cheaper and/or with more features the end user wants. It also ends MS's power over the OEM manufacturers. MS OS company 1 can't threaten to raise prices if Dell sells Linux since Dell can just buy a similar product from MS OS company 2, thus it opens the floor to competition from Linux and any other OS. Competition is good for consumers and the industry, if only the courts would actually enforce the bloody law, things could be better for the average Joe, as you put it.
Please note, I am not in any way complaining about this particular remedy. South Korea knows US politicians would make life difficult if they tried to actually fix the problem with such a large, influential US company. The first judge who ruled in the US ordered them split up, but a lot of bribes, err lobbying, changed that in a hurry. I blame the corrupt US government that no longer answers to the people.
But can someone **concisely** summarize for me why WMP and MSN's IM client coming preinstalled is different from Apple pre-loading all their stuff (Quicktime, iLife, iTunes, etc).
Apple is not a monopoly, MS is.
Bundling is not illegal. Bundling a product with a monopolized product is illegal. If I sell cars, nothing makes it illegal for me to include a free lifetime supply of cheese with every car. My customers are free to choose between my car and cheese bundle and my competitor's car or cheese or car and cheese bundle. If, however, I have a monopoly on car sales, then everyone who wants to drive is forced to buy a car from me. Then, it is illegal for me to bundle cheese with them, because it is unfair to the companies that sell cheese and to consumers. Since they are forced to buy cars only from me, they are also forced to buy cheese from me. Cheese sellers go out of business and soon I have a second monopoly. Worse yet, the cheese industry suffers, since I don't have to compete on quality or innovation, since my customers have no choice. Soon the quality of cheese in general is worse and customers have to pay more and I can move on to establish yet a third monopoly by bundling something else, except this time anyone who wants either a car or cheese is forced to buy some other product.
Apple bundles not only an OS and applications, but also hardware and services. It does not matter, because they don't have a monopoly on any of those things. MS does have a monopoly on consumer OS's, thus they are banned from bundling. They know it as well as anyone else and their business model is built upon the belief that the punishments for breaking the law will not be greater than the profit they make doing so. So far they have been correct due to the very slow nature of the courts, their huge legal team, and the influence they have in governments due to excessive lobbying.
Yeah, I don't know what the sense in this is. So, now, Microsoft could simply choose to SELL messenger and media player to the people in these places.
They already sell messenger and media player everywhere, they just roll the cost into Windows so if you've bought Windows you've also paid for both of the aforementioned programs whether you want them or not. Just because they don't have a separate price tag does not make them free.
It's on the same vein as forcing them to unbundle notepad from the system, or to unbundle Excel from Word when you buy Office. It's really stupid.
Yeah, forcing monopolies to unbundle their products sure is crazy, because I failed Econ 101 too. As for Word and Excel, if MS is found to have a monopoly on either word processors or spread sheets then yes, they should be forced to sell them separately. You seem a little unclear on the concepts of "monopoly" and "bundling." If someone has a monopoly then their customers have no choice but to buy their products. If they bundle, then many customers are forced to buy a second product that they don't want. This is very, very, very bad for the economy, the consumer, and the industry in question, thus it is illegal.
Force them to provide links to competitors? That's like saying Pepsi must provide coupons for Coke on their packages! wtf?
Pepsi does not have a monopoly. Pepsi has not been convicted of breaking the law to the detriment of Coca-cola. Do you honestly believe that if the courts in the U.S. found Pepsi guilty of a crime that resulted in Coca-cola losing a lot of money that Coca-cola would not win reparations of some sort?
the best thing i ever learned was that "cost to produce something has no bearing on price, the price is determined by the perceived value of the item by the purchaser."
I've worked at two different start-up companies where we hired expensive consultants to come in and evaluate our business model. Both times the advice was, "raise your price." In one case we were advised to increase our price by an order of magnitude, to be slightly more expensive than a competitor (since our product was better) even though we could easily cover all our costs without such a price increase. It worked too. We sold more units at the higher price.
As a side anecdote, my brother's girlfriend sells hunting knives online. One particular, very low end knife cost her $1.25 in bulk for each unit, but at a markup to $4 she was having trouble moving them. Her answer, she raised the price to $25 and sold out of them in 3 hours.
In regard to your a le carte pricing for cable channels assertions. Your model is based upon a number of flawed premises. First, your belief that there is a distinction between those who create the cable channels and those who deliver them is largely incorrect. By and large the cable channels and cable companies are owned by the same conglomerates. Secondly, the argument for a le carte pricing is not that the cost for the same programming would go down, but that the cost for an individual's bill would go down, since many of us would gladly prune 90% of the channels out there. Finally, pricing is by no means the primary advantage of such a pricing scheme. The primary advantage is that each channel would have to survive on it's own merits, not upon those of the other channels with which it is bundled. The golf channel can survive if and only if enough people are willing to pay enough money to make it profitable. This would hopefully drive competition for good programming as well as lowered costs. If I can buy the sci-fi channel and see stargate atlantis for $2 a mont, or I can get the special effects channel and see starpoop for $1 I can choose the price and show I prefer.
I do, however, agree that IP-TV where you can select individual shows, rather than channels is a better model yet.
Basically, he suggests that song prices be determined by market forces, just like stock and commodities markets.
While an interesting idea, I think this premise is flawed. Gold is not priced based upon how many people have bought it over the years, or even in a given year, but by how much people are willing to pay for it. Here's an extreme example. Suppose some very fringe singer produces a song called, "If you're not rich you're a stupid pussy" that appeals to to very wealthy elite and basically no one else. Perhaps this song names a dozen particular wealthy people and extolls their virtues. Say the total market for this song consists of about 500 people, but among those 500 people are individuals who would be willing to pay upwards of a thousand dollars a copy for the song and may buy a copies for relatives, friends, and even enemies they wish to taunt. According to a free market we could estimate the value of the market as 500 times and average of two copies per person times an average price of say $500. That gives us half a million dollars on a truly free market. Now consider the same market valued based solely on popularity and you get a song that is so unpopular the market is only worth a few dollars.
