Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly on desktop computer operating systems.
Name one company that sells desktop computer operating systems as their core business.
Apple sells hardware and includes an OS and they sell boxed OS's that can only be used upgrade existing Apple hardware.
IBM sells hardware, support and services (PPC as well as X86). They give away Linux and BSDs.
Redhat sells support, and give away Linux.
Sun sells hardware with an included OS.
...and so on. It is true that Apple sells desktop OS's, but only as a tertiary market supported by and as an incentive for their hardware business. They are significant as a hardware vendor, but insignificant in the Desktop OS market.
I bought a copy of XP Pro last year, so you could argue that the cost of WMP 9 was included, but I have since downloaded WMP 10 for free.
Do you truly believe that MS develops and gives away their media player at no cost? Whenever anyone buys Windows or a computer preloaded with Windows MS collects money. All that money goes into one pot, from which they pay for the development of WMP. If you use Windows or even buy a PC without windows from a major vendor you are paying for WMP whether you want to or or not. That is what bundling is all about, moving the cost from something you might buy from something you have to buy.
A typicly[sic] rabid anti-microsoft community is placing RMP in an even worse light. True, this >could
Is this some sort of typo?
Customers are still free to choose what ever 3rd party tools they want. Or are you suggesting that Ford should start shipping cars with out exhaust so I can have the dealer install the specific exhaust system I want?
First, Ford is not a monopoly. Second and exhaust system is integral to the operation of a car, while a media player is not integral to the operation of an OS. Are you saying if Ford did gain a monopoly on cars (you have to buy a car from them if you want to drive) you would not mind if they included a "free" refrigerator and charged a few thousand more for every car as a result?
This is the part where I say, "Who said life is fair?"
I dunno, Pol Pot?? This is a very weak cop out. Having fair competition is important to consumers so they get a good deal, to the economy so money is not directed to those who do no work, and to technology to provide incentive for innovation. Are you trying to imply that we shouldn't enforce the laws on the books that establish a fair market?
But being a monopoly is not illegal. If MS actively pushed any PC vendors to not include RMP, it would be a violation. If MS purposely designed their system to break RMP, it would be a violation. If MS packages a (widely accepted as) superior product with a product, that's called added value and is a simple part of marketing.
It is true being a monopoly is not illegal, but bundling is specifically listed as an illegal act for a monopoly and even cited as an example.
If someone does not want the MS add ons, they can buy the MS Windows lite (or what ever it is called) that does not include WMP or IE.
That is not good enough since it is not offered in all markets, has other, serious limitations, and does not provide a fair breakdown of price vs. features. You can buy your Ford car (monopoly example again) without a refrigerator and we'll even give it to you for $50 cheaper; oh and it only has a two gallon gas tank on that model. Sorry, not good enough.
Oddly enough, sales of this consumer liberating version of the OS have been very poor.
I think I already covered this above.
...there is still a lot of competition in the streaming media industry.
Too bad it is not fair competition.
MS does not have a monopoly over all aspects of everything digital, they have a monopoly in the OS and Browser markets. If they use their power in the those markets to destroy their competition, have at them. But in this situation, it's a simple case of the free market moving away from the least desired good.
Nope, this is a classic case of bundling, which is anti-competative behavior and the single most dangerous aspect of a monopoly (that it will spread to other markets). Please educate yourself by reading the anti-trust statutes. This is exactly the behavior they are designed to stop because, whatever you think, bundling a monopolized product and one in another market is very much not fair trade.
So you tell me.. What is this "Operating System" thing. Because I don't think you know. Because I always thought an Operating System is the kernel and layers of services and applications on top of it. Its the overall user experience.
Your definition is open-ended and unspecific. Heck hardware could easily be included in "the overall user experience." I reject your definition, but I understand the point you are making. It is difficult to define an OS, in terms of the way most people think of them and still have a technologic definition. Luckily, that is not necessary. Monopolies are defined in terms of markets and markets are defined by the flow of money. MS is moving into a new market with media players because their is money to be made and people currently making money in that market. Creating an improved filesystem is unlikely to fun afoul of antitrust laws because it is an integral part of the system, because one already existed before MS gained a monopoly, and because their is no market for desktop filesystems. Building advanced searching is likewise an improvement of already existing searching. Media players, browsers, and office suites are in no way integral to an operating system and each has a market outside the OS market (or did). Another argument can be made for items "grandfathered." That is to say, Windows includes a partition tool, which is needed and which has been included for a very long time.
Maybe MS should drop.NET because it competes with Java. I don't know.. probably
Nope, they just should not bundle it. You know companies can sell multiple products without bundling them all together.
So you're telling me, a user friendly, mass-market operating system should not even come with an application to support rudimentary audio-playback by default? Or should it come with one, but be crippled enough that users will hate it and look for alternatives?
Who said anything about users? The OS should not ship with a media player at all. If MS wants to create a media player, that is just fine and if Dell wants to include that media player on all the computers they sell that is fine too. The point is MS should have to compete on equal footing with all the other media player creators when talking to Dell. They should not be able to bundle it or force Dell to include it and none of their competitors as rumors in the industry claim Real has proof was happening.
Truth is Real sucks ass and they are doing this only because they can. $750 million is incentitve enough to cry anyone a river.
The truth is MS sucks ass even more and broke the law because they could and have shut down and locked out more small companies than anyone can count. Most of the companies they have illegally destroyed will never have the legal muscle to get a settlement and $750 million is a pittance compared to the billions they have profited from their illegal activities.
Electric companies are government ordained monopolies hence they are not subject to market pressure. If MS raised Windows price to $5000, Linux/Apple adoption would sky-rocket. This MS monopoly garbage is rediculous since MS has to tread really really slowly not to lose market share, if it f@cks up there is competition to replace it.
MS is already hundreds of dollars more expensive than their competitors. It is true that they cannot extract more money than people can pay, but they can charge more than fair value. As to your argument about a government imposed monopoly vs a regular monopoly, these laws were created to deal with regular monopolies the likes of Standard Oil and AT&T. The market pressures are just the same, except it does not leave room for argument about whether MS is a monopoly. Every court that has tried the issue has found MS to be a monopoly, and thus able to use bundling to unfairly market new products in new areas. If you don't agree, well I'm afraid you are just about the biggest MS apologizer I have ever seen. I'm sorry you can't see how much damage they have done and how much they have held back the advancement of the computing industry.
