Second Thoughts: Microsoft on Trial 712
Microsoft's gargantuan and controversial presence triggered a techno-social revolution over the last decade. Microsoft's dominance -- and as some describe it, predation -- helped shape the computer revolution and the new economy. It was also instrumental in spawning Open Source, Free Software and the related individualistic, decentralized media that may well have saved the Net from the corporatized fate of much of the rest of the non-virtual information culture.
One of the problems is that our media has become a mob, lurching one way, then the other.
Perspective and clarity is hard to come by.
For more than a decade, the popular press uncritically accepted just about every single thing Bill Gates and his company said or did. Big media were instrumental in uncritically promoting products like Windows 98 and in establishing the notion of Microsoftian omnipotence. Gates couldn't have done it without them. They slobbered over his bland pronouncements, his shamelessly excessive mansion, his inane books, and his company's workable but decidedly uninspired and proprietary software.
Now, by and large, they've turned, and just as uncritically accepted the notion that Microsoft is an illegal and predatory monopoly and that the company needs to be broken up. Gates' astonishing arrogance -- lying to a federal judge comes to mind -- is much to blame for this change. But monomania isn't a crime.
Some articulate federal appeals court judges -- the case is before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia -- appear to be challenging the finding in the Microsoft trial, although they've yet to make their ultimate findings. And they and others are raising some troubling questions about the conduct of Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, who has himself told interviewers he knows little about the issues involved and believes there are good grounds to appeal his ruling. (The transcripts are available from the Federal Document Clearing House, a private subscription service that is not online, and from various online news sites. They make compelling reading).
I was always uneasy about Jackson's ruling and posture. To me, Microsoft's crimes were arrogance, mediocrity and greed, the hallmarks of our corporatized culture -- none of them, alas, illegal in our business world. Much as people fault the quality of Microsoft's software and decry its practices, the truth is that tens of millions of people have used their products successfully to access the Net and the Web and run their PCs. And the idea that a Microsoft break-up would enhance competitiveness and creativity have always seemed dubious, even menacing. The Net has been so creative and explosive in part because the government didn't know enough about it to mess it up. That's a dangerous precedent to change.
I'd rather see MS challenged creatively in the marketplace, or by the generous spirit of movements like Open Source, than by a bunch of admittedly clueless federal bureaucrats, or an erratic judge. It seems clear that no one in the federal government from Congress to the regulatory agencies to the White House -- is in a strong position to oversee or regulate the Net or the increasingly disparate tech nation.
The appeal raises a host of complex issues, many of which fly well over my head. But the heart of the government action against Microsoft is clear enough: the U.S. accused the company of paying ISP's and OEM's (original equipment manufacturers) hundreds of millions of dollars to shut down Netscape's distribution channels. It also accused Microsoft of illegally tying its browser to Windows; of predatory pricing, and of exclusive dealing. But several questions about the government's case seem legitimate, even troubling, and it seems both fair and appropriate to launch an open discussion about them, to see whether they have any merit -- or not.
First:
Antitrust law says that for a company to behave illegally, it must establish a monopoly (not in itself illegal), engage in anti-competitive practices, and perhaps most importantly, harm consumers. Were consumers demonstrably harmed by Microsoft? If so, how?
Did government antitrust prosecutors actually prove that Microsoft prevented Netscape, or any other rival, from bringing new products to the marketplace?
According to unchallenged testimony in federal court this week, Netscape distributed 160 million copies of Navigator in l998 alone. At the time, according to the appeals court testimony, there were approximately 100 million Net users, which means every one could have acquired Netscape's product if they wanted to. Is it true that these users were not free to choose Netscape?
In ruling against Microsoft, Judge Jackson defined the "relevant market" that Microsoft controlled as operating systems and replacements to operating systems. He then found that Microsoft's admittedly aggressive tactics harmed Navigator. But Microsoft's lawyers have repeatedly argued -- correctly -- that Navigator isn't an operating system, and that Netscape had neither interest in nor means to supplant Windows. Was Judge Jackson wrong when he concluded that there was a direct link between Microsoft's bullying tactics and direct harm to consumers in the "relevant market?"
