OK, I actually agree with you. Anti-trust is horribly arbitrary. There are times when it should be used, but it is a pretty flawed law. The idea behind it is good, but its implementation is pretty much crap. Here is actually a pretty good article about the problems with anti-trust (actually the link is to part 4 or a 4 part article).
Anyway, if what Intel has been accused of is true I think this would be good use of anti-trust law. That said I like their products and am frustrated at how hard it can be to find a PC with AMD. The previous statement clearly shows I'm a bit biased, but perhaps also shows there is something to this case. If customers want a product but have trouble finding people to provide it, there is something else happening which is screwing up the natural principles of supply-and-demand.
Not really. Most anti-trust laws don't care if you are a monopoly or not. They are simply about anti-competitive practices. Now historically, a majority of companies found guilty of anti-trust laws were probably monopolies (since monopolies have the most chances to be anti-competitive) but being a monopoly is by no means required. Market share is certainly a factor, but by no means must they be a monopoly to be found guilty of anti-trust.
I think making a great product that enough people want so they'll voluntarily agree to your terms, thereby drawing market share away from your competitors is extremely competitive.
I think holding a gun to someones head so they'll voluntarily agree to my terms, thereby giving me all thier money is extremely fair!
Ya know what, I think both or our use of the word "voluntarily" is a bit strange.
First, RTFA and see what they are being accused of! It seems you have NO idea what the article is about or what has been pretty widely discussed of Intels practices for years.
AMD is having trouble competing because they sell the same damn thing as Intel, but Intel can afford to sell it cheaper.
Where did you get that?;-) Historically AMD has always been much cheaper for the same level of performance. The last year or two AMD has been raising prices a bit, but any honest comparison would have a hard time showing Intel being cheaper. Yes, if you currently compare both thier top level chips AMD is quite a bit more expensive but that is a horribly unfair comparison! For a more fair comparison you need to compare chips from both lines with similar performance. Right now AMD's top-of-the-line single core and daul core chips blow away Intels best in those markets. To be fair depending on what you are doing with the chip Intel is cheaper price/performance for some tasks, but for most tasks AMD is basically the same or cheaper. For a fair comparision in price/performance you need to compare the price of AMD 2nd (in some cases 3rd) tier chips with Intels best chips.
No idea how that got moded Interesting, much more like troll.
Intel doesn't have a monopoly
First is the obvious point that this is irrelevant! Anti-trust laws have no requirement you have to be a monopoly to be guilty of anti-trust behaviour! Anti-trust is about trade practices that undermine competitiveness or are considered to be unfair. Intel is certainly guilty of this.
Second is if its OK for Intel to use anti-competitive behaviour why not MS? Neither have 100% market share. What percent market share does it start being wrong to use anti-competitive tactics in your mind?
I'm glad MS got busted for these EXACT SAME anti-trust practices (prefered pricing for only using their product) and I hope Intel will as well.
I've got a funny feeling the GP wasn't meant to be a direct transcription from his conversation;-) I cannot believe you actually thought the entire thing was a verbatum replay of the conversation! Its pretty clear he is trying to convey that at least of the time they spoke to him they really had no answers to the most basic questions reguarding the service.
If this conversation really happend or not I don't know, but having three words you don't think are a direct quote from Google when its pretty clear the whole thing isn't a direct quote as a reason to question the sentiment behind post seems illogical. Of course they didn't say exactly that. I'd highly doubt they said EXACTLY anything attributed to them above, but I wouldn't be at all suprised if the basic concepts are pretty accurate.
Wish I had mod points! Thank you very much for explaining this in a rational way!!!!! While I still don't see such things as the incarnation of evil some do, at least this helps me to understand the basis of those feelings! Very well written and again, thank you!
First, thanks for the reply. By FAR the best reply thus far (most others are the predictable "MS sucks thats why" type reply;-)
without going through the proper channels which were created to avoid such mishaps
This is exactly what I'm curious about. What are those channels? Are you supposed to submit this to a standards body and wait or is there some other way to handle this?
This isn't meant to defend anyone or deamonize anyone, just an honest question (I realize/. isn't the place for that type of thing;-)
MS always gets kicked around (especially here) for doing things like this, so my question is: If a company is developing a product (RSS product seems an obvious example), and after exploring and using the standard meant for that type of product they see additional functionality which would be useful but isn't covered by the standards. What SHOULD they do? Just forget about additional functionality and live with the standard? Submit a request to the standard body, hope they agree, and wait for it to become part of the standard?
I'm honestly curious about this because this type of action by MS is fuzzy in my head. Is it really that bad? What should they do?