Actually I believe it's Real who is bypassing the competition here through the socialist EU.
Please stop watching Fox news.
The EU is about as socialist as the U.S., except for health care. In any case both the U.S. and the EU have very similar antitrust laws and both found MS guilty of antitrust violations. I believe this settlement applies to either MS's liability in the U.S. or in both the u.S. and the EU. This is a civil suit against MS which has already lost the criminal cases in both jurisdictions. How does this have anything to do with socialism?
Wait, what do RedHat/Linspire/Novell/SUSE/etc do then? Seems to me they make and OS to be solde[sic] and bundled with computers...
Redhat, Suse, and Novell all give away their OS for free (it is GPL). They sell support and services and hardware for that OS and that is how they make their money. Linspire does sell their OS in addition to giving it away, with the goal of pre-installing it on PC's but in such small quantities that it has no noticeable effect on the market. In fact, last I heard this was only available from Wal-mart's online store and sales had been very, very few. Remember, MS was declared a monopoly based upon there effects upon the market. This does not preclude others from offering OS's for sale (OS2, BeOS, or some other). It just precludes them being successful and having an influence on the desktop OS market.
Other then having a considerable market share advantage over Apple, Apple shows more of monopolistic traits then MS.
You keep using that word... I do not think it means, what you think it means. Overwhelmingly large market share is the only trait of being a monopoly.
As for what bundles with MS, unless you are buying the stand-alone version of MS, it is up to the computer store selling it to you. When I bought my Toshiba laptop and dell laptop it came with a TON of non-MS products.
...and it also came with a bunch of MS programs that neither Toshiba or the store had any choice to not sell to you.
And if MS has to sell their media player separately, then so does Apple - that is fair.
How many times does the concept of a monopoly and bundling have to be explained here? One more time:
Ford selling cars without a monopoly: legal
Ford selling cars with a monopoly: legal
Ford selling cars bundled with free gas without a monopoly: legal
Ford selling cars and free gas with a monopoly: legal
Ford selling cars bundled with free gas with a monopoly: illegal
Apple does not have a monopoly on anything. They can bundle whatever they want. Anyone can sell cars and gas or cars and gas, provided they don't have a monopoly because there is no barrier to entry for other companies. Any company that wants to can write an OS and build computers and build a media player, bundle them and sell them together. Any company that wants cannot create a desktop OS and a media player, bundle them, and sell them to compete with MS, because they have too much market share, technological restrictions, and business deals as the result of their monopoly for any company to compete with them. Several companies have created arguably better OS's and been unable to bring them to market because of MS's position. As a result of this everyone who buys a computer has to buy Windows (or a large enough percentage that the market responds in that way). Since everyone has to buy Windows they can (illegally) force those people to buy other products as well by bundling them. This means they can charge what they want and produce an inferior product to the competition and most people will still be forced to buy it. This is unfair to competitors in this new market (media players).
...MS is not restricting you from installing third party software.
True, once you have already paid for their competing product. Monopolistic bundling bypasses competition and all the advantages thereof. It retards the incentive for innovation and reduced prices. If the electric company (a local monopoly) were to start giving away free lifetime supplies of cheese with every account and then raised the cost of everyone's electric bill to cover the cost that would be unfair. It forces all their customers to buy a lifetime supply of cheese. Most cheese sellers would have to stop competing in that market. Sure there would still be sales of specialty and gourmet cheese in small quantities, but not much. Also, the electric companies cheese, not being subject to competition, only needs to be good enough that people won't pay for both electric company cheese and cheese from somewhere else as well, and in any case the electric company gets paid. That does not mean it should be illegal for manufacturers of battleships to give a free lifetime supply of cheese and a free car with every battleship, provided they do not have a monopoly on any of those products.
Now the above was a somewhat silly example, but hopefully it illustrates the problem for you.
Never has been. I have never purchased WMP, Winamp, or Real MP. No one's sales have been hurt by Microsoft's actions (by my actions at least).
You haven't bought a copy of Windows or PC hardware from and major vendor in a while then huh? If you did, like most people, you would have paid for WMP without knowing or having a choice. Heck some retailers charge you for and pass the money on to MS when you buy a mac (or at least used to).
RMP sales have been hurt for two reasons, 1) it is an inferior product, and 2) it has a very poor image.
That is a fine assertion, but there is no way to prove that and no way to know how the market would have shaped things had their been competition. Most likely all players would be better for consumers since they would have to fairly compete for business.
Using your logic, the makers of TextPad should be able to sue Microsoft for including NotePad in their OS. But they don't. They produce a supirior[sic] product and compete with microsoft.
...and there is your proof that the market is not operating properly. The makers of TextPad should not have to make a superior product to beat MS, just and equal or superior product. In truth they have to make product so much better than what MS make that people have to be willing to pay the cost of both programs just to get the better one. Can you honestly say the consumer would not be better off if MS have to compete with the makers of TextPad based upon features? Picture a world where MS and a hundred other vendors all submit bids on text editors, web browsers, e-mail applications, office suites, etc. to Dell (and all the other OEMs) who then bundles one or more of those applications based upon what their customers want and the cost. That is called a fair market.
Produce a supirior[sic], or hell, even similarly performing application, and they could have competed with Microsoft.
I disagree, as do pretty much all economists. They have to produce a product that is better by so much that people who have already been forced to pay for the cost of one program will still pay for the second one. That is not fair competition. MS introduced significant barriers to entry in the desktop OS market and succeeded. They have a monopoly. Monopolies can be used to bypass fair competition, but need not be used to do so. It is illegal to use them in this way. MS knowingly decided to break the law, and make consumers suffer financially and technology suffer by removing the innovation that results from competition. As a result they must pay. The problem is, not every company in every niche they are taking over has the money to continue to exist and fight MS in court, so MS is still profiting from their crimes and plans to continue with them.
Well see MS was not declared a monopoly until court pronounced it as such. So what are companies supposed to do until then?
Your first sentence is kind of silly. MS was a monopoly long before they were found to be such by the courts. A company is legally a monopoly based upon their effect on the market, which MS was well aware of.
