I did read the book. I'm aware that 2010 wasn't bound to the novel the way 2001 was -- its still hard to seperate them. The message is still very much in unison with anything Arthur C. Clarke would give us.
btw: I didn't think the movie was inconclusive about life on Europa. They detected chlorpohyl there, and Floyd's comments at the end (about the children of the old sun meeting the children of the new) and about the monolith, make it pretty clear.
I prefer to embrace movies like 2010 because of the way they can introduce their concepts to much wider audiences. 2001 for all its brilliance is a really difficult movie to watch -- its honestly impossible to understand what's happening when Bowman goes through the stargate and etc. if you haven't read the book -- and that's not necessarily a reasonable expectation.
Of course, I don't think I've ever seen a more amazing thing in the movies than the ol' bone turning into a space station moment in 2001.
The real solution is to improve the HTML spec to the point where we don't need proprietary add-ons. Yes and No to that.
Not needing proprietary add-ons like Flash and Silverlight is indeed a noble and desirable goal.
It's questionable however that an improved HTML spec. is the solution. HTML web-apps using AJAX/whatever techniques have serious limitations. HTML 5 looks like an improvement, and the new DOM interface APIs are a Good Thing, but it certainly doesn't make possible the kind of apps you can already create with Flash or Silverlight.
Rest in peace, Arthur C. Clarke - you will never be forgotten.
I can still remember the chill that went down my spine at the end of 2010 (the year we make contact) when HAL relays David Bowman's message:
All these worlds are yours except Europa
Attempt no landings there.
Use them together. Use them in Peace.
And the (almost Obamaesque) hope I felt when Haywood Floyd tells his son, "Someday, the children of the old sun will meet the children of the new sun. I hope we can be friends"
2001, 2010, Rama, Glide Path (and instrument landing systems), The City and the Stars, Earthlight, The Nine Billions Names of God, his Scientific American paper on geosynchronous satellites, and so much more. I can't imagine what our world would be like without his contributions.
(3) If I want to fix Vista myself I can't because it's proprietary. +5, Funny, LMAO.
So every time Joe user has an issue with the OS, they wade into the code and patch whatever is causing it? For all your consternation on this point, do you yourself have the expertise required to do that?
...and I don't care how often they repeat things in public... Neither do I. Slashdot posts, repeating ad-infinum that MS will rip out BSD and replace it with Windows Server without reason, doesn't make that prediction true either.
So, let's assume the following:
- press releases aren't worth much, for predicting what MS will do
-/. posts aren't worth much, for predicting what MS will do
- a little logical analysis however, is worth something
Now with these assumptions, if MS invests 44B in something, logic says they will want that investment to come good. Following that logic, the phased replacements I described in my original post make sense, and I merely pointed out that MS has stated that this is their intent.
The Hotmail case is a tried and tested example of their work. I'm not sure I follow.. Sure hotmail isn't as good as gmail, but are you implying that its a failure, or that MS has somehow run it into the ground since its acquisition?
So, just how much are MS paying you to catch flak on/. today? -1, Troll.
But then again, you do get great DRM for your troubles. With a poinless swipe like that you lose all credibility - so the lack of merit did not depend on which OS you use.
For the most part I agree, but using Rare as an example of a company that succeeded after Microsoft purchased it? Thats one heck of a joke... Possibly.. I just mentioned some stuff of the top of my head..
MS needs Yahoo's users and its brands to be able to at least get a foot in the door.
If MS buys Yahoo I'm moving to Google. I wonder how many Yahoo users would jump ship as well. Most web users aren't geeks like us - they won't even be aware that MS acquired Yahoo. For those that are, most will not care (one way or the other) unless they are actually impacted in some way (positive or negative). What remains is a small percentage of people like us that know and care (at least enough to have this conversation) but even among us there isn't concensus on defection.
There is very little that Microsoft has bought that didn't turn to crap and die. (Yes, I acknowledge there are some things that have done rather well, but they were already doing well before Microsoft got them and even then somehow the majority of those surviving have gotten a bit worse.)
Bungie Studios (even happily spun off as a healthy independant game studio now)
Visio Corp. (I assume you're familiar with Visio?)
