Huh? The word means exactly what they think it means, and is perfectly fitted to the context it is used in. It has to do with how you define the OS market. It's fairly retarded to say "MS has a monopoly in MS OS's". And it's simply untruthful to say MS has a monopoly in all OS's when there are dozens of alternatives.
Holy God, the voice of reason in this sea of nimwits. Yeah, this would seem to be the better approach, claiming MS has a monopoly when they demonstrably and provably don't and then letting the ensuing pointless consent decree carry on for years was stupid. A better approach is to look at the real problem, if there is one, and move government spending to counter that problem.
In this case, a single massively dominant OS is actually good in most ways, but possibly not in terms of the longevity and compatibility of government documents.
How exactly have they abused their position, again? I'm geniunely curious about what forms of illegal coersion they've used. Surely they've been proven to have used goons to physically force OEMS or customers to purchase. No? Hmm... I get it, maybe they've bribed government officials and been convicted. Not that either?
They haven't abused anything. They're a business, barring fraud, assault, corruption of government officials they haven't done shit wrong under the decree or in fact even before it. I know the old argument the socialist scum in "true capitalist" clothing will use, the free market doesn't work right without some rules. And of course, that's a load of shit but they seem so intelligent and reasonable when they say it.
The fact is that the free market only needs to be open to scrutiny and regulated, not controlled. The only reasonable use for antitrust law is against open collusion between multiple companies and against companies with government granted monopolies over physically limited resources. This whole witch hunt against Microsoft has been silly, and nobody but MS's competitors (who Antitrust is not designed to protect - it's for consumers) and you bunch of filthy nerds has any problem with MS.
Ahahaha. Brilliant logic! All programs should be 100% backwards compatible! You rock! New law. There shalt be no more releases of things with "new features". New features are bad.
Of course, MS Office does have 100% interop. I can save and load all prior versions of Office docs from 2007, should I choose.
First, nice ridiculous use of the term "illegal monopoly". That phrase means nothing but seems to give you angry nerds some kind of warm fuzzy.
More importantly, I like how you use such flowery, angry language to describe that "convicted monopolist" and "illegal monopoly" then go on to complain about ridiculous things like having to mail yourself an Oo doc. I sure think it's worth it to use government conficscation (that's what monopoly and anti-trust law are - the assertion that something is so important that the government should be able to control it) so you don't have to mail Oo docs and so people "don't have to learn linux" which is the other argument people make when faced with the tautology that Microsoft clearly does _not_ have a monopoly.
But..But... Linux doesn't have application X! Mac OSX you have to buy the hardware! FreeBSD isn't mainstream! It seems people think something is an "illegal monopoly" if there are all kinds of alternatives but they're just "not quite the same".
You do know that one SlashNerd venting the usual boring rhetoric about "RICO violations", "protection money", "threats", and "the mafia" means, well, less than nothing. I'm surprised you didn't add a nice "convicted monopolist", you angry people who just make shit up love to through that in there.
So wait, you think or expect that companies do things for reasons other than self interest? Beside the fact that their CEO is required to do things in the interests of the company for publicly traded companies, who cares why they're doing it? If their interests align with yours, be glad.
Oooh, and Cisco routers are transporting the bits, and Cox Communications is transporting the bits over their cable infrastructure to some people. Let's go after them! Apparently to "distribute" now means anything you want it to mean.
What shoud be a clue to you people is that if this ridiculous idea were true, Novell would right now be able to decide whether to "invalidate" Microsoft's patents. Novell doesn't distribute GPLv3 stuff, MS OK. Novell does, MS in trouble. Now, no judge or legal system in this country would accept that.
Here's another example of how idiotic this is. What if Novell decides to distribute pirated copies of commercial software along with SUSE? Is Microsoft now guilty of copyright infringement and piracy because of a decision Novell made? The idea is preposterous, and you're all completely out of touch with reality.
It's very clear cut. Microsoft is less "distributing" Linux than Cox or Verizon (carriers) are. They are giving no physical access to media, nor are they providing download for said Media. The entity distributing Linux (and Gplv3 stuff) is Novell. It's very, very simple.
This is just harebrained scheming, and all the nutjobs thinking they got one over on Microsoft. They didn't get shit over on Microsoft. And we'll never really get to laugh at them because Microsoft has no intention of ever suing endusers. Hopefully some idiot business tries to commandeer MS patents based on this nonsense and gets an unholy beat down they deserve. Not because I think patents are a good idea most of the time, but because I hate harebrained schemes.