The way I look at it, if Apple bundles iTunes with their OS, and MS competes with them, they should be allowed to do the same.
Ahh, but Apple does not compete with them. Apple sells computers and bundles an OS as incentive. Sure they sell boxed sets of their OS, but in very small numbers and only as upgrades to existing customers who bought a computer. Other companies also sell computers with OS's, or support with OS's or services with OS's. No one sells OS's by themselves to be bundled with computers because one company has locked everyone else out of that market.
Of course the problem is how to protect companies like Real wants to compete with Apple and MS, on particular part of their OS. There are no good answers that treats everyone fairly.
We have a tried and true method for that, it is called a fair market. You see Apple can sell whatever they want on whatever platform they want. They can include code to eliminate Real on their OS. That is just fine, because their is nothing stopping Real from getting into the OS and computer hardware business, or partnering with others in that business and competing with Apple. The problem only occurs when you run into a monopoly. Real can't create their own OS and compete with Windows on fair ground, because MS's market share, business contracts, and technological mechanisms prevent them from doing so. Everyone is playing by the same rules here and you can damn well bet MS knew about antitrust laws long before they were in any danger of breaking them. They chose to go for lock-in, intentionally break the laws, and settle the lawsuits as their business model. That is their choice, and they are not deserving of any sympathy for the results of that choice.
OS X includes iTunes, and nobody complains about that. Most Linux distros include XMMS, and nobody cries.
The makers of those OS's don't have monopolies. Sheesh, how can there be so many people on Slashdot that don't understand the legal or economic difference between bundling products and bundling products with a monopolized product?
They lost a market they created due to poor management and bad software.
Yup, Real did a lot of crap that I, as a customer did not like. The question is, did they do those things out of desperation because they were being driven out of business by anti-competative actions? We will never know the answer to that, nor what would have happened if the market had been allowed to decide. Instead we have to deal with what MS has given us. We don't let armed robbers go because they robbed a jaywalker. The problem is these settlements don't work either. Instead of MS being properly punished and a forced change in it's behavior, we get financial settlements where they pay off the victims with money gained from their crimes against other victims. Guess who is really paying. MS's customers.
It does look like a feeding frenzy at Microsoft's expense. Most of their competitors failed because of inferior programs.
Well, if MS wants to compete fairly, they can easily avoid these problems in future simply by offering these programs as separate purchases without discounts for bundling them together. Better yet, they could spin off their applications divisions and bid alongside Real, Mozilla, Apple, and Sun for programs to be included on OEM PCs. If MS is not willing to play fair, then customers suffer and MS will keep losing these big settlements.
Real media played about as unfairly as Microsoft. If I remember right once something is put as a RM, it's as safe as a PDF, you can share it but you can't copy it easily (yes I know there's ways to copy anything but there's no converter from RM to change it back to a AVI from real, and most out there are hack jobs, that the DMCA would be able to stop)
How can Real play as unfairly as MS? Did they bundle their software with some monopoly I haven't heard about? As for RM, you're mostly right, although they have opened some of the codec, but you seem to have weird ideas about PDFs. PDF is a completely open spec that can be viewed and edited by any number of programs.
Perhaps their problems arn't from Microsoft but from their lack of quality for so long.
Perhaps, but thanks to MS's illegal, anti-competitive behavior the market has not been given the opportunity to make that determination.
Real released a crappy product with a shady web site. I think it's a shame to capitalism that the better product will be funding the lessor product in this case.
Then perhaps MS should have competed on the quality of their product, instead of illegally bypassing competition and bundling their product with their monopoly. Your opinion is that WMP is better than Realplayer, but it is not up to you or MS to decide what product deserves to be purchased. It should be left to market forces to decide, based upon honest competition between the two products. Those market forces cannot act when a monopoly is used to "force" all users to pay for one option whether they want it or not.
OS X comes with iTunes yet there is no foul play there...
All sorts of people go to school playgrounds and it isn't illegal for them, so convicted child molesters out on parole shouldn't have any trouble going there either.
Luckily, the laws say otherwise. Monopolies can't use their monopoly to create a new one. Apple sells computers and bundles an OS and a mouse and iTunes. They don't have a monopoly on any of those things. MS does have a monopoly on desktop OS's, thus they can't bundle new products with it. If they want to sell the media player as a separate product with financing segregated from Windows that is fine.
89% sounds like a very good success ratio for the date and time test. However, RTFA and you'll see that only eleven people participated, most of them female.
Eleven people is a pretty good sized group for a usability test. This sort of testing is pretty expensive and time consuming, it's not like a survey or something. From a group that size, you can get a pretty good idea of how the average person will try to accomplish a task and some problems they may encounter. I've worked on projects where usability tests included only three people to test the interface to a product costing tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. I'm going to have to disagree that these results are meaningless. The important thing is how did the user who failed try to do the task. What stopped them? What problems did other users have?
Comprehensive is having everything you need in one package, a monopoly is not allowing anyone to provide replacements for parts of that package.
Nope. A monopoly is having enough of a market share for a product or service that their is no effective competition (from a market perspective not a technical one). Windows has dominated the desktop OS space to such an extent it has been ruled a monopoly by the courts in many different countries. Once a company has a monopoly, it is easy for that company to do several things including suppressing any potential competitors and using that monopoly to move into new markets without having to compete fairly. Doing so is illegal.
Example: Ford can give away all the free gas they want with their cars right up until they have a monopoly on either gas or cars. Once they have a monopoly on cars they can make their cars run without gas, but they cannot bundle their cars with gas. There are also restrictions on what they can do to restrict what kinds of gas their cars can use etc.
Right now MS has that monopoly on cars and they just announced they are going to get into the gas market. What they need to avoid, legally, is bundling that gas with the car in any way. It is illegal for them to give anti-virus software away with the OS, provide a discount if a customer buys both, or in any way leverage their current monopoly to help their new product along.
Otherwise most people will still use 3rd party software because a company that only makes security products will probably do a better job.
Abusing a monopoly is all about bypassing competition. Your assumption that MS will compete against other companies is not necessarily the case. If MS gives the product away and includes their costs in the price of Windows, everyone will have to pay for their product whether they want it or not. If they provide discounts for customers who buy both (or bundle both on the computers they sell) their is no fair competition. It is like expecting a fair deal when one party is aiming a gun at another. MS has the power to crush and OEM PC business and as such is in an unfair position to bargain with those companies to get their antivirus pre-installed. And that is what needs to be protected against by the courts.