This same principal applies to the opposite end of the spectrum as well. What is someone makes a funny, six second long song that billions would like to own, but no one wants to pay more than a quarter for. The market price may be 25 cents for optimal sales, but based on popularity would price this song at $10, which no one would want to pay, especially as the price would continually rise.
But the way most operatings systems are currently architected (including Windows, Unix and Unix-likes), while this is certainly an *option*, it is completely voluntary on the software developers' part. (How many Linux/Unix programs can be cleanly installed in just a sub-directory of a user's home directory? It should be possible [and some do] - but most of them want to install libraries to system paths, config files to/etc, etc).
Well most UNIX userspace applications are perfectly happy in a virtual machine all by themselves. Or take a look at the NextStep/OpenStep/OS X model where programs are self contained packages, including a copy of the libraries needed (which may be shared based on versioning). A correctly configured application may install a configuration file in your user library, but it is just a text/XML file, that is not executable and is restricted to only that directory. Or look at Java applications. They already run in a virtual machine and the hooks are there to build just such a system as I describe, just no one has made those controls easily configurable to users.
There's a lot of stupid, crappy ideas that made their way into the mainstream, and will never go away, despite how aweful they are - like popup windows stealing keyboard focus. I'm not just talking about advertising popups from the likes of gator and 180solutions. I'm also talking about notification popups from legitimate programs... couldn't someone create a GUI system where popups don't actually get the focus - they just display at the 'front' of the stack *without* getting keyboard input?
Now you're trying to make me sound like an Apple kool-aid drinker. I'm not, I use three different OS's daily and they all have strengths and weaknesses. That said, OS X has the most well tested GUI and notifications do not steal focus. If an application wants your attention or throws an alert, the icon for that application will "bounce" in the dock. It is easy to see, and no one wants that sort of a distraction hopping up and down so they don't neglect it, but at the same time it does not steal focus or interrupt your current task, whether it is typing or drawing a line.
So, the best we can really do, for now, is anti-spyware software, and (maybe) some user education to avoid some of the spyware to begin with.
I recognize that user education is vital, but I feel just as strongly that education, without empowerment will not make much of a difference. The historical example I like to quote is MS Word. We all used to get Word files with macros attached at a time when macro viruses were rampant. When you received a Word file with macros Word would warn you and give you the option of opening the file anyway (and running the macro) or not opening the file. I know people who literally offered thousands of dollars to anyone who could come up with a way to add a "open but don't run the macros" button. That is what I mean about empowerment. Right now to fight worms and viruses we first have to reasonably secure the machines from remote exploits with no user intervention. Once that is done, we'll need to address the user education/empowment issue to stop trojans. At that point we will need a "run the game, but don't let it mess with my files or send spam or do any other crazy crap" button. Users want to run programs and they want to look at data. Users generally don't want to run network services, like their own mail server. They generally don't want to run scripts or programs e-mailed to them. They generally don't want to let programs embedded in Web sites see their files. Anyone who does want to do any of those things will probably not mind having to click an extra button to enable that functionality. Hopefully some day, MS will either start solving these problems for their customers, or their monopoly will be broken and another company will do so. I've seen far too many security experts and people in the press that are so conditioned into thinking this is not a solvable proble
Slashdot Mirror
People will upgrade if they perceive something better. And for most people, CD is good enough, and it always will be.
Missing features: lyrics, accompanying video, available anywhere there is a network, more channels of sound, artist commentary, extra unreleased, songs... need I go on?
Well to me, all this excessive DRM tactics seem to be having an adverse effect on what companies like Sony are actually trying to achieve. In all honesty, what is your average file-sharing fanatic gonna think and do when they read of rootkits and vulnerabilities in CDs they might want to buy?
Or maybe you just don't understand what they are trying to do. This has nothing to do with people who download or pirate music. It does nothing to stop them. The intention of DRM is to stop regular people who obey the laws and don't download songs from P2P from being able to migrate their music to other devices and formats without paying. This is just making sure the CD debacle does not happen all over again. Sony was one of many companies who were pissed off that users could rip CDs and load that music onto mp3 players. They felt they should be paid again when users wanted to switch from CD players to mp3 players, just as they were paid again when users switched from tapes to CDs. DRM is an attempt to make sure they are paid multiple times for the same thing. So if downloading is an alternative, you're already outside their demographic.
As someone who designed webpages before, I know that the state of the art isn't in fact frozen. The truth is that you could design a website to easily scale back based on what the user is using... Web site designers are simply too lazy to implement this kind of thing.
They aren't lazy. It is not cost effective to implement a new solution (using many man hours) when that solution can only reach a small subset of the populace. You can urge people to download Firefox all you like, but the number who have the bandwidth and are willing to try some new random software is small for any given website.
The average consumer is therefore not presented with a viable alternative. Windows is a monopoly because you haven't introduced a proper product yet.
The average consumer can't go to the store and buy a computer without an OS. The average consumer can't go to a store and buy a computer without Windows. You claim this is because OEMs don't want to ship these products because the other OSs are not up to snuff. I think you're dead wrong. I've put my name on a purchase order for over a thousand desktops, each of which came with Windows. We specifically requested them without Windows, but the price was higher. None of these machines ended up running Windows. I know dozens of people who have done the same thing and I'm sure there are countless people in the same boat. Many large computer buyers have corporate licenses for Windows. They pay for two copies of Windows for each machine to make installation less painful. You don't think the number of companies with corporate licenses for Windows is a significant market? Why then can't you buy a PC without a copy of Windows you don't plan to use. Surely they can sell a computer cheaper without one, right?