Judge Jackson also found that Microsoft had violated Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act by tying IE to Windows. Appeals Court Justice Stephen Williams sharply challenged that view in court this week. Whatever Microsoft's conduct was, he argued, "it's not tying." Several other justices said they were sympathetic to Microsoft's argument that it integrated IE with Windows because there was little or no real market for computers without browsers. Isn't that so? In this time period, as the Web was exploding, why wasn't Microsoft justified in integrating Windows with its much-hyped OS? Wouldn't doing otherwise prove corporate suicide? Was Microsoft really supposed to sit back and allow competitors to dominate this critical market, surely threatening Windows in the process?
The Justice Department has been struggling in the appeals testimony to respond to arguments that computer operating systems by their very nature might have to be standardized, and that as a result a monopoly was inevitable. If Microsoft didn't create one, its lawyers claimed, somebody else would have and at least some of those potential "other" monopolies had a vested interested in seeing a divided and weakened Microsoft.
Plenty of questions remain about Microsoft and its practices. Did the company ruthlessly, or illegally, discourage competition? Did Microsoft make it too difficult or in some cases, impossible, for consumers to remove IE from their desktops? Did Microsoft unfairly -- or, more to the point, illegally --wipe out or damage potential competitors? But there are civil, criminal and other remedies for this behavior, if it occurred, short of chopping up the company.
The truth is, there is a fine but important legal line between ruthlessness, avarice and illegality. There are also profound implications for the tech world if Microsoft does, in fact, break apart, especially if it happens for the wrong reasons.
Now there is also the question of judicial bias. Some legal ethicists -- including nearly all of the appeals judges -- have sharply criticized Judge Jackson, whose dislike for Gates sometimes appeared personal -- in one interview, Jackson linked Microsoft to drug gangs -- and who made critical comments about Microsoft and its founder to reporters while the appeal process is still underway. The appeals judges are so upset with Jackson that they are reported to be considering sending the case back to a different judge. Jackson's behavior is considered grossly unprofessional, especially in the federal judiciary. Something seems off about this judge. The final decision in the Microsoft case will shape software and new economy laws for decades -- the ruling ought to be credible and beyond doubt.
Another problem is the selective nature of the Justice Department's prosecution of Microsoft, which suggests the government is regulating predatory corporations when it certainly is not. In the Corporate Republic, the land of AOL/Time-Warner and the Disney Corp., is Microsoft really that unusual, or even particularly predatory?
Are other giant theme park operators really free to create new versions of Disney World, whose synergistic marketing "tie-ins" would seem to a non-tech layperson to dwarf the alleged linkage between IE and Windows? Can new information content and delivery providers possibly compete with the monster that is AOL/Time-Warner, a truly awful merger with dreadful implications for privacy, free speech and competitiveness; a link-up that the very same Justice Department only recently approved with hardly a blink? This is a company crying out for a break-up from the day it merged.
Microsoft appeals trial transcripts are available on almost all major news sites -- USA Today, CNN.com, the Washington Post and the New York Times. People can reach their own conclusions about the testimony, and the appeal court's questioning of lawyers for both sides. It's implicit that your comments are always welcome on this site, but your thoughts about these questions would be particularly welcome.
Re:Which Evil Empire? (Score:2)
MS vs Corel AntiTrust in the Office Suite Market (Score:2)
If that's not anti-trust behaviour, I don't know what is.
That's *really* what the recent Corel/MS stock deal was all about, IMHO. It had nothing to do with
Hmm... (Score:2)
The appeal raises a host of complex issues, many of which fly well over my head
Right - so if Jackson can be discounted because he doesn't understand the issues, remind me again why I shouldn't discount this article?