Actually, its the opposite. ALL actions have consequences. Have you thought through the actual realistic consequences of your "simple solution". I guess maybe your thinking a threat of expulsion would cause the VAST majority of kids to not do it. I can tell you that isn't realistic! A more realistic consequence to this plan is what I said in the previous post. Lower college graduation rates, lower average income rates, more poverty, more drugs.
The "war on drugs" is one of the all time stupidest ideas we've ever had. Sure it sounds nice and makes people want to vote for you but again from a practical standpoint every step we've taken in the "war" has only compounded the issue. And these stupid steps (like your plan) basically just consintrate on harsher punishments assuming harsher punishments will change peoples behaviour. Today because of things like "mandatory minimums" and "three strike" rules created to increase punishments in the "war" you will get more prison time for being caught a few times with a couple grams of powder in your pocket than you will for killing someone. And guess what, these CRAZY punishment increases haven't ended drug use (or even really made a difference). These extra punishments have just resulted in the US having one of the highest prisiner per population rates in the world and have turned areas of high drug use into literal killing fields.
Now all of this whole arguement is really crazy because it all began with an unproven assumption. That is "drugs are bad". People start with this assumption, but really have no basis for it. All things can be bad if abused, but drugs like anything else can be fine in moderation. However, like during prohobition some in the government decided to tell others how to live and because of it we have suffered through decades of increased crime and poverty.
As for drugs I have a simple solution to that problem. Expulsion.
You hear that sound? Its every drug dealer in the country laughing thier asses off;-) Yes, kicking kids out of college for drinking should end all demand for drugs and alchohol. I'm sure of it! LOL!!!!!
Of course then the US will have record low enrollment in colleges and record high enrollment in welfare and drug dealers won't be able to keep up with demand, but besides that it seems a very good plan;-)
Completely agree! Russound/Niles/Nuvo/etc/etc systems are WAY beyond this system for the price. There are TONS of options to add WAY more oohs-and-ahhs (including the LCD remotes) by integrating with a good HA system like Homeseer.
Statistics are fun aren't they. Your 4 year stat of course is a result of the massive upturn after 9/11 and in no way a reflection on the more recent facts.
Here is one of tons of articles explaining the situation. If you think recruiting is going so well you really need to just do a bit of research on it. However, here is a quote that may give you some idea.
Last month, army recruitment chief General Michael Rochelle admitted that recruiting was a harder struggle than at any time in the 33 years of his career.
That's bullshit. I design all pages using firefox, then validate them. They always look fine in IE and all the other browsers.
Sorry, but how is my statement bullshit? If you took from my previous statement that I was saying everyone designs for IE, then sorry I wasn't trying to say that. I was just trying to reply to the GP who was asking why developers don't always use the standards. What part of my inital post do you find to be bullshit? Perhaps I'm overlooking something and part of it is bullshit (don't know what part it could be though). However, basically saying "Bullshit, I design for FireFox" isn't helping me see the flaw in my post.
The biggest problem with that is, the goal of webdesigners is to basically make an attractive site (to the highest percentage of viewers as practical). There is no browser which is 100% standards compliant, so going with the official standards isn't that practical since there are no browsers which fully support the standards. The practical solution (like it or not) is build for the defacto standard (the browser with 90% market share).
I bought Windows Media Center 2003 at Fry's
Windows Media Center 2003 has never been available for retail purchase as just software. It only is available pre-installed on a computer.
the validation key is printed on the outside of the package The activation codes are on the outside of the CD case which is inside a sealed box.
and says that _every_ copy of WinXP now has to be validated over the phone I've NEVER had to validate over the phone and have probably installed about 50 WinXP installs which requried validation.
In conclusion, you are a lieing FUD mongering ass-monkey. Have a nice day.
Perhaps now is the time to hit them with a first strike!
I think the US has thier own issues to work out. A Russian sub launches an ICBM and nobody knows where it went or what happened to it???? Hello! Norad! You awake???
Yeah, my favorite line in the patents is: The invention resides not in any one of these features per se, but rather in the particular combination of all of them herein disclosed and claimed and it is distinguished from the prior art in this particular combination of all of its structures for the functions specified.
So they admit they haven't invented anything, but they got a patent because of the amazingly innovative combination of those features like choosing a track combined with then playing the track. WOW!!!!!!!!
How does MS propose to turn this into a profit-generating venture?
They don't. There is no such product. Calling it vaporware doesn't even fit as they've never said there would be a product. MS does tons of research in tons of areas. This was just one research paper in the area of file sharing.
There is no code, there is no product, this is just a academic research paper discussing theoritical methods for very effiecent P2P file sharing. Thats it.