The answer is all the major OEMs have contracts with MS that say they can't sell a computer without Windows (or actually a DOS based OS). The contracts are trade secrets, but this has been confirmed by numerous insiders and has been common knowledge for years. This is the same reason why you can't buy a computer with Linux as the main OS in a store. It would cost the normal price (including Windows) plus the cost of installing/packaging a Linux distro. It has nothing to do with Linux not being ready.
99% of home users run the OS that shipped with their computer, hence MS automatically has 99% of the market, regardless of how well competitors do.
Apple has okay mainstream OS's but you have to be an Apple style individual, Apple has basically packaged their OS with their hardware and their mentality. It takes a unique individual to buy into all three at the same time and most companies that don't have an explicit need to do so aren't going to, it's simply not viable.
Lots of people would love Apple to sell their OS for x86 by itself. They won't for the foreseeable future because it is too big of a risk to compete with a monopoly. Apple makes most of its money on hardware sales. They would sacrifice that market and need to make that money back on such a move. Given that no major OEM can pre-install OS X without paying for Windows at an arbitrary cost set by MS and given that no OEM can afford to abandon the Windows market, there is basically no chance that Apple could compete in that space, even with a better product. Several other companies you've never heard of have tried with superior products, including ones that ran Windows software. They were all killed and most of them have won big settlements from MS for that.
Basically since MS has illegally locked down the pre-install market the only way to compete with them is to (like Apple) sell your own pre-installs, which necessitates getting into the hardware market. Aside from that, Linux will take chunks of the market away when they are so much better than Windows that Windows is not a viable option by comparison. That day may come, but it is by no means a level playing field and it certainly is not subject to the advantages of a free market.
Who cares if MS decides what software is the best for the end user or if Dell does?
The end user. If Dell and HP and Lenovo all decide you can bet some will make different choices, then the market can decide the best product. If MS decides they all have to use the same solution and the people are stuck using it. If Dell and HP and Lenovo are looking at a variety of choices, the producers of those choices will try to cater to their desires, which are to sell more computers, which is one step removed from the customer deciding. If MS decides there is no incentive to make better products or give the customers what they want.
Like Dell or Gateway or HP ever packaged superior products with their PCs, they haven't.
But if they are given the choice to do so, then consumers can vote with their dollars and buy from the company that gives them the best, or least annoying software. When MS decides, no one has a choice.
Besides, I bet people like Dell would prefer MS anyway, because then they can offer anti-spyware packages and upgrades when people only got spyware because their browser sucked to begin with. There is nothing more fun to a computer vendor than to sell a computer novice superfluous crap.
"Hey Bob, how's that new HP computer working out?" "Well, it's a lot better than that Dell which got viruses and I had to keep buying add ons for. I'm glad my cousin bought one and told me or I'd never have known."
Do you see how much better the aforementioned situation is than the one we are in now, where everyone is stuck with only one option?
People have the ability to decide for themselves what they want to use on the computer, the fact that they aren't aware of this ability just shows how disgustingly uneducated the populace is, and further illustrates that if you aren't going to educate yourself about technology then you probably deserve what you get.
When people buy any product, whether it is a car or a computer, a smart shopper looks at several options, then buys the one that seems like the best suited, for the best price. This works great in a free market and is how people are conditioned to shop. They don't expect a non-free market where they are only given the option of one substandard product. As a result, most of them assume, incorrectly, that there are no other option. After all if there were, wouldn't they be available in stores?
They should be available in stores and trying to shift the blame from the company that breaks the law to make sure they aren't to the deceived shopper is just blaming the victim.
I also don't understand why people, outside perhaps the tech support industry, get irritated by MS at all. Nowadays they have plenty of competition for the aware user. I use firefox almost exclusively and does it really matter how many other people use my same browser?
Yes, it does matter. First, because websites are crap compared to what they could be if the state of the art was not frozen, through this anti-competative behavior. Second, because their is no way to compete with a monopoly many companies don't bother to try, which further retards progress. Finally, there is plenty of other fallout from a massive user based trapped on a single, insecure product. The majority of automated worm traffic that clogs up the internet and slows everything down is the result of automatically propagating worms exploiting Windows, IE, and Outlook.
Firefox and other companies also stink at ad campaigns and making people aware of their superior product.
Firefox isn't a company. Companies can't compete against a monopoly so there are basically none left with significant market share. The Firefox team does a great job marketing considering they are just a bunch of guys working on donations. But no marketing campaign that does not cost many millions is going to have any affect compared to forcing everyone to have a copy of your program.
I think when we start to see Firefox co
IE always came bundled with Windows, but Netscape came installed too. When IE surpassed Netscape (which I believe it did before the advent of spyware and the exposure of all of its security holes), Netscape no longer needed to be packaged.
Ahh, but it was not when IE surpassed Netscape, but when IE became good enough that customers did not complain about it.
Netscape was a purchase product and MSIE simply came with Windows.
Except Netscape was free. Do you deny that being bundled is an advantage? If not, then IE has an unfair advantage, thus the monopoly was abused. If so, can you honestly tell me that if Firefox was bundled with all computers and IE was not, you don't think the market shares would change drastically?
If users who don't know anything about computers manage to download and install all kinds of other garbage, you'd think that if they wanted to, they would be able to download competing products.
The problem is that they don't know that they can, need to, or that there is any advantage in so doing. Most people just assume that Dell either includes the best product, or to get a better one will cost money. Clueless users don't install specific things, just ones they happen upon.
Are you saying that on a standard MS windows install you should have no browser? That is hardly an alternative. No media player? MS applications to me at least allow a gateway with which I can get the alternatives.