Novell is distributing the product. If they choose to ignore GPLv3's license, then they must deal with the consequences. This whole thing is silly, the FSF and FOSS nut jobs think they've pulled some kind of clever fast one on MS - it's Novell who would be obtaining and distributing software.
Except fortunately in this country you are not guilty when someone else makes a choice to do something. What Novell chooses to do is up to Novell, not MS. No court in its right mind would say otherwise.
Haha they modded you as a troll. The fact is the FSF will get nowhere. If they're smart they won't even push it. Right now people are somewhat convinced the GPL* licenses can hold water in a court of law. If they start pushing that idea they may be in for a rude awakening.
In particular, it's laughable that anyone would think they will go after Microsoft. Microsoft will simply crush them out of hand in a long, very expensive, protracted legal battle.
Cable companies should say "fine". First channel costs what cable currently costs, the rest are free. The biggest cost to the cable cos isn't carrying all those channels, it's the infrastructure. Does this idiot think that people should be able to buy 1/20th of the channels they have and pay 1/20th the price? It's ridiculous.
Every day. The thing that pisses me off about Java, which is actually a decent platform, is that you have to find 20 open source tools to get a really good development env. Eclipse, Continuum, Maven, Ant, SVN, etc... Plus, their web services stacks are a pain in the ass, e.g. no really comprehensive, complete WS-Security support though Glassfish is finally narrowing in on this.
The enterprise library is not a cookbook. It's a _solid_ implementation of reusable (and extensible) components frequently used in enterprise (or any, really) development. It lets you standardize and "plug and play" various aspects of cross cutting concerns. Think of it more as log4j + spring + AoJ + a DB layer + a caching layer + a security/authorization layer + a few other things. The point is that with one standard library which maintains a high level of consistency I can handle all this "misc" stuff in a very quality way.
WCF is a a highly customizable web services stack. Think of it as a far less primitive version of Xfire. It works, and it's (again) highly extensible and customizable. For example, I can edit a config file and change my entire authentication or authorization scheme, plug in new transports, etc... All the other vendors are well behind, for example Sun's Glassfish is their attempt to be compatible with Indigo (WCF). The thing is in this case MS defined the standards. No other web services stack supports all the WS-* standards that WCF does. For example, we had to write a lot of custom code to enable Kerberos authentication from a UNIX host running Java to a WCF service. In general, WCF makes.NET the premier web service development platform - nothing else is even close right now.
Haha. This is insightful? Give me a break. The point of open source software is for those people who already OWN the software, which is a large number of people. For serious people, open source is about practicality. In some cases someone wants to solve a problem but doesn't want to or doesn't think they can charge for it. So they release it in hopes that someone else can use it and/or improve upon it. The platform it's used on makes no difference, it's about solving a problem. If someone else has the same problem on the same platform they may benefit from it.
That's it, again for serious people. For kooks and obsessives they have all kinds of whacky motivations, but I for one (and many others agree with me) don't give a dripping, flying shit about their motivations. It's about getting the job done, or having fun in your hobby. In neither case does developing for "righteous open source platforms" matter.
Ahh. Yeah, the old "but the consumer is hurt" argument. So where can I find this "consumer" and how exactly can this person or legal entity describe and prove that he was hurt? Of course, there is no such person or entity - a "consumer" is (in a legal sense) an adjective. It's someone who does something. They don't have "rights".
Our monopoly and antitrust laws are inherently silly. They made sense (and still do) when applied to government granted monopolies or monopolies on limited physical resources "of great impact". For example, if the oil companies explicitly collude, then by all means use anti-trust on them. If all the power companies in my area collude, then go after them. Going after "monopolies" which a) don't exist unless you arbitrarily define the "market" in question with an artifically high specificity or b) are based on intellectual property or trademark is populism at its worst and most despicable.
Better tell that to Coke and Pepsi, apartment complexes who have exclusivity deals with telco providers, and all sorts of other businesses. Do you just "not like it" or do you have some rational reason why not? I certainly can't think of any rational reason. Both parties are willing to sign the contract, so I'm not sure whose rights are being violated.
Nobody but you and the SlashDweeb brigade cares all that much about platforms. It's about the software that runs on those platforms.
You can spend the time to either get them working in Mono, or port them to another language if you really care. Half of those primitive ass apps you find on FreshMeat only work on Linux, you don't hear me whining about it.