Groove Networks (their CEO is now the Cheif Technology Architect at MS - Ray Ozzie himself
Ensemble Studios (Age of Empires, and soon, Halo Wars)
Rare Inc. (Perfect Dark Zero)
Note that many acquisitions probably get integrated and the products renamed for branding purposes (for example, Viridian which ends up being MS's Virtualization solution). Just because they disappeared from the news doesn't mean they aren't thriving.
Yahoo will always be second or third place to Google. Yahoo is currently in second, and MS is currently in third. They expect to remain there for some time.
Microsoft made their attempt with MSN. It's crap and never caught on. MS knows that. Why do you think they are trying to acquire yahoo?
Yahoo and all of its things, while many are still vibrant, are generally too spammy to be useful any longer. (I can't tell you how many groups I had joined only to become flooded with unending spam even after leaving those groups!) Google groups don't have spam?
Anyway, that's besides the point. MS is aware of yahoo's issues (did you stop to read about the acquisition offer a bit before you posted your rant?). MS needs Yahoo's users and its brands to be able to at least get a foot in the door.
I simply cannot imagine with Microsoft's history of misunderstanding the internet (primarily they somehow don't get that they can't control or guide the internet in any successful way) and Yahoo's failure to maintain its dominance or communities that they can somehow put something together that will compete with Google. I agree with you -- this is not going to be easy to pull off, and the odds (and their track record) are against MS. Nothing from the press releases or Ballmer/Gates interviews suggests that they are unaware of this though. Being aware of your failings is a very important step in rectifying them.
Microsoft is just wasting money. Perhaps.
Actually, they have already stated in their press releases that initial integration will only be for things that make sense (plugging in MS's ad platform and search). This is painless and completely transparent to the end user. Later integration will be done on a case-by-case basis where it makes sense. Areas where future scalability and technologies are important will definitely be migrated to windows server, but not migrated for its own sake. I'm obviously paraphrasing, but they've repeated stuff to this effect several times.
Note that migrating to windows server makes sense for MS even for scalability reasons, even when you consider BSDs capabilities. Why would MS invest any effort on a different platform than the one they know the best?
It was a cost reduction of a factor of 20, not a performance improvement. Err.. if the old SGI had 400 CPUs and the new cluster needs 20 CPUs to match its performance, then new cluster performs the same at 1/20th the cost.
I know this is an over-simplification, the SGI probably used vector processors and relied a lot less on parallel-processing, cost-per-processor and number of processors will be completely skewed from my example if that's the case, yada yada yada.. but you get the point I hope..
What was the age and the specs of the SGI being replaced?
Going by Moore's law, a factor of 20 performance improvement takes about 6 to 8 years. If the SGI was at least that old, this isn't news -- it's just the state of the art these days. In other words, small clusters capable of weather forcasting are relatively run-of-the-mill.
Of course, props to linux for being the enabler in this case.
MS has been very good at equating function=some MS product - and too many users aren't tech saavy enough to understand that is not the case. I wouldn't give the credit for this to MS (at least not directly). It's just a by-product of being ubiqutious on the desktop. It's the same as calling a photocopier a Xerox machine, or saying a Zune is like an iPod manufactured by MS (heard someone say that on the radio today). Don't confuse computer illiterate users expressing things the only way they know how to, with subliminal marketing messages by MS.
Why the parent has not yet been modded up, I dont know (well, the day is still early). This (perception) issue is definitely key to the "interoperability" issue with Linux and Windows - because even if Linux fully interoperated with Windows, the perception that a MS product is a certain task/function must still be overcome. Well -- parent wasn't that insightful;). The perception problem exists -- this is true. But it's not completely unfounded. Firefox people have done a fantastic job of decoupling "Internet" and "Internet Explorer". But OOo doesn't go nearly that far with Office file formats. Same arguments can be made for a great many applications. Desktop performance/usability/general-application-buginess-and-UI-inconsistency issues with Linux don't help either. And then part of the problem is just unavoidable and to be expected. I mean, even if you're switching from Windows to a Mac or a Mac to Windows you'd have a bit of a learning curve. There's no point in expecting them all to work the same way, and there's no escaping the fact that the most dominant platform is the one that will be on the advantageous side of this perception problem.
But if Wal-Mart sold out of the units in all their stores... TFA was unclear -- the store sales were not good, the online sales were.