The fact is, Windows, as terrible as it may be can come with as much [spyware infested] programs as they want, for it's their product.
The fact is, Monopoly Inc.'s product, as terrible as it may be can come with as many bundled other products as they want, for it's their product.
Oh wait, or we could pay attention to all the antitrust laws that have been written and all the economics we have learned in the last 400 years and realize that monopolies tying new products to an existing monopolized product results in them completely bypassing fair trade and competition and results in them taking over more and more markets, products that are inferior (since the benefits of competition no longer apply), products that are unfairly priced (again competition is bypassed), the economy suffering (since one company gets more money than the value of the work/product they provide), the industry suffering (since their is no motivation/oportunity for innovation), and eventually (in theory) a single company taking over all markets.
I take it you slept through your freshman economics course? It is illegal for monopolies to bundle products and that is exactly what MS is doing and has been convicted of doing in the past. Unfortunately all of the punishments and remedies have been largely ineffective.
E.g. suppose MS began to apply formal methods, semi-formal methods, code reviews and so on in an effort to eliminate sources of insecurity -- yet did not sell a single "security" product. Not even a Snort. Would the EU then claim that MS was taking away their oxygen supply of the "security" band-aid selling companies?
No, because their is a fundamental difference between improving an existing product in a market where you have a monopoly and using that existing monopoly to move into a new market. The first is legal, the second is not. If MS improves their OS so that it uses no electricity, that is fine. It has made the product better, and while this will have an adverse effect upon electricity sales, it does not move MS into the electricity market by leveraging their existing monopoly. That is the part the law objects to, because that is the dangerous part of a monopoly and one that removes all the competitive benefits of a free market. What MS cannot (legally) do is start to give away electricity for free with copies of their OS or bundle it in any fashion.
Just off the top of my head I'd say that they are worried about the possibility that future development and bug fixes will go to a closed source branch, that development might grind to a halt as the original developers are reassigned, that the nature of development might change and move in directions not beneficial to Slashdot as a user, or that something else will result from this change.
It is wise to be concerned when you technology provider undergoes a drastic change. The GPL helps, since the project will likely continue as a active, GPL project in any case, but losing most of the experienced developers could really slow things down. That is not to say that it will. In fact, development might speed up and get better. It is just understandable to be concerned.
If Google is caching all the blogs locally so that readers never have to visit a blog site, Google is robbing the bloggers and other site's off their advertising revenue, not to mention the fact that Google is robbing the readers off the experience of seeing good creative graphic design of other sites by showing content in its crappy looking interface.
Boo Hoo. Squid caches things locally too. Your browser caches things locally and a second user might never actually visit the site. Pop-up blockers and browsing with Lynx both deprive sites of ad revenue too, it is not Google's problem. Robbing people of the experience of seeing the great graphic design?!? I really hope you are joking.
Actually, a lot of this is the result of many major hardware players and the trick of making "standards" that are patent encumbered and thus make money for someone. If the government would mandate real, open standards for media to prevent lock in and ensure that media is always readable by everyone, we'd see these groups settle on a single standard because then they would have no financial incentive to push one or another and could compromise on the best technical soultion.
It is more profitable to take a cut from every DVD player sold than it is to just make DVD players based upon a common standard that have to actually compete based on quality and price. Thus, both the new standards and the regular DVD standard in the U.S. are patent encumbered and require licensing. China is not interested in paying extra fees just to have a player compatible with what particular companies are trying to push, thus a new (hopefully patent/licensing free standard). Considering China manufactures the majority of players anyway, it will be interesting to see if being an open standard, cheaper, and supported by the government of the manufacturer is enough for them to dictate a new format.
Stealing is inappropriately acquiring someone else's property. Note that the type of property is NOT specified.
No, stealing is taking someone else's property without permission. This strongly implies that they no longer have it. But that has nothing to do with what we are discussing. The copyright infringement they are trying to stop, and which is illegal, is re-publishing material, not copying or stealing.
Your using their product, but you didn't pay for it, so they're out x$.
Your argument is not logical. If I walk into a store, scan a loaf of bread with my hi-tech scanner, leave the store, and assemble 5 new loaves of bread identical to the one in the store and give them away I have not taken or stolen anything from the store. I have created five new loaves of bread. This is the same situation with a television show, except they have a law that says I can't use their recipe except in certain circumstances. Has the store lost anything? They did not get paid, but they still have their bread. You might say, "but some of the people you gave that bread to may or may not have otherwise bought bread, thus the store lost the potential for a sale." This is quite possibly true, but it is not my responsibility, nor the government's to insure that store does well and that everyone purchases bread there. Trying to legally enforce, and place monetary value on potential, future sales is a road to disaster. By the same logic you could be sued for walking in front of an advertisement because during that time potential viewers could not see it and thus the subject of the advertisement lost potential sales. Unless you have some way of proving someone who downloads a particular work would otherwise have purchased it that argument fails.
2.4KB or the whole file, it does not matter. he still stole stuff they didn't want him to.
Stole? That would imply theft. This was copyright infringement he was notified of, hence he re-published something. He did not steal.
Amazing to me nowadays that people even have to argue whether stealing a partial file is still stealing. Fair Use doesn't cover this.
Fair Use does not cover a given 10% of a work or less in the U.S. as the previous poster implied (I believe it does in the U.K.). What it does cover is "amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole" which is one test this particular use passes. The other three tests (noncommercial use, nature of work, and effect on market) are arguable cases, but I imagine any decent lawyer should be able to defend him should it come to that.
HBO has made it F'ing clear they don't want your grubby little paws on their software / media. And yet you argue.
Tough titties. Burger King does not want me to obtain food from any other location. Who cares what they want, copyright is a codified restriction on free speech and only restricts certain types of copying. This is unlikely to be one of them.
Sorry, some of believe in fighting for our rights, especially against abusive cartels who use the legal system to harass and financially drain individuals with barratry and other blatantly illegal tactics. The RIAA and MPAA are going to lose big on some of these cases because they are not playing by the rules and because attention brought to this issue will not be good PR for them.