You all should really look around Codeplex. Look at what MS is doing with Enterprise Library. Look at what they're doing with WCF. Pretend you're software developers, for just a minute, and not OS kooks obsessed with ridiculous ideals. They are doing some cool shit on the technology side of things for developers. If I have to go back to developing in Perl/Python/PHP or even Java I'm going to put a pencil through my eyeball - most of it's just sloppy, primitive shit compared to what MS is doing.
Cry all you want about their OS's - they certainly have room for improvement. Their development tools are top notch. To be honest I do with they'd port an industrial strength CLR env to Linux along with all their class libraries, and Visual Studio/Orcas. It would be a ridiculously large undertaking but it would be god damn sweet to develop with MS tools on other OS's.
Now we not only have to worry about open source, but the zealots have a new category of "Open Source that runs on an Open Platform". Give me a break. The code is available under various GPL like licenses - it's open source.
The "trick" Microsoft uses to lure people is a vastly superior development/runtime environment in.NET. I can live with that trick.
There is no "next generation after this", at least in the near future. So you'll be watching your DVD's for the next 10+ years. 1080p is the final, forseeable frontier in consumer HDTV. Sure, there _will_ be something next but it's going to be quite a while.
Ahahaha. Ooh, that's a good one. The vasy majority of people don't know how to work their HDTV's, if they even have them. They certainly don't download movies to an HTPC, and most 360 players don't either. It's hilarious and ridiculous to think MS is doing this to sell online movies. They would literally be business retarded if that were the case, and they're anything but business retarded. Seriously, that's the most ridiculous, lame-brained conspiracy theory I've read in a while.
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Huh? The word means exactly what they think it means, and is perfectly fitted to the context it is used in. It has to do with how you define the OS market. It's fairly retarded to say "MS has a monopoly in MS OS's". And it's simply untruthful to say MS has a monopoly in all OS's when there are dozens of alternatives.
In this case, a single massively dominant OS is actually good in most ways, but possibly not in terms of the longevity and compatibility of government documents.
They haven't abused anything. They're a business, barring fraud, assault, corruption of government officials they haven't done shit wrong under the decree or in fact even before it. I know the old argument the socialist scum in "true capitalist" clothing will use, the free market doesn't work right without some rules. And of course, that's a load of shit but they seem so intelligent and reasonable when they say it.
The fact is that the free market only needs to be open to scrutiny and regulated, not controlled. The only reasonable use for antitrust law is against open collusion between multiple companies and against companies with government granted monopolies over physically limited resources. This whole witch hunt against Microsoft has been silly, and nobody but MS's competitors (who Antitrust is not designed to protect - it's for consumers) and you bunch of filthy nerds has any problem with MS.
Of course, MS Office does have 100% interop. I can save and load all prior versions of Office docs from 2007, should I choose.
More importantly, I like how you use such flowery, angry language to describe that "convicted monopolist" and "illegal monopoly" then go on to complain about ridiculous things like having to mail yourself an Oo doc. I sure think it's worth it to use government conficscation (that's what monopoly and anti-trust law are - the assertion that something is so important that the government should be able to control it) so you don't have to mail Oo docs and so people "don't have to learn linux" which is the other argument people make when faced with the tautology that Microsoft clearly does _not_ have a monopoly.
But..But... Linux doesn't have application X! Mac OSX you have to buy the hardware! FreeBSD isn't mainstream! It seems people think something is an "illegal monopoly" if there are all kinds of alternatives but they're just "not quite the same".
So wait, you think or expect that companies do things for reasons other than self interest? Beside the fact that their CEO is required to do things in the interests of the company for publicly traded companies, who cares why they're doing it? If their interests align with yours, be glad.
What shoud be a clue to you people is that if this ridiculous idea were true, Novell would right now be able to decide whether to "invalidate" Microsoft's patents. Novell doesn't distribute GPLv3 stuff, MS OK. Novell does, MS in trouble. Now, no judge or legal system in this country would accept that.
Here's another example of how idiotic this is. What if Novell decides to distribute pirated copies of commercial software along with SUSE? Is Microsoft now guilty of copyright infringement and piracy because of a decision Novell made? The idea is preposterous, and you're all completely out of touch with reality.
This is just harebrained scheming, and all the nutjobs thinking they got one over on Microsoft. They didn't get shit over on Microsoft. And we'll never really get to laugh at them because Microsoft has no intention of ever suing endusers. Hopefully some idiot business tries to commandeer MS patents based on this nonsense and gets an unholy beat down they deserve. Not because I think patents are a good idea most of the time, but because I hate harebrained schemes.