Do you think any computer retailer is going to sell a computer these days without a browser or a media player? I don't. How can you still not be getting this. When you buy a computer from Dell it will come with a browser and a media player. The problem is Dell should be the one choosing which one of those is installed, not MS. By forcing Dell to include IE and WMP to get Windows is a blatant violation of the law. MS gains market share by bundling, which is illegal for them, because they are a monopoly. Nothing is stopping Dell from selling a computer with Windows, IE, and WMP on it, but the law should be stopping MS from forcing Dell to sell that if they want to sell Windows. Vendors should include a browser pre-installed and on installer disk with your computer, just like they used to.
And here's another point, if the user doesn't even know what program they are using then does it really matter to them which program it is anyway?
Yes, because they are given an inferior product with security holes, and lacking features. In a free market, without bundling they would be given whichever program the retailer wanted to include and then the free market would decide which one was right. As it is now, they are all given an inferior solution because MS has forced it upon them.
The target audience for software these days I believe should incorporate the average user but target the high end user. Because as people get more and more tech savvy it will no longer go on what program was packaged with their Gateway, but what program is the most useful.
The evidence from the field does not agree with you. IE has been significantly behind in functionality to other products for many, many years, and yet they still have most of the market. Most users just use what comes with their computer and most people never know anyone who uses something else. As a result, users don't buy a HP computer that comes with the better browser and doesn't get viruses, because all the vendors ship the same thing, so there is no real competition for them to use to make a choice.
So, what you're saying, is that I should have to individually purchase every tool with my system, from the computer (even down to it's seperate pieces?) to the kernel to the command line tools, to the GUI, to the email program, the web browser, etc?
How can you possibly interpret my previous comment to say this? Individuals have no restrictions on what they can buy. Companies that don't have monopolies (like HP) have no restriction on what they can sell. The only companies that have restrictions are monopolies, and then only in what they can sell bundled together, based upon existing markets. HP obviously wants to sell a fully functional computer so they will probably put together hardware, OS, applications, etc. and sell them, which is fine. MS is free to sell them that OS, the applications, and even the hardware, so long as they are separate sales, not bundled together.
The belief that a product has to be BETTER to be accepted is how the market is SUPPOSED to work. It's all screwed up though because people just don't care. That's what seems to make this particular capitalism work so well though.
Capitalism breaks when it encounters monopolies. That is why there are laws to deal with that situation. End users shouldn't have to care. End users are used to dealing with free market products, and when there is not a free market the government is supposed to ensure that the companies involved behave as if there were. Customers can't be blamed for buying the only thing available in the store and they can't be blamed for not doing research and finding out they are being screwed. Half the posters on Slashdot can't seem to grasp what a monopoly is and what its affects are.
What the government is supposed to be ensuring is what MS is doing does not adversely affect customers or the industry, but they have been paid off. The courts keep finding MS guilty and MS keeps settling lawsuits and paying out millions, but it is still not as much money as they are making by breaking the law. What the courts should be doing is preventing MS from bundling any products together. Failing that (as they have) they should separate the company into competing organizations and let capitalism work again. If they split the company and gave both rights to the source code developed to date we'd have competition near instantly and none of this would be a problem.
Let's face it, generic soda is just as good as Coke or Pepsi, but people buy Coke and Pepsi in mass amounts compared to these products. Some of MS's advantage is its name recognition. People outside of the software community know who MS is, and for whatever reason, they trust it as a decent name in software.
You're overestimating their market influence. The truth is much of the popularity of IE is due to the fact that it is bundled. If that was not the case and most people bought computers that came pre-installed with Firefox, most would neither know or care that it was not an MS product. Most people making purchasing decisions decide to buy from Dell or HP because of the name recognition. They don't decide not to download Firefox, because they've never heard of Firefox. A good percentage don't even know what IE is and couldn't tell you if they are running Windows or something else. The fact that people have to take an extra step to get Firefox is the problem and it is the result of bundling.
My point is that nobody cares that MS bundles some things, but yet gets out of joint about others. As long as the MS product is so inferior it doesn't capture any percentage of the market, nobody notices or cares. Then as soon as the bundled application gets a bit better and takes off, everyone gets irritated.
If a bank robber tries to rob a bank, but accidentally locks themselves in their own closet for six hours no one knows or cares either, because they have not successfully caused any damage. It is when MS bundles products which take over markets based not on their own merits, but upon that bundling that other software producers and consumers are damaged.
I get the worst, worst software almost always from Apple.
He must not buy anything from Microsoft or Adobe then.
There is nothing stopping any PC manufacturer from bundling additional software that does not come with Windows along with their PC products.
First it takes effort to add software to an OEM machine. OEMs know they need a web browser, but since MS has already included one bundled with their monopoly product, they now need an additional incentive to choose anything other than IE. Thus IE is given preferential treatment because it is bundled. That is called unfair competition and it is the result of a monopoly bundling a product with it's existing monopoly product, something specifically illegal according to US anti-trust laws. In fact, bundling is the first example listed in anti-trust legislation. Additionally, OEMs are prohibited from removing IE or other MS implemented software before it reaches the customer.
Second, due to their monopoly position, MS has an excessive amount of power over computer manufacturers. They can put any company out of business simply by raising the price of Windows for that customer. They already charge different prices to different vendors. There have been reliable reports of MS both officially (in contracts) and unofficially (over dinner) telling manufacturers that if they include products from other vendors the price of their windows purchases will go up.
Web browsing has stagnated for more than half a decade because web developers choose to not use functions that IE has not implemented.
I agree with this.
Even if IE had been updated in the last 5 years, we'd STILL be in the same place
I disagree. Most Web developers (I've done a bit myself) code to deal with the majority of users. That means the most common 90% or so. Now Web technologies are mostly designed to degrade gracefully. That is to say, if I implement new features using CSS2, that does not mean the site is unusable for those without support for that protocol. It costs money, however, to implement new features and if 90% of users can't see them, then it is just not cost effective. If, however, 50% or more can see them, the situation changes drastically. IE's continued stagnation at a feature set that includes a partially implemented, buggy version of five year old technology has personally cost me at least a month worth of work time, versus just coding to the standards. It has also held back the implementation of dozens of new technologies.
