True, Microsoft and vendors do have contractual agreements on how they can sell software.
I think the telling point is that the manufacturers asked to keep shipping XP. I understand their reasons, but no one is forcing anyone to do anything here.
Customers do not have to purchase machines from vendors with an operating system.
Vendors do not have to sell XP, though they do (for valid reasons).
Microsoft doesn't have to offer XP at all, but they have business reasons to sell newer versions of their software - additional/improved features, increased stability, etc.
Yes, I agree that Vista isn't better than XP in a lot of areas, but Microsoft developed a newer version of their operating system in the somewhat misplaced belief it was better.
At the end of the day, no one forced anyone to do anything here. Dell/Lenovo/HP did not have a gun put to their head to sell XP. They decided to do that themselves and they must accept the costs involved with that business decision.
Lastly, I will say that I find it disagreeable that Microsoft would include language and provisions that would require the vendor to purchase two licenses (XP and Vista) when only one would be used (XP). Microsoft made a business decision to deter people from sticking with their previous operating system which the vendors accepted. Personally, I don't think they did anything legally wrong... just morally. I suppose that's just one of many reasons why I'm not running Microsoft.
For every new computer model (new/upgraded parts and versions of drivers), computer manufactures test the builds. This means that, as opposed to testing and certifying Vista with the NVidia 9800 card, they have to certify the machine with XP. This does add additional cost and time before they can sell it. Multiply this one factor over every component they offer and the cost does become very high. To use your example: It may be zero cost in storage once the engine is developed, but in this case - the cost to redevelop and test the engine every time a new spark plug model comes out isn't zero cost.
After that, add additional support costs for personnel as supporting multiple operating versions with vastly different quirks (I'm talking about Vista here) and you incur even more overhead.
Support organizations tend to prefer a single or at least uniform support model for individual products when possible to limit overall costs. Assuming that there are two groups to support the different operating systems (some for Vista and some for XP), having a single person out of one group makes support times longer and raises costs because you need to then keep even more people staffed to cover employees who aren't able to work (sickness/vacation/whatever).
True, there will be some people who can support both products, but not every support shop has a phone queue that can or will have some people in the queue for XP, some for Vista support, and some that can do both. A separation of expertise is sometimes very useful as the people who focus on a single product become better able to support that one product over time. Take the finance person in an office who can't change their windows resolution, but can tell you the most obscure piece of information about Excel. They focused on a single product and became experts at it.
What I'm saying is... there isn't a zero cost involved here.
Although "force" can mean physical intimidation, it isn't always the case. Force also means "a powerful effect for influence". Generally we use it in this secondary context as "forces", such as "My wife forces me to take out the garbage or watch the kids on Sundays.". Does this mean the wife will beat the crap out of you? Generally not... It means she uses emotional influences or powerful effects (such as love) to persuade you to do something.
In the case of accepting a job, there are forces at work (societal, need to take care of self and family, financial stability) that do force people to take a job. I'm not even talking about "eating to survive", but emotional forces that pressure you to take the job. There are still ways to eat without working (depending on area) - welfare, soup kitchens/food banks, and unemployment benefits can cover food (when needed and appropriate). I'm not saying they are optimal, but they exist and no force is required.
Emotional and psychological pressures are still a force.
As an extension for the Windows users, a VMWare image that has updates turned off would work.
Open the TrueCrypt encrypted image in VMWare so that the parent OS can't see it. Then do whatever you need to and unmount the TrueCrypt partition/file. Then shut down VMware. Since updates are turned off, no registry updates/tmp files/etc will be written to the image.
Annoying? Kinda... but if you really need that level of security then you should probably be prepared to do what it takes to assure that security stays viable to your needs.
There is a slight difference in how I read the ruling compared to what you said (and if I'm wrong, please reply to this), but...
In the case you present, the company that produced Rdos ALSO produced the cpu. In this case, Apple doesn't produce the cpu, so the tie-in isn't quite the same. Yes, it is tied to an Apple manufactured machine and it *may* be possible to argue on those grounds, but I'm not 100% sure.