Yes, IE is a closed source app. You cannot make a drop in replacement for windows explorer either or the file system (NTFS), or device manager, or really any other component of windows. Prior to.NET almost every application for windows was tied to specific MS components that couldn't be replaced by 3rd part drop-ins. With.NET this is going away to a point since it is standards based. However, this is still the minority. I realize that isn't popular, but thats the nature of proprietary software. Sure they may have a few standards based apps, where you can but for the most part thats just the part of the deal with proprietary software. Thats why many will avoid it. Why is it that its OK for developers to use the MS VB runtime, MS C libraries, etc which cannot be replaced, but not a browser component? I agree, it'd be nice if it was all open, but its not and I cannot see a real problem with that. As a developer, I'd much rather have common proprietary component I can count on being there instead of having nothing or having to install my own and hope no other app installs the same app but a different version as part of there setup thus breaking mine.
Sure I'd be cool if it was open, but its not. Doesn't really effect me as long as its there.
Yes, but that implementation is code right? And that code will expose the "browser" functionality. BTW, these implementations are usually,.ocx,.dll, etc.... Reguardless there will be files that are the API and these files will be the compiled code to expose the browser functionality.
Now if we agree this is needed, whats the big deal if it has its own GUI to run as stand-alone? Is it just that this has to be OSS so you can see it all?
Also, I hope your ADSL modem/Router gave you instructions on how to configure via telnet or your FTP won't help much. The bastard vendors of mine insist I use some friendly browser based tools to configure mine so I couldn't use FTP anyway.
Luckily, I still have a regular modem in my PC so I could sign-up for dial-up service I guess. Then I could download FF via ftp on the dail-up (what fun that will be). Then all I'll have to do is convince my dial-up company to let me out of my one year contract and switch back over to ADSL.
Congrats, you've just set the PC user experience back at least 20 years because you were pissed you couldn't uninstall one piece of software;-)
There is no code involved in an API? Then what does your code using the API talk to? I thought your code must be talking to other code, I guess there must just be some "magic" stuff your code talks to that isn't code;-)
I guess we could forget about browser stuff and every developer could just go native implement thier own browser logic on top of tcp/ip.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, I actually agree with you. Anti-trust is horribly arbitrary. There are times when it should be used, but it is a pretty flawed law. The idea behind it is good, but its implementation is pretty much crap. Here is actually a pretty good article about the problems with anti-trust (actually the link is to part 4 or a 4 part article).
Anyway, if what Intel has been accused of is true I think this would be good use of anti-trust law. That said I like their products and am frustrated at how hard it can be to find a PC with AMD. The previous statement clearly shows I'm a bit biased, but perhaps also shows there is something to this case. If customers want a product but have trouble finding people to provide it, there is something else happening which is screwing up the natural principles of supply-and-demand.
Not really. Most anti-trust laws don't care if you are a monopoly or not. They are simply about anti-competitive practices. Now historically, a majority of companies found guilty of anti-trust laws were probably monopolies (since monopolies have the most chances to be anti-competitive) but being a monopoly is by no means required. Market share is certainly a factor, but by no means must they be a monopoly to be found guilty of anti-trust.
I think making a great product that enough people want so they'll voluntarily agree to your terms, thereby drawing market share away from your competitors is extremely competitive.
I think holding a gun to someones head so they'll voluntarily agree to my terms, thereby giving me all thier money is extremely fair!
Ya know what, I think both or our use of the word "voluntarily" is a bit strange.
First, RTFA and see what they are being accused of! It seems you have NO idea what the article is about or what has been pretty widely discussed of Intels practices for years.
;-) Historically AMD has always been much cheaper for the same level of performance. The last year or two AMD has been raising prices a bit, but any honest comparison would have a hard time showing Intel being cheaper. Yes, if you currently compare both thier top level chips AMD is quite a bit more expensive but that is a horribly unfair comparison! For a more fair comparison you need to compare chips from both lines with similar performance. Right now AMD's top-of-the-line single core and daul core chips blow away Intels best in those markets. To be fair depending on what you are doing with the chip Intel is cheaper price/performance for some tasks, but for most tasks AMD is basically the same or cheaper. For a fair comparision in price/performance you need to compare the price of AMD 2nd (in some cases 3rd) tier chips with Intels best chips.
AMD is having trouble competing because they sell the same damn thing as Intel, but Intel can afford to sell it cheaper.
Where did you get that?
No idea how that got moded Interesting, much more like troll.
Intel doesn't have a monopoly
First is the obvious point that this is irrelevant! Anti-trust laws have no requirement you have to be a monopoly to be guilty of anti-trust behaviour! Anti-trust is about trade practices that undermine competitiveness or are considered to be unfair. Intel is certainly guilty of this.