-dair
Jon- better come up with 'third thoughts' quick. (Score:2)
I don't know which way it's going to go. Naturally, many forms of media _are_ in Microsoft's pocket and entirely dependent on MS for revenues directly or indirectly- how surprising can it be that these sources uniformly see the appeal as a huge vindication for MS? Clue: the verdict is NOT IN. There could be surprises- they could be engaging in some heavy Jackson bashing to clear themselves of the appearance of partiality, just as Jackson released findings of fact to insulate his work from the expected ravages of highly paid lawyers! Every step of the way the judges have had to go heavily on the defensive.
The appeals court cannot have failed to notice Microsoft lies in court ("I'm sorry, I don't buy that for a second"- this from their big ally?)
The appeals court cannot have failed to notice Microsoft introduced FAKE EVIDENCE (the video evidence of 'identical' windows boxes, one without IE)
Perjury _is_ a crime and contempt of court can lead to getting booted out of the courtroom- and if it was any _normal_ criminal, the antics of MS defense lawyers would have led to charges. It's not a normal criminal- there's a bottomless well of lawyers that can be dragged in and instructed to behave with the same contempt and untruthfulness, so booting the individual lawyers WILL NOT WORK. The judges are forced to let acts of perjury and contempt go unchallenged so the process doesn't get completely clogged. This is not reliable evidence that they are going to find for the lying, perjuring, and obviously, baldly guilty defendant.
Everyone swore that Jackson was going to let MS go up until the last minute as well- the media was uniformly convinced that nothing MS did was hurting them, and that Jackson would buy into the argument that as software didn't exist in the Industrial Age, antitrust didn't apply no matter what the company's motives were or what it did to twist arms.
Well- again, I am _autistic_ and even I am not so pedantic as to be completely stupid about this issue. The fact that I could write a word processor is not the freaking point! The fact that I would have to be totally insane to expect to SELL it, is. Microsoft has consistently taken over ENTIRE SECTORS of software development and made it completely absurd for a market to exist in them. That is the problem in a nutshell. It's irrelevant HOW they did it- although they did it with armtwisting and APIs, it would still be destruction of a market even if they'd made the market similarly barren using only quality (and that totally ignores the relevant point of distribution, and that's where we begin to see armtwisting again).
The judges are hearing this 'en banc' which is not an accident or trivial thing- and it may be speculative, but I can identify one very very good reason for the appeals court to put up the APPEARANCE that they totally disrespect Jackson's findings and procedures. If I was them, I would want to know if it were TRUE. Was Jackson a loon, or is Microsoft really so far gone that they will lie to the judges, fake evidence, make no sense at all? If the appeals court defers to Jackson on anything, it is a warning sign to Microsoft, and if I were the appeals court, I would want to send NO warning signs. Let the biggest MS supporter say anything he likes to reassure the MS defense- his courtroom comments ARE NOT VERDICTS! The chance that the MS defense can be baited into replicating their embarrassing performance in front of Jackson is too important to miss- the appeals court MUST KNOW if it was a fluke, or if the defense is that contemptuous, and most importantly they must know if Microsoft will respect the court enough to comply with sanctions after a previous failure to do so. Only a position of complete contempt for the court and the verdict will justify a structural remedy, as Jackson well knew, and as the appeals court believes even more strongly- otherwise it's much simpler to just issue conduct requirements and leave it at that.
Whatever the makeup of the 'en banc' appeals court, I do not believe for a second that it is an accident that the MS defense is being invited to exactly duplicate their attitude and performance they gave Jackson. They're being baited, coaxed to throw caution to the wind and show just how arrogant they can be, reveal their true colors before a full 'en banc' court of appeals judges (I assume they can talk to each other as a jury would?). Only this can truly reveal whether they are incapable of respecting a conduct remedy- and the court MUST know that, above all else, before passing judgement on whether Jackson's conclusions of law were correct. Many people feel they were correct.
For starters netscape isn't a symptom (Score:2)
Microsoft is a monopoly, and probably illegal. It isn't about netscape though, because netscape has always sucked. I remember netscape 1.1n, and I hated it, used it only when required. I remember 2.0 was worse. Netscape introduced frames, something I cannot forgive them for. (lynx has been my browser of choice for years) Anyone with money to pay programers could make a browser that would work better then netscape did, proof: Microsoft did.