Another point about the ruling is:
"Anticompetitive forcing only exists if consumers are forced to buy a tied product as a result of the [473 U.S. 908 , 909] sellers' market power, not simply because of the desirability of the package."
Although Apple makes a great operating system, it doesn't have the market power (especially on the x86 platform) to sufficiently claim full Market Power. I don't think Pystar could sufficiently make the claim either. Microsoft can claim this status, but not Apple. There is nothing unique or special about OSX that forces buyers to purchase this os that can't be mirrored on Linux or Windows.
smchris: Seriously (also) I think computer science students, college or tech school, didn't have a lot of time for liberal arts so they are sometimes uneducated trades persons. In truth, I don't have a lot of respect for libertarians. I call them "anti-hippies". The same unswerving naive belief -- in their case it's just blind belief in the free market and the invisible hand of capitalism instead of peace and love. ------
The problem with this statement is that the poster uses extremes just like everyone else does (including myself at times). I don't subscribe to socialist == communist. Not all Democrats are Socialists. Not all Republicans are only for the rich.
I have worked in soup kitchens on my own time. I have donated to charities and non-profit organizations. I am a Libertarian.
You claim the only thing Libertarians want is full belief in capitalism. That is completely untrue and I feel is truly saddening. I believe in peace and love. Hell, Ron Paul wants to get the hell out of Iraq as we shouldn't have been in there in the first place. That sounds like a peaceful action - Not starting wars. Also, I'm for peace and love, but not at the point of a gun (IRS or other government organization) like (I assume) you mean.
I've read hundreds of the posts in this thread and I can see that all beliefs (socialist, democrat, libertarian, republican, capitalists, hippies) are represented here within all the parties. There are Republicans who aren't for war. There are Democrats who want capitalism in a lot of respects.
There are cases for government control in the right places. As other posters mentioned (and I agree with), the case for stopping full monopolies from completely taking over a market segment is a good thing. 911 service is a good thing to have centralized. There are problems with the current 911 system and a uniform set of systems and software would be better. This would help in times of system failure or disaster where other 911 call centers could take over in a seamless manner. Would this happen if we had every 911 system controlled by different companies? Probably not.
But at the same time, I don't believe that every person is equal. If I work my ass off to learn a lot and get a good job and then I save my money, why should I pay a lot more money just to give me the exact same living conditions and money in my pocket as someone who doesn't try or doesn't save? Is this an extreme view of socialism? Yes. And it is a result that some people want. Who does that help? How does that drive people to succeed when the end result is zero for those who worked hard?
When someone works to start and build a company, there are some things that occur. Jobs are created. And if the company pays well, the company will grow. With that growth, more jobs are created. The problem with pure capitalism is that companies stop caring about the individual and starts paying less than they could because the "company" wants more money and power. Then corruption and power plays occur as individuals try to make more money or succeed for their own benefit. The same happens with government. It grows, hires a huge amount of people. People play politics and take money for their own ends. This is human nature. But both examples in this paragraph (capitalism and socialism (American definition of socialism)) are dangerous to the individual and do not display "peace and love". At least capitalism is a slight bit more honest in that they are trying to build their company's power in the marketplace as opposed to the government which builds itself bigger with a "won't somebody think about the children!" type catchphrase, but in reality is just trying to make itself more powerful with little regard for individuals.
I've spent time in Britain (Wales) and I've seen how the universal healthcare can work and have massive failures. A good friend of mine had to wait weeks for appoints for certain tests/physical exams. People here in the US can get an appointment in days/weeks and not months. Yes,
I don't see the need to remake Cloak & Dagger. It is one of Dabney Coleman's greatest roles aside from Hot To Trot. Ok. Bad Joke, but I'm not apologizing, and yes, I do know the comic book http://www.toonopedia.com/cloakdag.htm.
I will first state that I go read Groklaw, but I read more than just the posts. I have read a large percentage of the filings.