Your argument predicates that a new feature/technology must be so much better than what IE offers that people will upgrade to something else, but that very belief indicates an unfair market, where one party has to be significantly better in order to achieve the same results.
IE was almost always bundled with Windows, IE didn't become a problem until it had most of the features that Netscape did.
So here's a question for you. If IE "became a problem" and took over a big chunk of the market when it had "most of" the features of Netscape, then you have just provided an example of an inferior product taking over a market from a superior one. The main "advantage" that IE had at the time was that it was bundled with Windows. Since MS has a monopoly with their Windows product they are legally prohibited from bundling other products with it. They have chosen to ignore the law in this case and pay off politicians and lawsuits.
Now do you really think dozens of judges in multiple countries have all ruled against MS, despite the fact that they have done nothing wrong?
If instead, people innovated and created products that address concerns that MS's products do not, and consistently did so, then they wouldn't have so much to whine and take legal action on.
Your proposal requires that other companies reach a higher standard that MS, in order to achieve the same results. That is called "unfair competition" and it is due to MS's monopoly position and bundling.
MS has provided a platform in which you can easily download a different browser, a different media player, etc. The fact that most people don't is simply telling the competition that the average user sees no advantage over running your software instead of the stuff that they have already without expending any effort.
A more eloquent person than I once said, "They need only create a product just 'good enough' that people don't trouble themselves to see if something better exists." That is what MS does. They make products that are inferior to those already on the market, but are just "good enough" that it is not worth the trouble and/or price to get a better solution. And that is what people use today. Web browsing without tabs, spell checking, translation, real pop-up blocking, ad blocking, secure defaults, support for the HTML, CSS, and XHTML standards written in the last five years, or dozens of other features available in other browsers. I don't know a single person with an understanding of Web technologies that would claim IE is superior to, say, Firefox; and yet IE holds 90% of the market. That is bad for consumers and bad for the industry and it applies to dozens of other fields as well. Do you really think it is a good thing that IE is the main browser despite its obvious shortcoming, just because it is the on MS forced Dell and other companies to bundle?
The increasing popularity of firefox is a testament to this statement.
The fact that IE retains 90% of the market despite being vastly inferior for half a decade belies your belief. Companies should not have to be better than MS, just to compete with them. If another product is just as good as one MS produces and at the same price than each should grab about 50% of the market. That is what is known a fair market.
Everyone has a choice as to wether to buy Microsoft or Red Hat or Novell or IBM or Sun or HP or whatever products.
MS sells desktop operating systems. Every other company you mention sells other products that happen to include desktop operating systems, or sell a very small (insignificant to the market) number of systems. Apple, IBM, Sun, and HP sell hardware that comes with an OS. Red Hat, IBM, and Novell sell services and support that come with an OS. Monopolies are defined by markets. No one else can compete in the desktop OS market. Even solutions that were arguable superior when they were released were killed. Look at BeOS, for example.
OK, so, say I want to buy a computer, I need to go to Dell to get a computer, Apple to get an Operating system, Real to get a player that will play one type of a/v, Red Hat to get a GUI, *insert more crap here*
MS does not sell PC's. When you want to buy a PC with Windows on it does that mean you have to go to MS and buy the OS and then Dell to buy the machine? No you don't. You go to Dell or any other retailer and they are happy to sell you a bundle of items, preconfigured. Dell, HP, Apple, K-mart, and Bob's computer shack are all retailers that are not monopolies. They can bundle anything they like. Now what if Dell obtained a monopoly on desktop computers? There is still no problem, because Windows is not made by them, thus they can still bundle whatever they want so long as it is not an OS they make, themselves. Get it?
And your analogy fails AGAIN when you realise that Microsoft don't provide all operating systems, but there are competitors, one of them with a FREE product.
According to every court that has ruled on the issue so far, MS is a monopoly. A monopoly is defined by controlling an entire market such that others cannot compete. Please note, that is market not product. For example if there was only one company that sold tanning booths, but there was also a house manufacturer that made there own and gave them away with every house, and people could still tan outside under the sun, it is still monopoly because neither of the second two options are competing in the market. In fact, the presence of Linux and the fact that it is made by a collective and not sold is a very good indication of the presence of a monopoly. When your strongest competitor gives their product away for free you're probably a monopoly.
You know, honestly, we've been fighting stupidity for quite some time now. More and more it seems like most of my fellow Americans want someone else to take responsibility, and someone else to take care of their problems for them.
You're entirely correct. At the same time, however, I disagree that stupidity is the main problem when it comes to this worm, or computer worms in general. Stupidity and ignorance are not the same thing. I'm not stupid, but I don't know whether or not a given concentration of sulfuric acid will eat through the roof of my car. This is something that is unimportant to me, since I have never had need of this knowledge. Despite that, I'm not too worried about acid rain eating through my car roof on any given day. I trust that the car manufacturer put a reasonable finish on it.
Many people are ignorant about computer worms, file types, and the default behaviors of their computers. As far as they know, they don't have a worm problem, or they do have a problem but can't find the source. A large percentage have been infected without any intervention on their part. To then imply that they are stupid because they don't understand the technology, is not just. There should be no links in any IM message your computer displays that will infect your computer with a virus. If you specifically download a file from another user, you should be informed if that file is an image, movie, or a program. If they send you a program, after the computer tells you it is a program, it should still have no access to the internet, your core OS, or your files unless you specifically grant it that right.