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Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly on desktop computer operating systems.
Name one company that sells desktop computer operating systems as their core business.
Apple sells hardware and includes an OS and they sell boxed OS's that can only be used upgrade existing Apple hardware.
IBM sells hardware, support and services (PPC as well as X86). They give away Linux and BSDs.
Redhat sells support, and give away Linux.
Sun sells hardware with an included OS.
...and so on. It is true that Apple sells desktop OS's, but only as a tertiary market supported by and as an incentive for their hardware business. They are significant as a hardware vendor, but insignificant in the Desktop OS market.
I bought a copy of XP Pro last year, so you could argue that the cost of WMP 9 was included, but I have since downloaded WMP 10 for free.
Do you truly believe that MS develops and gives away their media player at no cost? Whenever anyone buys Windows or a computer preloaded with Windows MS collects money. All that money goes into one pot, from which they pay for the development of WMP. If you use Windows or even buy a PC without windows from a major vendor you are paying for WMP whether you want to or or not. That is what bundling is all about, moving the cost from something you might buy from something you have to buy.
A typicly[sic] rabid anti-microsoft community is placing RMP in an even worse light. True, this >could
Is this some sort of typo?
Customers are still free to choose what ever 3rd party tools they want. Or are you suggesting that Ford should start shipping cars with out exhaust so I can have the dealer install the specific exhaust system I want?
First, Ford is not a monopoly. Second and exhaust system is integral to the operation of a car, while a media player is not integral to the operation of an OS. Are you saying if Ford did gain a monopoly on cars (you have to buy a car from them if you want to drive) you would not mind if they included a "free" refrigerator and charged a few thousand more for every car as a result?
This is the part where I say, "Who said life is fair?"
I dunno, Pol Pot?? This is a very weak cop out. Having fair competition is important to consumers so they get a good deal, to the economy so money is not directed to those who do no work, and to technology to provide incentive for innovation. Are you trying to imply that we shouldn't enforce the laws on the books that establish a fair market?
But being a monopoly is not illegal. If MS actively pushed any PC vendors to not include RMP, it would be a violation. If MS purposely designed their system to break RMP, it would be a violation. If MS packages a (widely accepted as) superior product with a product, that's called added value and is a simple part of marketing.
It is true being a monopoly is not illegal, but bundling is specifically listed as an illegal act for a monopoly and even cited as an example.
If someone does not want the MS add ons, they can buy the MS Windows lite (or what ever it is called) that does not include WMP or IE.
That is not good enough since it is not offered in all markets, has other, serious limitations, and does not provide a fair breakdown of price vs. features. You can buy your Ford car (monopoly example again) without a refrigerator and we'll even give it to you for $50 cheaper; oh and it only has a two gallon gas tank on that model. Sorry, not good enough.
Oddly enough, sales of this consumer liberating version of the OS have been very poor.
I think I already covered this above.
Too bad it is not fair competition.
MS does not have a monopoly over all aspects of everything digital, they have a monopoly in the OS and Browser markets. If they use their power in the those markets to destroy their competition, have at them. But in this situation, it's a simple case of the free market moving away from the least desired good.
Nope, this is a classic case of bundling, which is anti-competative behavior and the single most dangerous aspect of a monopoly (that it will spread to other markets). Please educate yourself by reading the anti-trust statutes. This is exactly the behavior they are designed to stop because, whatever you think, bundling a monopolized product and one in another market is very much not fair trade.
So you tell me.. What is this "Operating System" thing. Because I don't think you know. Because I always thought an Operating System is the kernel and layers of services and applications on top of it. Its the overall user experience.
Your definition is open-ended and unspecific. Heck hardware could easily be included in "the overall user experience." I reject your definition, but I understand the point you are making. It is difficult to define an OS, in terms of the way most people think of them and still have a technologic definition. Luckily, that is not necessary. Monopolies are defined in terms of markets and markets are defined by the flow of money. MS is moving into a new market with media players because their is money to be made and people currently making money in that market. Creating an improved filesystem is unlikely to fun afoul of antitrust laws because it is an integral part of the system, because one already existed before MS gained a monopoly, and because their is no market for desktop filesystems. Building advanced searching is likewise an improvement of already existing searching. Media players, browsers, and office suites are in no way integral to an operating system and each has a market outside the OS market (or did). Another argument can be made for items "grandfathered." That is to say, Windows includes a partition tool, which is needed and which has been included for a very long time.
Maybe MS should drop .NET because it competes with Java. I don't know.. probably
Nope, they just should not bundle it. You know companies can sell multiple products without bundling them all together.
So you're telling me, a user friendly, mass-market operating system should not even come with an application to support rudimentary audio-playback by default? Or should it come with one, but be crippled enough that users will hate it and look for alternatives?
Who said anything about users? The OS should not ship with a media player at all. If MS wants to create a media player, that is just fine and if Dell wants to include that media player on all the computers they sell that is fine too. The point is MS should have to compete on equal footing with all the other media player creators when talking to Dell. They should not be able to bundle it or force Dell to include it and none of their competitors as rumors in the industry claim Real has proof was happening.
Truth is Real sucks ass and they are doing this only because they can. $750 million is incentitve enough to cry anyone a river.
The truth is MS sucks ass even more and broke the law because they could and have shut down and locked out more small companies than anyone can count. Most of the companies they have illegally destroyed will never have the legal muscle to get a settlement and $750 million is a pittance compared to the billions they have profited from their illegal activities.
Electric companies are government ordained monopolies hence they are not subject to market pressure. If MS raised Windows price to $5000, Linux/Apple adoption would sky-rocket. This MS monopoly garbage is rediculous since MS has to tread really really slowly not to lose market share, if it f@cks up there is competition to replace it.
MS is already hundreds of dollars more expensive than their competitors. It is true that they cannot extract more money than people can pay, but they can charge more than fair value. As to your argument about a government imposed monopoly vs a regular monopoly, these laws were created to deal with regular monopolies the likes of Standard Oil and AT&T. The market pressures are just the same, except it does not leave room for argument about whether MS is a monopoly. Every court that has tried the issue has found MS to be a monopoly, and thus able to use bundling to unfairly market new products in new areas. If you don't agree, well I'm afraid you are just about the biggest MS apologizer I have ever seen. I'm sorry you can't see how much damage they have done and how much they have held back the advancement of the computing industry.