I feel the writer ignores or is incorrect on these points: 1: Novell (who at the time believed they had the final say on matters of this nature (via the contracts drawn up from the sale of unix to SCO)) specifically told SCO to back off and allow/ignore whatever transgressions theoretically occurred. SCO ignored Novell and this caused the legal battle to grow.
2: The writer mentions that SCO needs to find any patches that were rejected as a result of an AIX centric development mindset. The writer ignores the fact that someone working at IBM may have been an application programmer writing software for AIX and not a kernel hacker. Additionally, I do not believe that the writer takes into account the fact that someone may have worked on AIX years ago and now works on Linux. It isn't believable that someone who once worked on AIX in the past would be forever limited/tainted on all future development projects until the day they died.
3: The writer initially tries to show SCO to be somewhat of a victim and yet admits that after the Boies law firm took over the case expanded and the legal battle heated up. He also mentions the code that he believes does exist in Linux. Darl McBride also mentioned that code 2 years ago, but to this date, no actual code has been released in court documents that support that remark. Darl initially said that there were thousands (or tens of thousands) of lines that were copied and could be traced to Unix. Amazingly, SCO has asked (and received) AIX source code from IBM. If SCO had identified that source 2 years ago and in the legal battle wants more source, why would the writer make the statement that he believes it is there. He should have expanded his reasoning for that remark. SCO said they already identified it. We (as a community) would like to know: "Where is it?".
4: The writer talks uses the terms "mislead the public", "focus attention on irrelevancies", and "Anti-SCO hysteria". Admittedly, many Linux users are passionate about the operating system and have said some wildly inaccurate things about SCO (and Microsoft), but there have also been a lot of intelligent and thoughtful discussions about the case. Strangely enough, the writer does NOT talk about the wildly inaccurate and misleading statements from SCO and their legal team over the past 2 years.
Neither side in this case is perfect, but I am surprised that this article has such a one sided feel when there is so much information available (from sites like Groklaw and SCO's own legal filings page) that give a much clearer view of things over the article itself.
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True, Microsoft and vendors do have contractual agreements on how they can sell software.
I think the telling point is that the manufacturers asked to keep shipping XP. I understand their reasons, but no one is forcing anyone to do anything here.
Customers do not have to purchase machines from vendors with an operating system.
Vendors do not have to sell XP, though they do (for valid reasons).
Microsoft doesn't have to offer XP at all, but they have business reasons to sell newer versions of their software - additional/improved features, increased stability, etc.
Yes, I agree that Vista isn't better than XP in a lot of areas, but Microsoft developed a newer version of their operating system in the somewhat misplaced belief it was better.
At the end of the day, no one forced anyone to do anything here. Dell/Lenovo/HP did not have a gun put to their head to sell XP. They decided to do that themselves and they must accept the costs involved with that business decision.
Lastly, I will say that I find it disagreeable that Microsoft would include language and provisions that would require the vendor to purchase two licenses (XP and Vista) when only one would be used (XP). Microsoft made a business decision to deter people from sticking with their previous operating system which the vendors accepted. Personally, I don't think they did anything legally wrong... just morally. I suppose that's just one of many reasons why I'm not running Microsoft.
Actually, the cost isn't the same.
For every new computer model (new/upgraded parts and versions of drivers), computer manufactures test the builds. This means that, as opposed to testing and certifying Vista with the NVidia 9800 card, they have to certify the machine with XP. This does add additional cost and time before they can sell it. Multiply this one factor over every component they offer and the cost does become very high. To use your example: It may be zero cost in storage once the engine is developed, but in this case - the cost to redevelop and test the engine every time a new spark plug model comes out isn't zero cost.
After that, add additional support costs for personnel as supporting multiple operating versions with vastly different quirks (I'm talking about Vista here) and you incur even more overhead.
Support organizations tend to prefer a single or at least uniform support model for individual products when possible to limit overall costs. Assuming that there are two groups to support the different operating systems (some for Vista and some for XP), having a single person out of one group makes support times longer and raises costs because you need to then keep even more people staffed to cover employees who aren't able to work (sickness/vacation/whatever).