Ask the Samba folks to prove microsoft is anti-competitive. Ask the Wine folks. They have the dealings with microsoft to prove it. Ask anyone who is trying to build a word processor that loads docments created with a microsoft product. They are the ones being harmed, not netscape. There are quality word processors out there created by someone other then microsoft. They don't work with Word though (well) so noone uses them.
Re:For starters netscape isn't a symptom (Score:2)
So were you running IE back then? Or was it Konqueror perhaps?
Turbo Gopher accually. Remember at this time point there were more Gopher sites then web sites. When I wanted to see a web site (and most were not worth it) mosiac was there.
Re:Jackson and the DOJ blew it... (Score:2)
I think you need to take a look at Windows Media Player. It is quickly outstripping RA. And it is included with Windows. You can get free updates for it simply and painlessly with Win98.
Will RA be around in a year? Maybe. Probably not doing as well, I'd wager. Has WinMP killed their market? Yep.
Now what is the cause? Well, there it gets complicated. The bundling is a big part. It really is killing them. The other part, however, is total irony--Microsoft is trying to use more open standards. They release the specs for their codecs, and then drive the codec via WMP platform bundling. The MS ASF format is much better than RA's format--better compression, better quality. A good thing.
So is MS innovating or destroying? A little of both. And that is why they are sooo damn effective. Anyone who says MS doesn't innovate is a fool. But anyone who thinks they get there on technical merit is equally a fool.
The REAL issue in all of this is: do Microsoft applicactions get an unfair advantage by being created by the company that makes AND ships the OS? I think the answer is clear: yes.
Could RA get bundled with the default installation of Windows 98--I doubt it. And there is the difference. Yes, RA let down their guard and got upstaged. But how do they compete with the Juggernaut that is "comes with Windows 98 Free!" ? Support the format? No--that will only kill them. The real competition is minshare--and MS has the lock on that, because it is their platform. Yes, I use Linux. But I also realize that Windows is pretty much the only game in town for 95% of computer users.
Re:My biggest nit on the hearings (Score:2)
It's well-accepted word of mouth that MS vastly underplayed the importance of the internet at that time, and possibly still do.
Re:Microsoft are good for consumers and society (Score:2)
If you want to talk cheap then you are better off with PostgreSQL or even MySQL. Seeing as you already poo-poo'd Oracle and DB2 despite them being technically superior, proving that you are not interested in technical merits, you might as well pick the cheapest database.
These are databases, not e-mail clients. The fact that you consider "easy-to-use" a necessary feature for a database is ludicrous. Databases aren't useful by themselves. You additionally need the ability to program SQL and some variation of frontend language. This is PROGRAMMER TERRITORY, and so you should not be using the same criteria to select a database as you would pick an e-mail client or word processor.
This is a clear sign of the declining quality of computer professionals. You can read as much disgust into the emphasized word as you see fit. You apparently think the first criteria for choosing a database isn't data-integrity, robustness, transaction speed, rollback features, data-type support, customer support, or any other "true" criteria. You seem to think that the most important criteria is that you can click a mouse button and get a list of options. You have your priorities completely messed up.
I did say my purposes. Afterall, we were talking about databases, so in context I hadn't really thought that secretaries were the main issue here.
But on the matter of secretaries. Keep in mind that UNIX was invented so patent typists - i.e. secretaries - could enter information. My first computer-related job was in 1991 and involved upgrading an ISC system which had 10 VT100 dumb terminals hooked off a serial board. It was used by - wait for it - 10 secretaries who used vi and troff for preparing letters and invoices. I think people often underestimate the high intelligence required to be a good secretary.
I was of course talking about Word for DOS, which began to supplant WordPerfect because Word shipped "for free" on new PCs. This should have been obvious from my reference to MultiMate: the CPM/DOS word processor.