Actually I believe it's Real who is bypassing the competition here through the socialist EU.
Please stop watching Fox news.
The EU is about as socialist as the U.S., except for health care. In any case both the U.S. and the EU have very similar antitrust laws and both found MS guilty of antitrust violations. I believe this settlement applies to either MS's liability in the U.S. or in both the u.S. and the EU. This is a civil suit against MS which has already lost the criminal cases in both jurisdictions. How does this have anything to do with socialism?
Wait, what do RedHat/Linspire/Novell/SUSE/etc do then? Seems to me they make and OS to be solde[sic] and bundled with computers...
Redhat, Suse, and Novell all give away their OS for free (it is GPL). They sell support and services and hardware for that OS and that is how they make their money. Linspire does sell their OS in addition to giving it away, with the goal of pre-installing it on PC's but in such small quantities that it has no noticeable effect on the market. In fact, last I heard this was only available from Wal-mart's online store and sales had been very, very few. Remember, MS was declared a monopoly based upon there effects upon the market. This does not preclude others from offering OS's for sale (OS2, BeOS, or some other). It just precludes them being successful and having an influence on the desktop OS market.
Other then having a considerable market share advantage over Apple, Apple shows more of monopolistic traits then MS.
You keep using that word... I do not think it means, what you think it means. Overwhelmingly large market share is the only trait of being a monopoly.
As for what bundles with MS, unless you are buying the stand-alone version of MS, it is up to the computer store selling it to you. When I bought my Toshiba laptop and dell laptop it came with a TON of non-MS products.
...and it also came with a bunch of MS programs that neither Toshiba or the store had any choice to not sell to you.
And if MS has to sell their media player separately, then so does Apple - that is fair.
How many times does the concept of a monopoly and bundling have to be explained here? One more time:
Apple does not have a monopoly on anything. They can bundle whatever they want. Anyone can sell cars and gas or cars and gas, provided they don't have a monopoly because there is no barrier to entry for other companies. Any company that wants to can write an OS and build computers and build a media player, bundle them and sell them together. Any company that wants cannot create a desktop OS and a media player, bundle them, and sell them to compete with MS, because they have too much market share, technological restrictions, and business deals as the result of their monopoly for any company to compete with them. Several companies have created arguably better OS's and been unable to bring them to market because of MS's position. As a result of this everyone who buys a computer has to buy Windows (or a large enough percentage that the market responds in that way). Since everyone has to buy Windows they can (illegally) force those people to buy other products as well by bundling them. This means they can charge what they want and produce an inferior product to the competition and most people will still be forced to buy it. This is unfair to competitors in this new market (media players).
True, once you have already paid for their competing product. Monopolistic bundling bypasses competition and all the advantages thereof. It retards the incentive for innovation and reduced prices. If the electric company (a local monopoly) were to start giving away free lifetime supplies of cheese with every account and then raised the cost of everyone's electric bill to cover the cost that would be unfair. It forces all their customers to buy a lifetime supply of cheese. Most cheese sellers would have to stop competing in that market. Sure there would still be sales of specialty and gourmet cheese in small quantities, but not much. Also, the electric companies cheese, not being subject to competition, only needs to be good enough that people won't pay for both electric company cheese and cheese from somewhere else as well, and in any case the electric company gets paid. That does not mean it should be illegal for manufacturers of battleships to give a free lifetime supply of cheese and a free car with every battleship, provided they do not have a monopoly on any of those products.
Now the above was a somewhat silly example, but hopefully it illustrates the problem for you.
Never has been. I have never purchased WMP, Winamp, or Real MP. No one's sales have been hurt by Microsoft's actions (by my actions at least).
You haven't bought a copy of Windows or PC hardware from and major vendor in a while then huh? If you did, like most people, you would have paid for WMP without knowing or having a choice. Heck some retailers charge you for and pass the money on to MS when you buy a mac (or at least used to).
RMP sales have been hurt for two reasons, 1) it is an inferior product, and 2) it has a very poor image.
That is a fine assertion, but there is no way to prove that and no way to know how the market would have shaped things had their been competition. Most likely all players would be better for consumers since they would have to fairly compete for business.
Using your logic, the makers of TextPad should be able to sue Microsoft for including NotePad in their OS. But they don't. They produce a supirior[sic] product and compete with microsoft.
...and there is your proof that the market is not operating properly. The makers of TextPad should not have to make a superior product to beat MS, just and equal or superior product. In truth they have to make product so much better than what MS make that people have to be willing to pay the cost of both programs just to get the better one. Can you honestly say the consumer would not be better off if MS have to compete with the makers of TextPad based upon features? Picture a world where MS and a hundred other vendors all submit bids on text editors, web browsers, e-mail applications, office suites, etc. to Dell (and all the other OEMs) who then bundles one or more of those applications based upon what their customers want and the cost. That is called a fair market.
Produce a supirior[sic], or hell, even similarly performing application, and they could have competed with Microsoft.
I disagree, as do pretty much all economists. They have to produce a product that is better by so much that people who have already been forced to pay for the cost of one program will still pay for the second one. That is not fair competition. MS introduced significant barriers to entry in the desktop OS market and succeeded. They have a monopoly. Monopolies can be used to bypass fair competition, but need not be used to do so. It is illegal to use them in this way. MS knowingly decided to break the law, and make consumers suffer financially and technology suffer by removing the innovation that results from competition. As a result they must pay. The problem is, not every company in every niche they are taking over has the money to continue to exist and fight MS in court, so MS is still profiting from their crimes and plans to continue with them.
Well see MS was not declared a monopoly until court pronounced it as such. So what are companies supposed to do until then?
Your first sentence is kind of silly. MS was a monopoly long before they were found to be such by the courts. A company is legally a monopoly based upon their effect on the market, which MS was well aware of.
The way I look at it, if Apple bundles iTunes with their OS, and MS competes with them, they should be allowed to do the same.
Ahh, but Apple does not compete with them. Apple sells computers and bundles an OS as incentive. Sure they sell boxed sets of their OS, but in very small numbers and only as upgrades to existing customers who bought a computer. Other companies also sell computers with OS's, or support with OS's or services with OS's. No one sells OS's by themselves to be bundled with computers because one company has locked everyone else out of that market.