Second is if its OK for Intel to use anti-competitive behaviour why not MS? Neither have 100% market share. What percent market share does it start being wrong to use anti-competitive tactics in your mind?
I'm glad MS got busted for these EXACT SAME anti-trust practices (prefered pricing for only using their product) and I hope Intel will as well.
Here is a video of what it looks like happening to a goldfish.
;-)
OK, not quite the same but similar and I find it somehow entertaining
I've got a funny feeling the GP wasn't meant to be a direct transcription from his conversation ;-) I cannot believe you actually thought the entire thing was a verbatum replay of the conversation! Its pretty clear he is trying to convey that at least of the time they spoke to him they really had no answers to the most basic questions reguarding the service.
If this conversation really happend or not I don't know, but having three words you don't think are a direct quote from Google when its pretty clear the whole thing isn't a direct quote as a reason to question the sentiment behind post seems illogical. Of course they didn't say exactly that. I'd highly doubt they said EXACTLY anything attributed to them above, but I wouldn't be at all suprised if the basic concepts are pretty accurate.
Wish I had mod points! Thank you very much for explaining this in a rational way!!!!! While I still don't see such things as the incarnation of evil some do, at least this helps me to understand the basis of those feelings! Very well written and again, thank you!
First, thanks for the reply. By FAR the best reply thus far (most others are the predictable "MS sucks thats why" type reply ;-)
without going through the proper channels which were created to avoid such mishaps
This is exactly what I'm curious about. What are those channels? Are you supposed to submit this to a standards body and wait or is there some other way to handle this?
Thanks again for the reply!
This isn't meant to defend anyone or deamonize anyone, just an honest question (I realize /. isn't the place for that type of thing ;-)
MS always gets kicked around (especially here) for doing things like this, so my question is:
If a company is developing a product (RSS product seems an obvious example), and after exploring and using the standard meant for that type of product they see additional functionality which would be useful but isn't covered by the standards. What SHOULD they do? Just forget about additional functionality and live with the standard? Submit a request to the standard body, hope they agree, and wait for it to become part of the standard?
I'm honestly curious about this because this type of action by MS is fuzzy in my head. Is it really that bad? What should they do?
If none of your actions have consequences
Actually, its the opposite. ALL actions have consequences. Have you thought through the actual realistic consequences of your "simple solution". I guess maybe your thinking a threat of expulsion would cause the VAST majority of kids to not do it. I can tell you that isn't realistic! A more realistic consequence to this plan is what I said in the previous post. Lower college graduation rates, lower average income rates, more poverty, more drugs.
The "war on drugs" is one of the all time stupidest ideas we've ever had. Sure it sounds nice and makes people want to vote for you but again from a practical standpoint every step we've taken in the "war" has only compounded the issue. And these stupid steps (like your plan) basically just consintrate on harsher punishments assuming harsher punishments will change peoples behaviour. Today because of things like "mandatory minimums" and "three strike" rules created to increase punishments in the "war" you will get more prison time for being caught a few times with a couple grams of powder in your pocket than you will for killing someone. And guess what, these CRAZY punishment increases haven't ended drug use (or even really made a difference). These extra punishments have just resulted in the US having one of the highest prisiner per population rates in the world and have turned areas of high drug use into literal killing fields.
Now all of this whole arguement is really crazy because it all began with an unproven assumption. That is "drugs are bad". People start with this assumption, but really have no basis for it. All things can be bad if abused, but drugs like anything else can be fine in moderation. However, like during prohobition some in the government decided to tell others how to live and because of it we have suffered through decades of increased crime and poverty.
As for drugs I have a simple solution to that problem. Expulsion.
;-) Yes, kicking kids out of college for drinking should end all demand for drugs and alchohol. I'm sure of it! LOL!!!!!
;-)
You hear that sound? Its every drug dealer in the country laughing thier asses off
Of course then the US will have record low enrollment in colleges and record high enrollment in welfare and drug dealers won't be able to keep up with demand, but besides that it seems a very good plan
Completely agree! Russound/Niles/Nuvo/etc/etc systems are WAY beyond this system for the price. There are TONS of options to add WAY more oohs-and-ahhs (including the LCD remotes) by integrating with a good HA system like Homeseer.
Statistics are fun aren't they. Your 4 year stat of course is a result of the massive upturn after 9/11 and in no way a reflection on the more recent facts.
Here is one of tons of articles explaining the situation. If you think recruiting is going so well you really need to just do a bit of research on it. However, here is a quote that may give you some idea.