I'd say that is about the right level of diligence I'd expect from reasonably architected software given today's internet environment. The fact that people buy substandard products when they are the only products available in stores is not their fault. Most people are not interested in computers, they just want to use them to perform a few specific tasks. Ignorance about how faulty computers are is not stupidity.
But no one complains as long as the product is crummy. When the product is a real competitor, then they complain.
You're mistaken. IE is crummy and people complain very vocally about it. You're also confusing consumer complaints with legal action. For legal action there needs to be demonstrable damage (losing market share). No one sued over the calculator program because there was no calculator program market (defined by dollars exchanged). There was a media player market, an browser market, and a chat market, most of which was ad supported.
Personally I complain more when MS bundles a crappy product than a good one because I want to use a good product and when MS steals a huge chunk of the market with a crappy one competitors (not really competitors since bundling nullifies competition) are forced to raise prices to stay profitable or they go away and I end up having to make due with an old version of a good product or a crappy alternative from MS.
I am getting tired of the constand MS bashing.
MS is breaking the law. Just because you don't understand the laws, or the purpose for the laws, or the concepts of monopoly and bundling does not mean you should spout off a bunch of uninformed crap. Why don't you actually read a little bit about monopolies so that you can understand what the rest of us are talking about?
I am also tired of the double standard against MS.
Please look up the term "monopoly" in the dictionary. Some laws apply only to monopolies, for good reason. The laws apply the same to everyone. If Apple every gains a monopoly, they will apply to them just as much. MS knew the laws before they broke them, they are just betting the cost in fines and settlements will be less than the profit. They chose to be fined like this as part of their business plan. There is no reason to feel sorry for them over it. Thus far they have been right.
I don't understand why MS simply doesn't tell the EU and South Korea to F*ck off. I mean, MS should at least make them aware that other competitor products like OSX and Linux don't have the same restrictions, and that if they insist on suing MS, then ALL OS'es sold in South Korea or the EU should have NO built-in functionality other then a file system.
MS does not want to lose huge markets for them to sell into. MS does not want competitors to get funding by selling into markets it abandons. MS executives do not want to go to jail and have all their assets seized for breaking the law and then violating court orders. Having no built in functionality other than the core OS would be great for the industry and users. Imagine if each OEM (Dell, HP, Lenova, etc.) got to choose what browser to install on the computers they sell without interference from MS. The majority would probably choose something other than IE, with more features and more security. End users would have a better experience and be safer. Web page authors could code to standards instead of making multiple versions of each page. Internet Explorer might even finally get some of the improvements and features that have been in all other browsers for years as an incentive for OEMs to ship it. Heck your post would probably even be spell checked since that feature would be in your default browser. I think the EU, S. Korea, and end users would all be much happier with that situation. I know I would be.
In any regard, make a product that excels past what MS build into their OS, and people will get it and install it, government forcing consumers to buy a product devoid of features imposes on the rights of consumers to make their own choice about the products they can and can't buy.
Governments aren't forcing anything on consumers, just on the seller. The government has not said you can't buy Windows bundled with Explorer, bundled with a chat program, just that MS can't sell it that way to retailers. When a company that has a monopoly bundles other products with that monopoly, the market loses all the benefits of capitalism. There is no free market price, no or advancement due to the benefits of competition. Also, it allows that company to expand the monopoly into (eventually) all other markets. That is why pretty much every country in the world makes it illegal for monopolies to bundle products.
Governments should keep their noses out of it.
If governments did not regulate monopolies you'd still be renting your telephone from Ma Bell, and the internet would not exist. Intel would have a monopoly on computers, and Windows would not exist. The laws apply the same to everyone and exist for a good reason. I take it you never took even a basic economics course?
You're dead wrong and not understanding the previous posts. This is about MS bundling. It is as if there was only one manufacturer (MS) for car engines and they were bundling a car stereo with each car engine sale to car manufacturers. Very few people buy OS's from MS directly, the vast majority of people buy computers with an OS pre-installed. The original poster mentioned OEMs picking the components, not end users.
Unbundling media player helps no-one. It just hurts the user as they have to go out and download a media player rather than having it built in.
MS does not sell OS's to users (99% of home sales). MS sells an OS to PC manufacturers. If MS is prohibited from bundling their media player with their OS, it theoretically it opens up the media player space to equal competition as each media player vendor has a fair chance of getting the PC maker to pre-install their software. Realistically, it probably does not do enough to stop MS from coercing the PC manufacturers into just installing their media player using differential pricing.
If you don't like media player there's nothing stopping you from installing something else so what's the problem?
If every time you buy a car (from the one monopoly car maker left) you get a free, lifetime supply of cheese you can always just throw it away and buy different cheese elsewhere, so what's the problem? The problem is you just f*cked the cheese market. The problem is most people don't know there are alternatives, or won't bother to go get them, and they have already paid for Windows media player (the cost was rolled into Windows which was rolled into the cost of the computer they bought). As a result no other media player can sell their product (all the remaining ones are free, ad supported, or supported by other companies with a vested interest in stopping MS from gaining another monopoly). Thus, instead of having a desktop OS monopoly, MS has a desktop OS and media player monopoly, which they can then leverage into a media distribution, or creation, or some other monopoly. In the mean time, the media player industry suffers since MS has no reason to improve their product since they have no one competing with them. Maybe you've noticed how much IE has improved in the last six years? Web browsing has stagnated for more than half a decade and Web developers have to code everything to really, really old standards that are not even completely implemented. Expect the same for media player technologies once MS takes over that space.
'd simply stick two fingers up at the South Korean government and dare them to pull Windows from the shelves. While most /. readers would feel this is a good thing, could you imagine the uproar from business and government when they discover that they can no longer install MS software on their machines?