Novell is distributing the product. If they choose to ignore GPLv3's license, then they must deal with the consequences. This whole thing is silly, the FSF and FOSS nut jobs think they've pulled some kind of clever fast one on MS - it's Novell who would be obtaining and distributing software.
Except fortunately in this country you are not guilty when someone else makes a choice to do something. What Novell chooses to do is up to Novell, not MS. No court in its right mind would say otherwise.
In particular, it's laughable that anyone would think they will go after Microsoft. Microsoft will simply crush them out of hand in a long, very expensive, protracted legal battle.
Cable companies should say "fine". First channel costs what cable currently costs, the rest are free. The biggest cost to the cable cos isn't carrying all those channels, it's the infrastructure. Does this idiot think that people should be able to buy 1/20th of the channels they have and pay 1/20th the price? It's ridiculous.
Every day. The thing that pisses me off about Java, which is actually a decent platform, is that you have to find 20 open source tools to get a really good development env. Eclipse, Continuum, Maven, Ant, SVN, etc... Plus, their web services stacks are a pain in the ass, e.g. no really comprehensive, complete WS-Security support though Glassfish is finally narrowing in on this.
The enterprise library is not a cookbook. It's a _solid_ implementation of reusable (and extensible) components frequently used in enterprise (or any, really) development. It lets you standardize and "plug and play" various aspects of cross cutting concerns. Think of it more as log4j + spring + AoJ + a DB layer + a caching layer + a security/authorization layer + a few other things. The point is that with one standard library which maintains a high level of consistency I can handle all this "misc" stuff in a very quality way.
WCF is a a highly customizable web services stack. Think of it as a far less primitive version of Xfire. It works, and it's (again) highly extensible and customizable. For example, I can edit a config file and change my entire authentication or authorization scheme, plug in new transports, etc... All the other vendors are well behind, for example Sun's Glassfish is their attempt to be compatible with Indigo (WCF). The thing is in this case MS defined the standards. No other web services stack supports all the WS-* standards that WCF does. For example, we had to write a lot of custom code to enable Kerberos authentication from a UNIX host running Java to a WCF service. In general, WCF makes .NET the premier web service development platform - nothing else is even close right now.
That's it, again for serious people. For kooks and obsessives they have all kinds of whacky motivations, but I for one (and many others agree with me) don't give a dripping, flying shit about their motivations. It's about getting the job done, or having fun in your hobby. In neither case does developing for "righteous open source platforms" matter.
Our monopoly and antitrust laws are inherently silly. They made sense (and still do) when applied to government granted monopolies or monopolies on limited physical resources "of great impact". For example, if the oil companies explicitly collude, then by all means use anti-trust on them. If all the power companies in my area collude, then go after them. Going after "monopolies" which a) don't exist unless you arbitrarily define the "market" in question with an artifically high specificity or b) are based on intellectual property or trademark is populism at its worst and most despicable.
Better tell that to Coke and Pepsi, apartment complexes who have exclusivity deals with telco providers, and all sorts of other businesses. Do you just "not like it" or do you have some rational reason why not? I certainly can't think of any rational reason. Both parties are willing to sign the contract, so I'm not sure whose rights are being violated.
You can spend the time to either get them working in Mono, or port them to another language if you really care. Half of those primitive ass apps you find on FreshMeat only work on Linux, you don't hear me whining about it.
Cry all you want about their OS's - they certainly have room for improvement. Their development tools are top notch. To be honest I do with they'd port an industrial strength CLR env to Linux along with all their class libraries, and Visual Studio/Orcas. It would be a ridiculously large undertaking but it would be god damn sweet to develop with MS tools on other OS's.
The "trick" Microsoft uses to lure people is a vastly superior development/runtime environment in .NET. I can live with that trick.
Huh? It's for embedding Python in .NET apps, or developing .NET scripts in Python. It's not useless unless you're a Linux-only dweeb.
There is no "next generation after this", at least in the near future. So you'll be watching your DVD's for the next 10+ years. 1080p is the final, forseeable frontier in consumer HDTV. Sure, there _will_ be something next but it's going to be quite a while.
Haha. Someone modded this tripe interesting.
Ahahaha. Ooh, that's a good one. The vasy majority of people don't know how to work their HDTV's, if they even have them. They certainly don't download movies to an HTPC, and most 360 players don't either. It's hilarious and ridiculous to think MS is doing this to sell online movies. They would literally be business retarded if that were the case, and they're anything but business retarded. Seriously, that's the most ridiculous, lame-brained conspiracy theory I've read in a while.