True, there will be some people who can support both products, but not every support shop has a phone queue that can or will have some people in the queue for XP, some for Vista support, and some that can do both. A separation of expertise is sometimes very useful as the people who focus on a single product become better able to support that one product over time. Take the finance person in an office who can't change their windows resolution, but can tell you the most obscure piece of information about Excel. They focused on a single product and became experts at it.
What I'm saying is... there isn't a zero cost involved here.
FTFGP: Force is what is used when your life is threatened. When you cannot work without such a contract, your life is threatened...
That's just it. Your life is NOT threatened. Your *way* of life is threatened.
Although "force" can mean physical intimidation, it isn't always the case. Force also means "a powerful effect for influence". Generally we use it in this secondary context as "forces", such as "My wife forces me to take out the garbage or watch the kids on Sundays.". Does this mean the wife will beat the crap out of you? Generally not... It means she uses emotional influences or powerful effects (such as love) to persuade you to do something. In the case of accepting a job, there are forces at work (societal, need to take care of self and family, financial stability) that do force people to take a job. I'm not even talking about "eating to survive", but emotional forces that pressure you to take the job. There are still ways to eat without working (depending on area) - welfare, soup kitchens/food banks, and unemployment benefits can cover food (when needed and appropriate). I'm not saying they are optimal, but they exist and no force is required. Emotional and psychological pressures are still a force.
As an extension for the Windows users, a VMWare image that has updates turned off would work. Open the TrueCrypt encrypted image in VMWare so that the parent OS can't see it. Then do whatever you need to and unmount the TrueCrypt partition/file. Then shut down VMware. Since updates are turned off, no registry updates/tmp files/etc will be written to the image. Annoying? Kinda... but if you really need that level of security then you should probably be prepared to do what it takes to assure that security stays viable to your needs.
There is a slight difference in how I read the ruling compared to what you said (and if I'm wrong, please reply to this), but...
In the case you present, the company that produced Rdos ALSO produced the cpu. In this case, Apple doesn't produce the cpu, so the tie-in isn't quite the same. Yes, it is tied to an Apple manufactured machine and it *may* be possible to argue on those grounds, but I'm not 100% sure.
Another point about the ruling is:
"Anticompetitive forcing only exists if consumers are forced to buy a tied product as a result of the [473 U.S. 908 , 909] sellers' market power, not simply because of the desirability of the package."
Although Apple makes a great operating system, it doesn't have the market power (especially on the x86 platform) to sufficiently claim full Market Power. I don't think Pystar could sufficiently make the claim either. Microsoft can claim this status, but not Apple. There is nothing unique or special about OSX that forces buyers to purchase this os that can't be mirrored on Linux or Windows.
smchris:
Seriously (also) I think computer science students, college or tech school, didn't have a lot of time for liberal arts so they are sometimes uneducated trades persons. In truth, I don't have a lot of respect for libertarians. I call them "anti-hippies". The same unswerving naive belief -- in their case it's just blind belief in the free market and the invisible hand of capitalism instead of peace and love.
------
The problem with this statement is that the poster uses extremes just like everyone else does (including myself at times).
I don't subscribe to socialist == communist. Not all Democrats are Socialists. Not all Republicans are only for the rich.
I have worked in soup kitchens on my own time. I have donated to charities and non-profit organizations. I am a Libertarian.
You claim the only thing Libertarians want is full belief in capitalism. That is completely untrue and I feel is truly saddening. I believe in peace and love. Hell, Ron Paul wants to get the hell out of Iraq as we shouldn't have been in there in the first place. That sounds like a peaceful action - Not starting wars. Also, I'm for peace and love, but not at the point of a gun (IRS or other government organization) like (I assume) you mean.
I've read hundreds of the posts in this thread and I can see that all beliefs (socialist, democrat, libertarian, republican, capitalists, hippies) are represented here within all the parties. There are Republicans who aren't for war. There are Democrats who want capitalism in a lot of respects.