Of course the problem is how to protect companies like Real wants to compete with Apple and MS, on particular part of their OS. There are no good answers that treats everyone fairly.
We have a tried and true method for that, it is called a fair market. You see Apple can sell whatever they want on whatever platform they want. They can include code to eliminate Real on their OS. That is just fine, because their is nothing stopping Real from getting into the OS and computer hardware business, or partnering with others in that business and competing with Apple. The problem only occurs when you run into a monopoly. Real can't create their own OS and compete with Windows on fair ground, because MS's market share, business contracts, and technological mechanisms prevent them from doing so. Everyone is playing by the same rules here and you can damn well bet MS knew about antitrust laws long before they were in any danger of breaking them. They chose to go for lock-in, intentionally break the laws, and settle the lawsuits as their business model. That is their choice, and they are not deserving of any sympathy for the results of that choice.
OS X includes iTunes, and nobody complains about that. Most Linux distros include XMMS, and nobody cries.
The makers of those OS's don't have monopolies. Sheesh, how can there be so many people on Slashdot that don't understand the legal or economic difference between bundling products and bundling products with a monopolized product?
They lost a market they created due to poor management and bad software.
Yup, Real did a lot of crap that I, as a customer did not like. The question is, did they do those things out of desperation because they were being driven out of business by anti-competative actions? We will never know the answer to that, nor what would have happened if the market had been allowed to decide. Instead we have to deal with what MS has given us. We don't let armed robbers go because they robbed a jaywalker. The problem is these settlements don't work either. Instead of MS being properly punished and a forced change in it's behavior, we get financial settlements where they pay off the victims with money gained from their crimes against other victims. Guess who is really paying. MS's customers.
It does look like a feeding frenzy at Microsoft's expense. Most of their competitors failed because of inferior programs.
Well, if MS wants to compete fairly, they can easily avoid these problems in future simply by offering these programs as separate purchases without discounts for bundling them together. Better yet, they could spin off their applications divisions and bid alongside Real, Mozilla, Apple, and Sun for programs to be included on OEM PCs. If MS is not willing to play fair, then customers suffer and MS will keep losing these big settlements.
Real media played about as unfairly as Microsoft. If I remember right once something is put as a RM, it's as safe as a PDF, you can share it but you can't copy it easily (yes I know there's ways to copy anything but there's no converter from RM to change it back to a AVI from real, and most out there are hack jobs, that the DMCA would be able to stop)
How can Real play as unfairly as MS? Did they bundle their software with some monopoly I haven't heard about? As for RM, you're mostly right, although they have opened some of the codec, but you seem to have weird ideas about PDFs. PDF is a completely open spec that can be viewed and edited by any number of programs.
Perhaps their problems arn't from Microsoft but from their lack of quality for so long.
Perhaps, but thanks to MS's illegal, anti-competitive behavior the market has not been given the opportunity to make that determination.
Real released a crappy product with a shady web site. I think it's a shame to capitalism that the better product will be funding the lessor product in this case.
Then perhaps MS should have competed on the quality of their product, instead of illegally bypassing competition and bundling their product with their monopoly. Your opinion is that WMP is better than Realplayer, but it is not up to you or MS to decide what product deserves to be purchased. It should be left to market forces to decide, based upon honest competition between the two products. Those market forces cannot act when a monopoly is used to "force" all users to pay for one option whether they want it or not.
OS X comes with iTunes yet there is no foul play there...
All sorts of people go to school playgrounds and it isn't illegal for them, so convicted child molesters out on parole shouldn't have any trouble going there either.
Luckily, the laws say otherwise. Monopolies can't use their monopoly to create a new one. Apple sells computers and bundles an OS and a mouse and iTunes. They don't have a monopoly on any of those things. MS does have a monopoly on desktop OS's, thus they can't bundle new products with it. If they want to sell the media player as a separate product with financing segregated from Windows that is fine.
incompatible java technology? how the fuck did they manage that?
...by shipping a Microsoft created JVM that intentionally broke the java standard.
89% sounds like a very good success ratio for the date and time test. However, RTFA and you'll see that only eleven people participated, most of them female.
Eleven people is a pretty good sized group for a usability test. This sort of testing is pretty expensive and time consuming, it's not like a survey or something. From a group that size, you can get a pretty good idea of how the average person will try to accomplish a task and some problems they may encounter. I've worked on projects where usability tests included only three people to test the interface to a product costing tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. I'm going to have to disagree that these results are meaningless. The important thing is how did the user who failed try to do the task. What stopped them? What problems did other users have?
Comprehensive is having everything you need in one package, a monopoly is not allowing anyone to provide replacements for parts of that package.
Nope. A monopoly is having enough of a market share for a product or service that their is no effective competition (from a market perspective not a technical one). Windows has dominated the desktop OS space to such an extent it has been ruled a monopoly by the courts in many different countries. Once a company has a monopoly, it is easy for that company to do several things including suppressing any potential competitors and using that monopoly to move into new markets without having to compete fairly. Doing so is illegal.
Example: Ford can give away all the free gas they want with their cars right up until they have a monopoly on either gas or cars. Once they have a monopoly on cars they can make their cars run without gas, but they cannot bundle their cars with gas. There are also restrictions on what they can do to restrict what kinds of gas their cars can use etc.
Right now MS has that monopoly on cars and they just announced they are going to get into the gas market. What they need to avoid, legally, is bundling that gas with the car in any way. It is illegal for them to give anti-virus software away with the OS, provide a discount if a customer buys both, or in any way leverage their current monopoly to help their new product along.
Otherwise most people will still use 3rd party software because a company that only makes security products will probably do a better job.
Abusing a monopoly is all about bypassing competition. Your assumption that MS will compete against other companies is not necessarily the case. If MS gives the product away and includes their costs in the price of Windows, everyone will have to pay for their product whether they want it or not. If they provide discounts for customers who buy both (or bundle both on the computers they sell) their is no fair competition. It is like expecting a fair deal when one party is aiming a gun at another. MS has the power to crush and OEM PC business and as such is in an unfair position to bargain with those companies to get their antivirus pre-installed. And that is what needs to be protected against by the courts.