There would be no uproar. The new CEO of Microsoft Korea who took over for the old on, rotting in jail for contempt of court, would comply with the court order. You can bluster all you like, but the minute you directly contravene publicly visible court orders the government has to act. You are directly challenging their authority and if they don't toss you in jail, they are screwed. Only an idiot would put them in that position and not expect to go to jail. Hell, they could go down to the MS Korea offices and tell each person in the chain of command to comply and drag off any who refuse. For that matter they could temporarily appoint a new CEO for that branch.
The reason this isn't having any effect is because there's no real alternative to Windows.
None of the courts, thus far, have made any punishments even designed to break up MS's OS monopoly. If the courts wanted to fix the problem of an abusive OS monopoly, they could certainly do so. It is easy, split the company in five parts (just like they did with AT&T). MS service, MS OS 1, MS OS 2, MS Applications 1, MS Applications 2. Both OS companies have equal rights to all the source code developed to date as well as half the dev team. They are forbidden from colluding with any other MS company and watched by an oversight group. Both applications companies have equal rights to the source to the applications yada yada. Poof! Instant competition.
All the rulings so far have been weak attempts at keeping MS from extending their monopoly into other areas such as media distribution, instant messaging, internet services, etc. That is all well and good, but just not enough when dealing with a company whose business model is built upon breaking the law and assuming the fines and settlements will be smaller than the profits.
No matter how many times someone reports that the current year is the year of Linux, there's no indication that it will be the year of Linux. And there's no indication that Linux will gain a strong position in the desktop marketplace anytime soon.
That is because the courts have never addressed MS's OS monopoly and done nothing about its anti-competative contracts that exclude competition on pre-installed OEM machines. Linux could compete just fine if it was purchasable, pre-installed on computers in the stores, and retailers would like to sell that way, but are forbidden from so doing because of MS's differential pricing that allows them to immediately crush any vendor that sells computers that way.
So no matter how many lawsuits are brought against Microsoft, there's no real alternative for your average Joe.
Well, it funnels some money away from MS to hopefully better causes and raises the price of Windows, which hopefully opens more of a market for low-end competition. Also, just because no government has implemented an effective solution against MS does not mean it can't be done. It certainly can be done. If MS OS company 1 and MS OS company 2 both have to renegotiate with Dell, do you think Dell will accept the same prices/features? Hell no, they will go with whichever company gives them the better price/feature set. This would drive both companies to have to try to sell cheaper and/or with more features the end user wants. It also ends MS's power over the OEM manufacturers. MS OS company 1 can't threaten to raise prices if Dell sells Linux since Dell can just buy a similar product from MS OS company 2, thus it opens the floor to competition from Linux and any other OS. Competition is good for consumers and the industry, if only the courts would actually enforce the bloody law, things could be better for the average Joe, as you put it.
Please note, I am not in any way complaining about this particular remedy. South Korea knows US politicians would make life difficult if they tried to actually fix the problem with such a large, influential US company. The first judge who ruled in the US ordered them split up, but a lot of bribes, err lobbying, changed that in a hurry. I blame the corrupt US government that no longer answers to the people.
But can someone **concisely** summarize for me why WMP and MSN's IM client coming preinstalled is different from Apple pre-loading all their stuff (Quicktime, iLife, iTunes, etc).
Apple is not a monopoly, MS is.
Bundling is not illegal. Bundling a product with a monopolized product is illegal. If I sell cars, nothing makes it illegal for me to include a free lifetime supply of cheese with every car. My customers are free to choose between my car and cheese bundle and my competitor's car or cheese or car and cheese bundle. If, however, I have a monopoly on car sales, then everyone who wants to drive is forced to buy a car from me. Then, it is illegal for me to bundle cheese with them, because it is unfair to the companies that sell cheese and to consumers. Since they are forced to buy cars only from me, they are also forced to buy cheese from me. Cheese sellers go out of business and soon I have a second monopoly. Worse yet, the cheese industry suffers, since I don't have to compete on quality or innovation, since my customers have no choice. Soon the quality of cheese in general is worse and customers have to pay more and I can move on to establish yet a third monopoly by bundling something else, except this time anyone who wants either a car or cheese is forced to buy some other product.
Apple bundles not only an OS and applications, but also hardware and services. It does not matter, because they don't have a monopoly on any of those things. MS does have a monopoly on consumer OS's, thus they are banned from bundling. They know it as well as anyone else and their business model is built upon the belief that the punishments for breaking the law will not be greater than the profit they make doing so. So far they have been correct due to the very slow nature of the courts, their huge legal team, and the influence they have in governments due to excessive lobbying.
Yeah, I don't know what the sense in this is. So, now, Microsoft could simply choose to SELL messenger and media player to the people in these places.
They already sell messenger and media player everywhere, they just roll the cost into Windows so if you've bought Windows you've also paid for both of the aforementioned programs whether you want them or not. Just because they don't have a separate price tag does not make them free.
It's on the same vein as forcing them to unbundle notepad from the system, or to unbundle Excel from Word when you buy Office. It's really stupid.
Yeah, forcing monopolies to unbundle their products sure is crazy, because I failed Econ 101 too. As for Word and Excel, if MS is found to have a monopoly on either word processors or spread sheets then yes, they should be forced to sell them separately. You seem a little unclear on the concepts of "monopoly" and "bundling." If someone has a monopoly then their customers have no choice but to buy their products. If they bundle, then many customers are forced to buy a second product that they don't want. This is very, very, very bad for the economy, the consumer, and the industry in question, thus it is illegal.
Force them to provide links to competitors? That's like saying Pepsi must provide coupons for Coke on their packages! wtf?
Pepsi does not have a monopoly. Pepsi has not been convicted of breaking the law to the detriment of Coca-cola. Do you honestly believe that if the courts in the U.S. found Pepsi guilty of a crime that resulted in Coca-cola losing a lot of money that Coca-cola would not win reparations of some sort?
the best thing i ever learned was that "cost to produce something has no bearing on price, the price is determined by the perceived value of the item by the purchaser."