Microsoft offering them a deal they can't refuse to discontinue selling them? MS can't legally do that. And Walmart is not some 2-bit company that can be bullied into submission. If you look at the financials you'll realize who's the tail and who's the tiger in this case.
You're right about that being the cheapest way to get a linux machine. I think the objection to that would be on principle more than anything else -- people won't want to pay the Vista license fee if they're not gonna actually use Vista. In fact, if you're trying to get value for money its a little annoying to know that your PC could have been cheaper if you didn't have to pay for s/w you're not going to use.
It's important to note though, that users do have a choice in the matter (buying the gPC in the store/online - and now just online). If Walmart decided to discontinue it because of the lack of demand, that's fair game. If Walmart decides they would rather install Vista on everything rather than the hassle of having seperate SKUs (with Vista/without Vista) - that's fair game as well.
When I see a pulldown at every on-line retailer that has
OS:
None
Linux (Ubuntu|whatever)
Windows Vista
then what you say will make sense. Until then, it's arrant nonsense Now that's nonsense. Consider the support cost (to the OEM) for these options, and then see if that makes sense.
MS has worked hard to make sure that it's the *only* choice people have, to the point of destroying competitive products by nearly any means, including stealing (emphasis mine), buy-out and close, and giving away their own version.
Don't let your hatred cloud you this bad dude. Just because its repeated so often doesn't make it true. If you think it's true, I suggest you back up your claim. In fact forget stealing, you probably won't be able to even come up with an example of the buy-out-and-close strategy except for some arcane thing that nobody really cares about (which means it got integrated in an invisible way -- not closed out).
Hmmm... It's not a choice when it's the only thing offered. Dell, etc. only offer Windows. (With few exceptions). Who's forcing you to buy a dell?
If dell adds an OS to your choices, there are serious cost implications for them. Test the h/w on that OS, automate your image installations for various configurations, more patch distribution, much larger volume of customer software issues to troubleshoot (and therefore much more training for their support staff). Why should they do that for a choice only 1% of their customers will make?
Google is open source. If google had to pay microsoft licensing ms would not sell them to Google What?? What part of Google is open source? What part of the EU and US DOJ judgements leave MS the option of denying licensing protocols and IP to google?
I didn't ask for an explaination. I didn't say that you should not be wary of MS's intentions. If you didn't notice, that point was covered about 100 times prior to your post. GP's point (actually discussing the features of the beta) was not.
Hence, I said, that your response to GP was pointless and devoid of information/insight. So was your next one. Do you seriously think you enlightened me in some way? If I understand your signature correctly, my tendency is to bracket you as an instance of typical slashdot groupthink, which I find tiresomely unoriginal and consistently missing the bigger picture (and yes, that includes your current post I'm responding to -- we can discuss in detail, if you wish, though I doubt eiher of us is likely to budge).
Group-think represents the lions share of this website. Its the other posters (the original thinkers) that I keep coming back for. That was my second point -- that its getting harder and harder to filter through the group-think BS and find actual insightful comments -- the comments that got me hooked to this site in the first place.
OP called out some feature You pan the feature because it will be proprietary, or has already been implemented (therefore MS should not even bother). And then rinse and repeat.
To address your first point: "Improved compliance still isn't compliance". Can you please give us a link to a complaint web browser? There are only less complaint browsers and more compliant browsers! "Improved" standards compliance is a Good Thing!
No real need to respond to the rest. Just frustrated with the way this site and its moderation have become so shamelessly biased.
...In this, you fail to understand antitrust law, so I will try to enlighten you
Don't patronize me man.. Let's keep it civil..
First, an analogy: It is legal to fire a gun. Bob goes to the target range and practices his marksmanship in hopes of getting on the olympic team. Barry goes to the mall with a shotgun and starts murdering people wearing hats...
Murder is illegal -- for all players, whatever the circumstances. People know when they are committing murder -- so they know when they violate this rule. I hope you see my point. Circumstances are indeed important. But their importance is in determining if someone actually committed murder or not (or some lesser offence like manslaughter) -- they never determine whether the murder they committed was legal or not. The rule itself is crystal clear, and applies equally to all.
Note, I'm perfectly aware that ignorance of the law is never a valid excuse. That's immeterial here. Knowing in this case is the ability to logically determine whether you are in violation or not. Antitrust law fails to meet this bar.