The fact is, Windows, as terrible as it may be can come with as much [spyware infested] programs as they want, for it's their product.
The fact is, Monopoly Inc.'s product, as terrible as it may be can come with as many bundled other products as they want, for it's their product.
Oh wait, or we could pay attention to all the antitrust laws that have been written and all the economics we have learned in the last 400 years and realize that monopolies tying new products to an existing monopolized product results in them completely bypassing fair trade and competition and results in them taking over more and more markets, products that are inferior (since the benefits of competition no longer apply), products that are unfairly priced (again competition is bypassed), the economy suffering (since one company gets more money than the value of the work/product they provide), the industry suffering (since their is no motivation/oportunity for innovation), and eventually (in theory) a single company taking over all markets.
I take it you slept through your freshman economics course? It is illegal for monopolies to bundle products and that is exactly what MS is doing and has been convicted of doing in the past. Unfortunately all of the punishments and remedies have been largely ineffective.
E.g. suppose MS began to apply formal methods, semi-formal methods, code reviews and so on in an effort to eliminate sources of insecurity -- yet did not sell a single "security" product. Not even a Snort. Would the EU then claim that MS was taking away their oxygen supply of the "security" band-aid selling companies?
No, because their is a fundamental difference between improving an existing product in a market where you have a monopoly and using that existing monopoly to move into a new market. The first is legal, the second is not. If MS improves their OS so that it uses no electricity, that is fine. It has made the product better, and while this will have an adverse effect upon electricity sales, it does not move MS into the electricity market by leveraging their existing monopoly. That is the part the law objects to, because that is the dangerous part of a monopoly and one that removes all the competitive benefits of a free market. What MS cannot (legally) do is start to give away electricity for free with copies of their OS or bundle it in any fashion.
Shut up. They are listening. The last thing we want is for them to realize every third page in the books we read are not ads.
Why? InnoDB is GPL'ed.
Just off the top of my head I'd say that they are worried about the possibility that future development and bug fixes will go to a closed source branch, that development might grind to a halt as the original developers are reassigned, that the nature of development might change and move in directions not beneficial to Slashdot as a user, or that something else will result from this change.
It is wise to be concerned when you technology provider undergoes a drastic change. The GPL helps, since the project will likely continue as a active, GPL project in any case, but losing most of the experienced developers could really slow things down. That is not to say that it will. In fact, development might speed up and get better. It is just understandable to be concerned.
If Google is caching all the blogs locally so that readers never have to visit a blog site, Google is robbing the bloggers and other site's off their advertising revenue, not to mention the fact that Google is robbing the readers off the experience of seeing good creative graphic design of other sites by showing content in its crappy looking interface.
Boo Hoo. Squid caches things locally too. Your browser caches things locally and a second user might never actually visit the site. Pop-up blockers and browsing with Lynx both deprive sites of ad revenue too, it is not Google's problem. Robbing people of the experience of seeing the great graphic design?!? I really hope you are joking.
Actually, a lot of this is the result of many major hardware players and the trick of making "standards" that are patent encumbered and thus make money for someone. If the government would mandate real, open standards for media to prevent lock in and ensure that media is always readable by everyone, we'd see these groups settle on a single standard because then they would have no financial incentive to push one or another and could compromise on the best technical soultion.
It is more profitable to take a cut from every DVD player sold than it is to just make DVD players based upon a common standard that have to actually compete based on quality and price. Thus, both the new standards and the regular DVD standard in the U.S. are patent encumbered and require licensing. China is not interested in paying extra fees just to have a player compatible with what particular companies are trying to push, thus a new (hopefully patent/licensing free standard). Considering China manufactures the majority of players anyway, it will be interesting to see if being an open standard, cheaper, and supported by the government of the manufacturer is enough for them to dictate a new format.
Stealing is inappropriately acquiring someone else's property. Note that the type of property is NOT specified.
No, stealing is taking someone else's property without permission. This strongly implies that they no longer have it. But that has nothing to do with what we are discussing. The copyright infringement they are trying to stop, and which is illegal, is re-publishing material, not copying or stealing.
Your using their product, but you didn't pay for it, so they're out x$.
Your argument is not logical. If I walk into a store, scan a loaf of bread with my hi-tech scanner, leave the store, and assemble 5 new loaves of bread identical to the one in the store and give them away I have not taken or stolen anything from the store. I have created five new loaves of bread. This is the same situation with a television show, except they have a law that says I can't use their recipe except in certain circumstances. Has the store lost anything? They did not get paid, but they still have their bread. You might say, "but some of the people you gave that bread to may or may not have otherwise bought bread, thus the store lost the potential for a sale." This is quite possibly true, but it is not my responsibility, nor the government's to insure that store does well and that everyone purchases bread there. Trying to legally enforce, and place monetary value on potential, future sales is a road to disaster. By the same logic you could be sued for walking in front of an advertisement because during that time potential viewers could not see it and thus the subject of the advertisement lost potential sales. Unless you have some way of proving someone who downloads a particular work would otherwise have purchased it that argument fails.
2.4KB or the whole file, it does not matter. he still stole stuff they didn't want him to.
Stole? That would imply theft. This was copyright infringement he was notified of, hence he re-published something. He did not steal.
Amazing to me nowadays that people even have to argue whether stealing a partial file is still stealing. Fair Use doesn't cover this.
Fair Use does not cover a given 10% of a work or less in the U.S. as the previous poster implied (I believe it does in the U.K.). What it does cover is "amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole" which is one test this particular use passes. The other three tests (noncommercial use, nature of work, and effect on market) are arguable cases, but I imagine any decent lawyer should be able to defend him should it come to that.
HBO has made it F'ing clear they don't want your grubby little paws on their software / media. And yet you argue.
Tough titties. Burger King does not want me to obtain food from any other location. Who cares what they want, copyright is a codified restriction on free speech and only restricts certain types of copying. This is unlikely to be one of them.
Sorry, some of believe in fighting for our rights, especially against abusive cartels who use the legal system to harass and financially drain individuals with barratry and other blatantly illegal tactics. The RIAA and MPAA are going to lose big on some of these cases because they are not playing by the rules and because attention brought to this issue will not be good PR for them.