But your point is wrong anyway. There were WYSIWYG word processors in the 80s for the Amiga, the Atari, the Macintosh, etc. Microsoft even had a graphical version of Word on the Macintosh many years before Word for Windows appeared. And they certainly weren't the 1st WYSIWYG word processor for the Macintosh. Heck, I remember running some crappy WYSIWYG word processor on my C64.
I'm almost certain that GEM had a rather good WYSIWYG word processor as well, so that means you could have gotten WYSIWYG word processing on your IBM-PC before Windows even existed.
Re:Microsoft are good for consumers and society (Score:2)
Quite possibly. I'm pretty sure the Apple II had a Microsoft BASIC. And the C128 definitely had a Microsoft BASIC. Grepping the C128 roms turns up "(C)1977 MICROSOFT CORP".
But the BASIC wasn't what made these computers sell well. The "killer" games and apps for these computers didn't use BASIC at all. They all wrote directly to the hardware.
This was what I meant when I said Microsoft played a small but non-important role in these earlier consoles.
Re:Libertarianism and Promoting Choice (Score:2)
They have a limited right to this, yes. What they DO NOT have the right to do is dicate what OTHER software they can do, both in interacting with their own software, and completely external to their software. This means that no, they cannot say you can use our OS, but not their applications. They also cannot say you can use our OS, so long as you *NEVER* use theirs..
Re:An interesting perspective.. (Score:2)
Any OS needs to have basic tools. That does not mean that they should include fully fledged bundled packages.
Re:An interesting perspective.. (Score:2)
So would I!! (Score:2)
So would I, BUT, the problem is that you are assuming that the marketplace is a level playing field where the consumer reigns supreme. This is NOT AT ALL TRUE. The marketplace is controlled, at least in large part, by the same large companies (Microsoft, RIA) and the same federal bureaucrats (DMCA, UCITA) and the same judges (Kaplan) that you say you don't want making this decision.
You say, "Let MS be challenged in the marketplace!"
I say, "Challenge the marketplace in court!"
From my perspective, all of the important battles (MPAA, 1-click patents, RIAA, DeCSS, UCITA, censorware, encryption export controls, GPL, carnivore, Napster...) will happen in the courtrooms and not in the marketplace. That's the sad truth of it.
Derek
Re:Integrating Windows into the OS. (Score:2)
Microsoft is forcing you to use their own Win32 Windowing system. You don't have a choice. You can't get it to load up with any other windowing system. Sure you can get shells that do a good job of pretending to be another system, and programs that bend the existing API to look like another system (Windowblinds), but you can't write your own window system to REPLACE win32.
So? Why did I buy windows95/98/ME/whatever? Was it for DOS? nope. Was it for karma? nope. Was it for the Win32 system? Yup.
If I want to replace Win32 (aka Windows) then fine, fdisk and Linux goes on. But why would I complain that I can't what I bought (windows) won't let me replace it. That's like getting pissed because I bought a Chevy but it won't let me put the oil filter and spark plugs from my Ford in it.
Should I also complain that I can't run Linux without running the Linux kernel?
Sure, on X, I can run Gnome/GTK/Xaw/Xlib/KDE/Motif apps, etc... but underneath they all are X windows apps that make calls to the Xlib layer.
The idea of the Windows product is to sell Windows - which *surprise* includes the windowing system built in. Should everthing now provide the ability to morph to something else? Should Word now be forced to let me use ispell? Should vi now support emacs keystokes? Should bash now understand setenv?
Re:Demonstrating harm is tough. Or is it? (Score:2)
The exploit in BIND was not written by bind, but the existence of the hole combined with the monopoly they have in the DNS "market" are what really caused the problem.
See...it works both ways. As for having to reboot everyday, the only time I rebooted my 2000 machine in the past few months has been to install a video capture card. The only reason I reboot my ME machine at home is because it gets turned off at night so I don't have to listen to the fans.
As for Office 2000, I run it because it works well, is a lot less buggy than any of the half-assed solutions on any other OS and has way too much functionality. Plus I like the little cat that does cute things on the bottom of my screen.