<Your paragraph on products A and B; the various scenarios and their effect on free markets>
Acknowleged -- I understand the purpose of antitrust law -- to protect free markets. I'm saying that: A) They actually don't do that B) They unfairly penalize companies that are successful (thereby biasing what was a free market), and C) they would be unnecessary if law was to actually keep pace with technology and treat the disease (file formats, internal APIs, etc) instead of the symptom (market share).
For example, Apple does not have a monopoly on desktop operating systems
Apple has a monopoly on Macs, so it depends on how you define the market and that can be very subjective. Say software company ZZ makes s/w only for Macs, and Apple decides to integrate some competing feature into OS-X which now threatens ZZ's existance. Now is Apple exempt regulatory oversight over this feature (similar to MS) because they don't have a monopoly in desktop s/w, or are they not exempt because they have a monopoly on Macs? Apple will argue one way, and the software maker will argue the other. Both are correct from their world view. Applying antitrust law one way will penalize Apple unfairly, and the other way will cripple ZZ's competitiveness unfairly (and other exclusive Mac shops as well).
Antitrust law is utterly useless here - regulators won't step in until Apple is a behemoth and the entire industry is spending their lobbying money on getting the DOJ to investigate Apple. By the time the dust settles all the little guys are already extinct. What was needed, was clear rules of engagement from day one. Can Apple have use undocumented OS internals of any type, to give their competing feature an advantage, or is that forbidden? Simple as that. No need for antitrust/marketshare-related bullshit.
Stuff about iTunes, DRM, MS, etc.
Apologies if I sound dismissive here. Disagreed with many things you said, but don't have the time to refute on a case-by-case basis.
Apple is not confused by this topic and their business executives and lawyers on staff know exactly what antitrust laws state and if what they are doing is likely to be ruled an abuse. Microsoft is even less confused.
It doesn't work like that (at least in my company). Whenever a product team (developers/testers/mamagers/architects) think that a particular point in their design can cause antitrust issues, they will ask the legal department what they think. The best legal can do is offer opinions and a confidence-level in said opinion. In general legal is consulted whenever there is any doubt whatsoever. Legal of course can't scan API design docs for timebombs, and the product team obviously doesn't understand antitust nuances so
Dead right -- and a very sensible and fair option to implement -- this would be an easy one to enforce for all player irrespective of market share etc.
I've been in product cycles where we've gone through exactly the dilemma you pointed out: where making an API public means supporting it until kingdom come, when the scenario is too new for the API to be stable, or you have definite long-term plans that will cause breaking changes in the API and you don't want the burden of having to be backwards compatible with applications designed for the older API.
The only part I didn't agree with was this:
The only thing one could possibly argue is that Safari shouldn't be using the SPI, either, to put them on equal footing. That said, since it's safe for them to do so, where's the harm? There's no monopoly involved, certainly.:-) And as you noted, many of those SPIs that Safari is trying out might become APIs at some point in the future.
I think it should either be ok for all players to have internal APIs or not ok for all players. I mean, if we say that right now it's ok for Apple to do this because they are not a monopoly, what happens if they do become one? At that point do they get penalized for these internal APIs (using which they designed the products that helped them obtain the monopoly)? At what point will Apple cross a threshold at which they need to change this practice and how will they know when they have crossed it? And when this threshold is crossed, is it suddenly ok for MS to start this practice again (of having undocumented APIs).
Slashdot Mirror
I did read the book. I'm aware that 2010 wasn't bound to the novel the way 2001 was -- its still hard to seperate them. The message is still very much in unison with anything Arthur C. Clarke would give us.
btw: I didn't think the movie was inconclusive about life on Europa. They detected chlorpohyl there, and Floyd's comments at the end (about the children of the old sun meeting the children of the new) and about the monolith, make it pretty clear.
I prefer to embrace movies like 2010 because of the way they can introduce their concepts to much wider audiences. 2001 for all its brilliance is a really difficult movie to watch -- its honestly impossible to understand what's happening when Bowman goes through the stargate and etc. if you haven't read the book -- and that's not necessarily a reasonable expectation.
Of course, I don't think I've ever seen a more amazing thing in the movies than the ol' bone turning into a space station moment in 2001.