I've worked at two different start-up companies where we hired expensive consultants to come in and evaluate our business model. Both times the advice was, "raise your price." In one case we were advised to increase our price by an order of magnitude, to be slightly more expensive than a competitor (since our product was better) even though we could easily cover all our costs without such a price increase. It worked too. We sold more units at the higher price.
As a side anecdote, my brother's girlfriend sells hunting knives online. One particular, very low end knife cost her $1.25 in bulk for each unit, but at a markup to $4 she was having trouble moving them. Her answer, she raised the price to $25 and sold out of them in 3 hours.
In regard to your a le carte pricing for cable channels assertions. Your model is based upon a number of flawed premises. First, your belief that there is a distinction between those who create the cable channels and those who deliver them is largely incorrect. By and large the cable channels and cable companies are owned by the same conglomerates. Secondly, the argument for a le carte pricing is not that the cost for the same programming would go down, but that the cost for an individual's bill would go down, since many of us would gladly prune 90% of the channels out there. Finally, pricing is by no means the primary advantage of such a pricing scheme. The primary advantage is that each channel would have to survive on it's own merits, not upon those of the other channels with which it is bundled. The golf channel can survive if and only if enough people are willing to pay enough money to make it profitable. This would hopefully drive competition for good programming as well as lowered costs. If I can buy the sci-fi channel and see stargate atlantis for $2 a mont, or I can get the special effects channel and see starpoop for $1 I can choose the price and show I prefer.
I do, however, agree that IP-TV where you can select individual shows, rather than channels is a better model yet.
Basically, he suggests that song prices be determined by market forces, just like stock and commodities markets.
While an interesting idea, I think this premise is flawed. Gold is not priced based upon how many people have bought it over the years, or even in a given year, but by how much people are willing to pay for it. Here's an extreme example. Suppose some very fringe singer produces a song called, "If you're not rich you're a stupid pussy" that appeals to to very wealthy elite and basically no one else. Perhaps this song names a dozen particular wealthy people and extolls their virtues. Say the total market for this song consists of about 500 people, but among those 500 people are individuals who would be willing to pay upwards of a thousand dollars a copy for the song and may buy a copies for relatives, friends, and even enemies they wish to taunt. According to a free market we could estimate the value of the market as 500 times and average of two copies per person times an average price of say $500. That gives us half a million dollars on a truly free market. Now consider the same market valued based solely on popularity and you get a song that is so unpopular the market is only worth a few dollars.
This same principal applies to the opposite end of the spectrum as well. What is someone makes a funny, six second long song that billions would like to own, but no one wants to pay more than a quarter for. The market price may be 25 cents for optimal sales, but based on popularity would price this song at $10, which no one would want to pay, especially as the price would continually rise.
I just don't think this is workable or desirable.
But the way most operatings systems are currently architected (including Windows, Unix and Unix-likes), while this is certainly an *option*, it is completely voluntary on the software developers' part. (How many Linux/Unix programs can be cleanly installed in just a sub-directory of a user's home directory? It should be possible [and some do] - but most of them want to install libraries to system paths, config files to /etc, etc).
Well most UNIX userspace applications are perfectly happy in a virtual machine all by themselves. Or take a look at the NextStep/OpenStep/OS X model where programs are self contained packages, including a copy of the libraries needed (which may be shared based on versioning). A correctly configured application may install a configuration file in your user library, but it is just a text/XML file, that is not executable and is restricted to only that directory. Or look at Java applications. They already run in a virtual machine and the hooks are there to build just such a system as I describe, just no one has made those controls easily configurable to users.
There's a lot of stupid, crappy ideas that made their way into the mainstream, and will never go away, despite how aweful they are - like popup windows stealing keyboard focus. I'm not just talking about advertising popups from the likes of gator and 180solutions. I'm also talking about notification popups from legitimate programs... couldn't someone create a GUI system where popups don't actually get the focus - they just display at the 'front' of the stack *without* getting keyboard input?
Now you're trying to make me sound like an Apple kool-aid drinker. I'm not, I use three different OS's daily and they all have strengths and weaknesses. That said, OS X has the most well tested GUI and notifications do not steal focus. If an application wants your attention or throws an alert, the icon for that application will "bounce" in the dock. It is easy to see, and no one wants that sort of a distraction hopping up and down so they don't neglect it, but at the same time it does not steal focus or interrupt your current task, whether it is typing or drawing a line.
So, the best we can really do, for now, is anti-spyware software, and (maybe) some user education to avoid some of the spyware to begin with.
I recognize that user education is vital, but I feel just as strongly that education, without empowerment will not make much of a difference. The historical example I like to quote is MS Word. We all used to get Word files with macros attached at a time when macro viruses were rampant. When you received a Word file with macros Word would warn you and give you the option of opening the file anyway (and running the macro) or not opening the file. I know people who literally offered thousands of dollars to anyone who could come up with a way to add a "open but don't run the macros" button. That is what I mean about empowerment. Right now to fight worms and viruses we first have to reasonably secure the machines from remote exploits with no user intervention. Once that is done, we'll need to address the user education/empowment issue to stop trojans. At that point we will need a "run the game, but don't let it mess with my files or send spam or do any other crazy crap" button. Users want to run programs and they want to look at data. Users generally don't want to run network services, like their own mail server. They generally don't want to run scripts or programs e-mailed to them. They generally don't want to let programs embedded in Web sites see their files. Anyone who does want to do any of those things will probably not mind having to click an extra button to enable that functionality. Hopefully some day, MS will either start solving these problems for their customers, or their monopoly will be broken and another company will do so. I've seen far too many security experts and people in the press that are so conditioned into thinking this is not a solvable proble