It is useless to resist (Score:2)
Netscape's failure proves that it's impossible to compete against Microsoft if Microsoft decides it wants to have you out of business. Microsoft has near-infinite resources and near-infinite manpower; they can afford to develop workalikes for any company's software products then give these workalikes away for free until the competition is bankrupt.
Re:Microsoft are good for consumers and society (Score:2)
http://www.bestbuy.com/software/Detail.asp?m=10
$89.95 for the WinMe upgrade. I paid $94.95 for the Win95 upgrade back in 1995.
How is that a price increase?
This is really the crux of the issue. Your facts are not facts at all, they are FUD. FUD intended to stir emotion.
The Appeals court on the other hand is worried only about the actual facts in the case. Not your Peter Pan fantasy dreams.
I'm amazed your post was rated a 5.
Re:Ummm... Psst! You're missing a major fact. (Score:2)
Win98 was the same price.
Look, you can either prove that windows is more expensive today than 10 years ago... Or you can give up on the stupid argument.
Re:Ummm... Psst! You're missing a major fact. (Score:2)
Proof of a conspiracy.
They may have charged $4 more! I don't recall, I seem to remember Win95 having a retail price of $99, or it might have been $95.
This is a riduculous argument.
Fair Reporting in the Press (Score:2)
What we can count on now, as has been demonstated in the past, is that the press will not fairly report anything against Microsoft. The same is true for reporting on Car Dealerships in your local newspaper. With Microsoft the problem is only magnified. It all comes down to AD dollars. Mircosoft pays a lot of money to every major network for commercials. Expensive commercials. They also put a lot of money into politician's pockets. So not only has this case been grossly -under investigativly-reported, but the Federal politicians have no incentive to take on MicroSoft.
This case is a perfect example of AntiTrust. Microsoft holds monopoly control over the desktop and they abused that power in preventing competitors to provide competing products on that platform. OEM computer builders were required to install ONLY Internet Explorer on their machines, and in some cases they were required to pay for a Windows license for every machine they produced wether or not that Operating system was actually installed. Microsoft has hidden and continues to hide important API information making development on the platform very difficult for competitors and in some instaces actually modified the APIs to "break" competitor's products. The list goes on...
Microsoft controls the railroad and has prevented competitors from using that railroad to their detriment.
Re:Demonstrating harm is tough. Or is it? (Score:2)
Microsoft deserves part of the blame for ILOVEYOU and Melissa. Their dominance has created a dangerous monoculture [newhousenews.com] for the virus to propogate in. A most heterogenous network of computers would make it drastically harder for a virus or worm to propogate. Microsoft's consumer level operating systems effectively have no security, meaning that once a single user is infected, everyone on the machine is infected. This assumption of little to no security created an culture of programmers that assume that users have write access everywhere. As a result, lots of programs require Administrator access under NT. As a result, lots of users run under Administrator access under NT. So NT's security features are largely ignored.
However, this doesn't really count as harm for anti-trust purposes, making bad decisions in software design isn't against the law, just frustrating.
Re:Microsoft are good for consumers and society (Score:2)
It was very generous of Microsoft to keep prices down on all of those computers they sell. Oh, wait, Microsoft doesn't sell computers. In fact, the price of computers is low enough that the price of Windows is is a big chunk of the total cost of a new (low-end) machine. If you want to thank someone for affordable computers, thank Compaq for producing the first clone of the IBM PC.
What competition? How about OS/2 [ibm.com], or DESQView [totse.com]? Many people were enjoying protected memory and pre-emptive multi-tasking before Microsoft chose to share it with us.
What is your evidence for Microsoft benefitting the economy? That they're big and everyone uses them? Standard Oil [ripon.edu] and AT&T were both big and everyone used them. The economy in both cases improved when they were broken up.
I trust you've tested your theory by comparing the economy with Microsoft to the economy of an alternate universe without Microsoft? We can't know for certain that Microsoft helped the economy. Maybe the economy would be stronger if there were many more companies all fighting against each other on more even terms.