Not needing proprietary add-ons like Flash and Silverlight is indeed a noble and desirable goal.
It's questionable however that an improved HTML spec. is the solution. HTML web-apps using AJAX/whatever techniques have serious limitations. HTML 5 looks like an improvement, and the new DOM interface APIs are a Good Thing, but it certainly doesn't make possible the kind of apps you can already create with Flash or Silverlight.
Rest in peace, Arthur C. Clarke - you will never be forgotten.
I can still remember the chill that went down my spine at the end of 2010 (the year we make contact) when HAL relays David Bowman's message:
All these worlds are yours except EuropaAttempt no landings there.
Use them together. Use them in Peace.
And the (almost Obamaesque) hope I felt when Haywood Floyd tells his son, "Someday, the children of the old sun will meet the children of the new sun. I hope we can be friends"
2001, 2010, Rama, Glide Path (and instrument landing systems), The City and the Stars, Earthlight, The Nine Billions Names of God, his Scientific American paper on geosynchronous satellites, and so much more. I can't imagine what our world would be like without his contributions.
So every time Joe user has an issue with the OS, they wade into the code and patch whatever is causing it? For all your consternation on this point, do you yourself have the expertise required to do that?
...and I don't care how often they repeat things in public... Neither do I. Slashdot posts, repeating ad-infinum that MS will rip out BSD and replace it with Windows Server without reason, doesn't make that prediction true either.So, let's assume the following:
- press releases aren't worth much, for predicting what MS will do
-
- a little logical analysis however, is worth something
Now with these assumptions, if MS invests 44B in something, logic says they will want that investment to come good. Following that logic, the phased replacements I described in my original post make sense, and I merely pointed out that MS has stated that this is their intent.
The Hotmail case is a tried and tested example of their work. I'm not sure I follow.. Sure hotmail isn't as good as gmail, but are you implying that its a failure, or that MS has somehow run it into the ground since its acquisition?
So, just how much are MS paying you to catch flak on
If MS buys Yahoo I'm moving to Google. I wonder how many Yahoo users would jump ship as well. Most web users aren't geeks like us - they won't even be aware that MS acquired Yahoo. For those that are, most will not care (one way or the other) unless they are actually impacted in some way (positive or negative). What remains is a small percentage of people like us that know and care (at least enough to have this conversation) but even among us there isn't concensus on defection.
- Bungie Studios (even happily spun off as a healthy independant game studio now)
- Visio Corp. (I assume you're familiar with Visio?)
- Groove Networks (their CEO is now the Cheif Technology Architect at MS - Ray Ozzie himself
- Ensemble Studios (Age of Empires, and soon, Halo Wars)
- Rare Inc. (Perfect Dark Zero)
Note that many acquisitions probably get integrated and the products renamed for branding purposes (for example, Viridian which ends up being MS's Virtualization solution). Just because they disappeared from the news doesn't mean they aren't thriving. Yahoo will always be second or third place to Google. Yahoo is currently in second, and MS is currently in third. They expect to remain there for some time. Microsoft made their attempt with MSN. It's crap and never caught on. MS knows that. Why do you think they are trying to acquire yahoo? Yahoo and all of its things, while many are still vibrant, are generally too spammy to be useful any longer. (I can't tell you how many groups I had joined only to become flooded with unending spam even after leaving those groups!) Google groups don't have spam?Anyway, that's besides the point. MS is aware of yahoo's issues (did you stop to read about the acquisition offer a bit before you posted your rant?). MS needs Yahoo's users and its brands to be able to at least get a foot in the door. I simply cannot imagine with Microsoft's history of misunderstanding the internet (primarily they somehow don't get that they can't control or guide the internet in any successful way) and Yahoo's failure to maintain its dominance or communities that they can somehow put something together that will compete with Google. I agree with you -- this is not going to be easy to pull off, and the odds (and their track record) are against MS. Nothing from the press releases or Ballmer/Gates interviews suggests that they are unaware of this though. Being aware of your failings is a very important step in rectifying them. Microsoft is just wasting money. Perhaps.
Actually, they have already stated in their press releases that initial integration will only be for things that make sense (plugging in MS's ad platform and search). This is painless and completely transparent to the end user. Later integration will be done on a case-by-case basis where it makes sense. Areas where future scalability and technologies are important will definitely be migrated to windows server, but not migrated for its own sake. I'm obviously paraphrasing, but they've repeated stuff to this effect several times.