Last month, army recruitment chief General Michael Rochelle admitted that recruiting was a harder struggle than at any time in the 33 years of his career.
That's bullshit. I design all pages using firefox, then validate them. They always look fine in IE and all the other browsers.
Sorry, but how is my statement bullshit? If you took from my previous statement that I was saying everyone designs for IE, then sorry I wasn't trying to say that. I was just trying to reply to the GP who was asking why developers don't always use the standards. What part of my inital post do you find to be bullshit? Perhaps I'm overlooking something and part of it is bullshit (don't know what part it could be though). However, basically saying "Bullshit, I design for FireFox" isn't helping me see the flaw in my post.
OK, but that stats quoted in the summary say they still have 87.23%. 87 > 85. IE is still the standard for your previous boss.
The biggest problem with that is, the goal of webdesigners is to basically make an attractive site (to the highest percentage of viewers as practical). There is no browser which is 100% standards compliant, so going with the official standards isn't that practical since there are no browsers which fully support the standards. The practical solution (like it or not) is build for the defacto standard (the browser with 90% market share).
I bought Windows Media Center 2003 at Fry's
Windows Media Center 2003 has never been available for retail purchase as just software. It only is available pre-installed on a computer.
the validation key is printed on the outside of the package
The activation codes are on the outside of the CD case which is inside a sealed box.
and says that _every_ copy of WinXP now has to be validated over the phone
I've NEVER had to validate over the phone and have probably installed about 50 WinXP installs which requried validation.
In conclusion, you are a lieing FUD mongering ass-monkey. Have a nice day.
Perhaps now is the time to hit them with a first strike!
I think the US has thier own issues to work out. A Russian sub launches an ICBM and nobody knows where it went or what happened to it???? Hello! Norad! You awake???
Yeah, my favorite line in the patents is:
The invention resides not in any one of these features per se, but rather in the particular combination of all of them herein disclosed and claimed and it is distinguished from the prior art in this particular combination of all of its structures for the functions specified.
So they admit they haven't invented anything, but they got a patent because of the amazingly innovative combination of those features like choosing a track combined with then playing the track. WOW!!!!!!!!
How does MS propose to turn this into a profit-generating venture?
They don't. There is no such product. Calling it vaporware doesn't even fit as they've never said there would be a product. MS does tons of research in tons of areas. This was just one research paper in the area of file sharing.
There is no code, there is no product, this is just a academic research paper discussing theoritical methods for very effiecent P2P file sharing. Thats it.
Yes, IE is a closed source app. You cannot make a drop in replacement for windows explorer either or the file system (NTFS), or device manager, or really any other component of windows. Prior to .NET almost every application for windows was tied to specific MS components that couldn't be replaced by 3rd part drop-ins. With .NET this is going away to a point since it is standards based. However, this is still the minority. I realize that isn't popular, but thats the nature of proprietary software. Sure they may have a few standards based apps, where you can but for the most part thats just the part of the deal with proprietary software. Thats why many will avoid it. Why is it that its OK for developers to use the MS VB runtime, MS C libraries, etc which cannot be replaced, but not a browser component? I agree, it'd be nice if it was all open, but its not and I cannot see a real problem with that. As a developer, I'd much rather have common proprietary component I can count on being there instead of having nothing or having to install my own and hope no other app installs the same app but a different version as part of there setup thus breaking mine.
Sure I'd be cool if it was open, but its not. Doesn't really effect me as long as its there.
Yes, but that implementation is code right? And that code will expose the "browser" functionality. BTW, these implementations are usually, .ocx, .dll, etc.... Reguardless there will be files that are the API and these files will be the compiled code to expose the browser functionality.
Now if we agree this is needed, whats the big deal if it has its own GUI to run as stand-alone? Is it just that this has to be OSS so you can see it all?
Also, I hope your ADSL modem/Router gave you instructions on how to configure via telnet or your FTP won't help much. The bastard vendors of mine insist I use some friendly browser based tools to configure mine so I couldn't use FTP anyway.
;-)
Luckily, I still have a regular modem in my PC so I could sign-up for dial-up service I guess. Then I could download FF via ftp on the dail-up (what fun that will be). Then all I'll have to do is convince my dial-up company to let me out of my one year contract and switch back over to ADSL.
Congrats, you've just set the PC user experience back at least 20 years because you were pissed you couldn't uninstall one piece of software
There is no code involved in an API? Then what does your code using the API talk to? I thought your code must be talking to other code, I guess there must just be some "magic" stuff your code talks to that isn't code ;-)
I guess we could forget about browser stuff and every developer could just go native implement thier own browser logic on top of tcp/ip.