Just compare Netscape 2 with IE 2. Microsoft didn't really have such a clear lead then. To give themselves the lead, Microsoft used their monopoly to take distribution channels away from Netscape. I don't see anything "fair-and-square" about threatening to kill Office for Mac unless Apple make IE the default Mac browser.
Re:Integrating Windows into the OS. (Score:2)
Or you can code to their documented API (Win32) and use their GUI and front end.
If you actually read what I said, I said that some win32 API calls are actually wrappers around the NT Native API, I didn't say that they all are.
The difference here is openness. Anybody with a compiler can write a Win32 application. You try porting something like X to run as the native graphical front end (instead of an application on top of Win32). It just won't happen without a vast amount of reverse engineering & major hackery.
Yes, you can replace the Explorer shell, written to the Win32 API, but you can't replace the Win32 API, even though that is not the native NT API. NT does have a Posix subsytem built in, but you can't write your own, because they don't publish the API for it.
Am I getting my point across here?
My Point
Microsoft is forcing you to use their own Win32 Windowing system. You don't have a choice. You can't get it to load up with any other windowing system. Sure you can get shells that do a good job of pretending to be another system, and programs that bend the existing API to look like another system (Windowblinds), but you can't write your own window system to REPLACE win32.
Re:ctrl-alt-del to login (Score:2)
Re:Harm to consumers (Score:2)
Re:Easy, an Oppressive Government (Score:2)
In the market place (which is how we "get rid of" a corporation) my one vote is my one dollar, which competes with your 5 dollars and someone else's thousand dollars. That means that if that one person "voted" for a corporation to continue to exist, our "vote" against it would be meaningless. And all a corporation need to do to continue to exist is get enough "votes" to be profitable. It is easier to participate in the political process and effect political change (especially at the local city/county/school district level) as an individual than it is to modify corporate behaviour. The problem is that most of the crowd here is so wrapped up in their work-lives, that they never actually bother to look into how the public sector works.
Forced Standard Format Compliance (Score:2)
In fact the government should ask the ACM or IEEE to come up with open and free standards for Word Processing, Spreadsheets, Presentation software, Databases, Boomarks, network file sharing, Scripting languages, and the like. These need to be of equivalent or better quality and capabilities than Microsoft's existing formats/interfaces. Then a ACM or IEEE standard is defined that states that to be ACM/IEEE xxxx.xx certified you must support these formats/interfaces NATIVELY, by DEFAULT, and as easy and similar to use as any proprietary formats as technically possible. Then force Microsoft to make their operating system and applications to be compliant with the most recent version of the standard.
This wouldn't stop Microsoft from continueing to play their games with their own proprietary formats and interfaces, but their products would at least get along nicely with any software that also supports these open and free standards.
Microsoft would always have to face the fact that as the standard evolved to support similar features to anything they added to their own proprietary features, they would have to support the standard implementation as well. This should over time make them want to just start supporting the open and free standard system, since they have to anyhow. They can then spend more of the effort making a better to use system, rather than a difficult to live without system.
Re:Harm to consumers (Score:2)
I hate to break out some bad news, but frankly, Linux in its current form is still not ready for prime time when it comes to the average home user. While setup has improved a lot in terms of ease of use, trying to do things like kernel upgrades and other code upgrades can still be a pretty tricky proposition at times. And I don't think the average home user wants to tackle the formidable command-line interface of Linux, which uses frequently confusing UNIX commands.
The Linux crowd really needs to support the likes of Eazel, which is developing the Nautilus GUI working under GNOME to substantially make it easier for the average person to use Linux. (It helps that Eazel has Andy Hertzfeld--who developed much of the ideas for the original Macintosh interface--working on the project.)
Once Linux has a consistent, easy-to-use GUI interface, the ability to easily update the OS code without a finicky kernel recompile and the ability to recognize and configure itself to use new hardware in a "hot docked" fashion over the USB and IEEE-1394 connections, THEN I will consider it a serious contender against Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP. In short, Linux is getting better, but it's still got a ways to go.