There are cases for government control in the right places. As other posters mentioned (and I agree with), the case for stopping full monopolies from completely taking over a market segment is a good thing. 911 service is a good thing to have centralized. There are problems with the current 911 system and a uniform set of systems and software would be better. This would help in times of system failure or disaster where other 911 call centers could take over in a seamless manner. Would this happen if we had every 911 system controlled by different companies? Probably not.
But at the same time, I don't believe that every person is equal. If I work my ass off to learn a lot and get a good job and then I save my money, why should I pay a lot more money just to give me the exact same living conditions and money in my pocket as someone who doesn't try or doesn't save? Is this an extreme view of socialism? Yes. And it is a result that some people want. Who does that help? How does that drive people to succeed when the end result is zero for those who worked hard?
When someone works to start and build a company, there are some things that occur. Jobs are created. And if the company pays well, the company will grow. With that growth, more jobs are created. The problem with pure capitalism is that companies stop caring about the individual and starts paying less than they could because the "company" wants more money and power. Then corruption and power plays occur as individuals try to make more money or succeed for their own benefit. The same happens with government. It grows, hires a huge amount of people. People play politics and take money for their own ends. This is human nature. But both examples in this paragraph (capitalism and socialism (American definition of socialism)) are dangerous to the individual and do not display "peace and love". At least capitalism is a slight bit more honest in that they are trying to build their company's power in the marketplace as opposed to the government which builds itself bigger with a "won't somebody think about the children!" type catchphrase, but in reality is just trying to make itself more powerful with little regard for individuals.
I've spent time in Britain (Wales) and I've seen how the universal healthcare can work and have massive failures. A good friend of mine had to wait weeks for appoints for certain tests/physical exams. People here in the US can get an appointment in days/weeks and not months. Yes,
I don't see the need to remake Cloak & Dagger. It is one of Dabney Coleman's greatest roles aside from Hot To Trot. Ok. Bad Joke, but I'm not apologizing, and yes, I do know the comic book http://www.toonopedia.com/cloakdag.htm.
I will first state that I go read Groklaw, but I read more than just the posts. I have read a large percentage of the filings.
I feel the writer ignores or is incorrect on these points:
1: Novell (who at the time believed they had the final say on matters of this nature (via the contracts drawn up from the sale of unix to SCO)) specifically told SCO to back off and allow/ignore whatever transgressions theoretically occurred. SCO ignored Novell and this caused the legal battle to grow.
2: The writer mentions that SCO needs to find any patches that were rejected as a result of an AIX centric development mindset. The writer ignores the fact that someone working at IBM may have been an application programmer writing software for AIX and not a kernel hacker. Additionally, I do not believe that the writer takes into account the fact that someone may have worked on AIX years ago and now works on Linux. It isn't believable that someone who once worked on AIX in the past would be forever limited/tainted on all future development projects until the day they died.
3: The writer initially tries to show SCO to be somewhat of a victim and yet admits that after the Boies law firm took over the case expanded and the legal battle heated up. He also mentions the code that he believes does exist in Linux. Darl McBride also mentioned that code 2 years ago, but to this date, no actual code has been released in court documents that support that remark. Darl initially said that there were thousands (or tens of thousands) of lines that were copied and could be traced to Unix. Amazingly, SCO has asked (and received) AIX source code from IBM. If SCO had identified that source 2 years ago and in the legal battle wants more source, why would the writer make the statement that he believes it is there. He should have expanded his reasoning for that remark. SCO said they already identified it. We (as a community) would like to know:
"Where is it?".
4: The writer talks uses the terms "mislead the public", "focus attention on irrelevancies", and "Anti-SCO hysteria". Admittedly, many Linux users are passionate about the operating system and have said some wildly inaccurate things about SCO (and Microsoft), but there have also been a lot of intelligent and thoughtful discussions about the case. Strangely enough, the writer does NOT talk about the wildly inaccurate and misleading statements from SCO and their legal team over the past 2 years.
Neither side in this case is perfect, but I am surprised that this article has such a one sided feel when there is so much information available (from sites like Groklaw and SCO's own legal filings page) that give a much clearer view of things over the article itself.