Note that migrating to windows server makes sense for MS even for scalability reasons, even when you consider BSDs capabilities. Why would MS invest any effort on a different platform than the one they know the best?
Someone already mentioned that. Moore's law still applies. See my previous response here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=487034&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=22748784#22749162
I know this is an over-simplification, the SGI probably used vector processors and relied a lot less on parallel-processing, cost-per-processor and number of processors will be completely skewed from my example if that's the case, yada yada yada.. but you get the point I hope..
What was the age and the specs of the SGI being replaced?
Going by Moore's law, a factor of 20 performance improvement takes about 6 to 8 years. If the SGI was at least that old, this isn't news -- it's just the state of the art these days. In other words, small clusters capable of weather forcasting are relatively run-of-the-mill.
Of course, props to linux for being the enabler in this case.
Why the parent has not yet been modded up, I dont know (well, the day is still early). This (perception) issue is definitely key to the "interoperability" issue with Linux and Windows - because even if Linux fully interoperated with Windows, the perception that a MS product is a certain task/function must still be overcome. Well -- parent wasn't that insightful
Microsoft offering them a deal they can't refuse to discontinue selling them? MS can't legally do that. And Walmart is not some 2-bit company that can be bullied into submission. If you look at the financials you'll realize who's the tail and who's the tiger in this case.
You're right about that being the cheapest way to get a linux machine. I think the objection to that would be on principle more than anything else -- people won't want to pay the Vista license fee if they're not gonna actually use Vista. In fact, if you're trying to get value for money its a little annoying to know that your PC could have been cheaper if you didn't have to pay for s/w you're not going to use.
It's important to note though, that users do have a choice in the matter (buying the gPC in the store/online - and now just online). If Walmart decided to discontinue it because of the lack of demand, that's fair game. If Walmart decides they would rather install Vista on everything rather than the hassle of having seperate SKUs (with Vista/without Vista) - that's fair game as well.
OS:
None
Linux (Ubuntu|whatever)
Windows Vista
then what you say will make sense. Until then, it's arrant nonsense Now that's nonsense. Consider the support cost (to the OEM) for these options, and then see if that makes sense. MS has worked hard to make sure that it's the *only* choice people have, to the point of destroying competitive products by nearly any means, including stealing (emphasis mine), buy-out and close, and giving away their own version. Don't let your hatred cloud you this bad dude. Just because its repeated so often doesn't make it true. If you think it's true, I suggest you back up your claim. In fact forget stealing, you probably won't be able to even come up with an example of the buy-out-and-close strategy except for some arcane thing that nobody really cares about (which means it got integrated in an invisible way -- not closed out).
If dell adds an OS to your choices, there are serious cost implications for them. Test the h/w on that OS, automate your image installations for various configurations, more patch distribution, much larger volume of customer software issues to troubleshoot (and therefore much more training for their support staff). Why should they do that for a choice only 1% of their customers will make?
I didn't ask for an explaination. I didn't say that you should not be wary of MS's intentions. If you didn't notice, that point was covered about 100 times prior to your post. GP's point (actually discussing the features of the beta) was not.
Hence, I said, that your response to GP was pointless and devoid of information/insight. So was your next one. Do you seriously think you enlightened me in some way? If I understand your signature correctly, my tendency is to bracket you as an instance of typical slashdot groupthink, which I find tiresomely unoriginal and consistently missing the bigger picture (and yes, that includes your current post I'm responding to -- we can discuss in detail, if you wish, though I doubt eiher of us is likely to budge).
Group-think represents the lions share of this website. Its the other posters (the original thinkers) that I keep coming back for. That was my second point -- that its getting harder and harder to filter through the group-think BS and find actual insightful comments -- the comments that got me hooked to this site in the first place.
The gist of your post was:
OP called out some feature You pan the feature because it will be proprietary, or has already been implemented (therefore MS should not even bother). And then rinse and repeat.To address your first point: "Improved compliance still isn't compliance". Can you please give us a link to a complaint web browser? There are only less complaint browsers and more compliant browsers! "Improved" standards compliance is a Good Thing!
No real need to respond to the rest. Just frustrated with the way this site and its moderation have become so shamelessly biased.
Holy crap I wish I had mod point to use right now. Thanks for the intelligent post.
...In this, you fail to understand antitrust law, so I will try to enlighten you
Don't patronize me man.. Let's keep it civil..
First, an analogy: It is legal to fire a gun. Bob goes to the target range and practices his marksmanship in hopes of getting on the olympic team. Barry goes to the mall with a shotgun and starts murdering people wearing hats...
Murder is illegal -- for all players, whatever the circumstances. People know when they are committing murder -- so they know when they violate this rule. I hope you see my point. Circumstances are indeed important. But their importance is in determining if someone actually committed murder or not (or some lesser offence like manslaughter) -- they never determine whether the murder they committed was legal or not. The rule itself is crystal clear, and applies equally to all.
Note, I'm perfectly aware that ignorance of the law is never a valid excuse. That's immeterial here. Knowing in this case is the ability to logically determine whether you are in violation or not. Antitrust law fails to meet this bar.
<Your paragraph on products A and B; the various scenarios and their effect on free markets>
Acknowleged -- I understand the purpose of antitrust law -- to protect free markets. I'm saying that: A) They actually don't do that B) They unfairly penalize companies that are successful (thereby biasing what was a free market), and C) they would be unnecessary if law was to actually keep pace with technology and treat the disease (file formats, internal APIs, etc) instead of the symptom (market share).
For example, Apple does not have a monopoly on desktop operating systems
Apple has a monopoly on Macs, so it depends on how you define the market and that can be very subjective. Say software company ZZ makes s/w only for Macs, and Apple decides to integrate some competing feature into OS-X which now threatens ZZ's existance. Now is Apple exempt regulatory oversight over this feature (similar to MS) because they don't have a monopoly in desktop s/w, or are they not exempt because they have a monopoly on Macs? Apple will argue one way, and the software maker will argue the other. Both are correct from their world view. Applying antitrust law one way will penalize Apple unfairly, and the other way will cripple ZZ's competitiveness unfairly (and other exclusive Mac shops as well).
Antitrust law is utterly useless here - regulators won't step in until Apple is a behemoth and the entire industry is spending their lobbying money on getting the DOJ to investigate Apple. By the time the dust settles all the little guys are already extinct. What was needed, was clear rules of engagement from day one. Can Apple have use undocumented OS internals of any type, to give their competing feature an advantage, or is that forbidden? Simple as that. No need for antitrust/marketshare-related bullshit.
Stuff about iTunes, DRM, MS, etc.
Apologies if I sound dismissive here. Disagreed with many things you said, but don't have the time to refute on a case-by-case basis.
Apple is not confused by this topic and their business executives and lawyers on staff know exactly what antitrust laws state and if what they are doing is likely to be ruled an abuse. Microsoft is even less confused.
It doesn't work like that (at least in my company). Whenever a product team (developers/testers/mamagers/architects) think that a particular point in their design can cause antitrust issues, they will ask the legal department what they think. The best legal can do is offer opinions and a confidence-level in said opinion. In general legal is consulted whenever there is any doubt whatsoever. Legal of course can't scan API design docs for timebombs, and the product team obviously doesn't understand antitust nuances so
Dead right -- and a very sensible and fair option to implement -- this would be an easy one to enforce for all player irrespective of market share etc.
Great post.
I've been in product cycles where we've gone through exactly the dilemma you pointed out: where making an API public means supporting it until kingdom come, when the scenario is too new for the API to be stable, or you have definite long-term plans that will cause breaking changes in the API and you don't want the burden of having to be backwards compatible with applications designed for the older API.
The only part I didn't agree with was this:
The only thing one could possibly argue is that Safari shouldn't be using the SPI, either, to put them on equal footing. That said, since it's safe for them to do so, where's the harm? There's no monopoly involved, certainly.I think it should either be ok for all players to have internal APIs or not ok for all players. I mean, if we say that right now it's ok for Apple to do this because they are not a monopoly, what happens if they do become one? At that point do they get penalized for these internal APIs (using which they designed the products that helped them obtain the monopoly)? At what point will Apple cross a threshold at which they need to change this practice and how will they know when they have crossed it? And when this threshold is crossed, is it suddenly ok for MS to start this practice again (of having undocumented APIs).