Re:Microsoft are good for consumers and society (Score:2)
Personally, I think the reason why Microsoft is so successful is the very fact that it was Microsoft's inclusion easy-to-setup networking features in both NIC and dial-up form in Windows 95 that really kicked off the explosive use of the Internet as we know it today. Before Windows 95, setting up your computer to connect to a Internet Service Provider was a very tricky situation, what with the fussy setup of Trumpet Winsock for Windows 3.1x.
Netscape made a lot of money in the early Windows 95 days because they got their Navigator 2.0x browser to work as a WIN32 API application; it took Microsoft a year before they released Internet Explorer 3.0, which matched Netscape's efforts.
What really killed Netscape was the fact that Netscape could not keep up with the improvements in Internet Explorer; by the time IE 5.0 came out, Netscape was way behind the times. So far, Netscape 6.0x is nowhere as fast and is far more resource hungry than IE 5.5 Service Pack 1.
Microsoft has something that few other companies have, and that is an excellent Usability Lab that does research into how to make programs easier to use. Note that IE 5.5 SP1 has a very "polished" feel because of this, while Netscape 6.0x feels like a mish-mash of menus in comparison.
The Linux crowd really needs to back the efforts of companies like Eazel, which seeks to create an easy-to-use, "polished feel" GUI for Linux running under GNOME. The fact that ex-Apple developer Andy Hertzfeld (one of the world's most foremost experts in GUI design) is doing much of the work on the Eazel Nautilus interface gives me hope that Linux will within a few years be able to successfully compete with Windows in terms of easy of installation and use.
Breaking up M$ is the STUPIDEST thing to do. (Score:2)
M$ is and has always been a one trick pony. Their trick is see something that anyone else is doing and buy it outright or 'reverse engineer (can anyone say DMCA is a two edged sword?)' it and vanquish the competition under the elephantine weight of the leverage M$ has with its OS.
But they have proved completely incapable of competing fairly on the basis of product quality.
If you force them into competing fairly, they might be able to learn how to do it on other platforms and you've just metastacized the cancer of having to deal with an arrogant school yard bully onto the next generation of hardware.
Between the flat-lining of x86 sales, the competition with Linux and the arrival of the 64 bit hurdle onto the desktop, M$'s days are numbered (in surprizingly low numbers too, they have no assets beyond some real-estate,) as long as they effectively corrall themselves onto the x86.
Let M$ die with the x86 and it will merely have been an extremely expensive abberation and we can all get on with our lives.
Before M$ there was DRI on PCs. (Score:2)
Find me anything that M$ actually created that has not been an utter failure. Bob?
Pu-leez! M$ sees something and buys it outright (QDOS) or reverse-engineers it (Make it more like the Mac! -Gates) Before he acquired Express, there was MultiPlan, a VisiCalc clone. Want me to go on?
Gates is a pimp and a nasty bully one at that. Technology lets him have a bulding full of hos. But they're still hos.
IE 6.0 is coming out for M$ to control YOU not ... (Score:2)
And now that there's no competition its going to come out as slowly as M$ can get away with it.
Look at the history of the business... IBM sold OS 360 well into the eighties on 360s and 370 because they could. Why did they want to when they had a better OS (MVS) waiting in the wings?
Because it was pure gravy . Zero development cost and zero marketing costs. Just pure gravy
Its not about you. Its never about you. Its about the bottom line.
Re:Libertarianism and Promoting Choice (Score:2)
However, 90% of the people don't want to, or can't build their own plant.
They can still use his gas. RedHat will sell it to them, or they can get it at their local book store, or they can mail-order it from CheapBytes [cheapbytes.com] for $2 for a lifetime supply.
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Re:Libertarianism and Promoting Choice (Score:2)
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Re:Libertarianism and Promoting Choice (Score:2)
Which makes my analogy perfect. Would we expect the government to step in and require him to sell you the car without the engine, at a discount?
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Re:Libertarianism and Promoting Choice (Score:2)
Guess you missed the part where we were talking about buying the computer without having to pay for the OS.
You would have to make this world a place where people can swap out engines as easily as they do OS's.
No I don't, because that's the opposite of what we're talking about. OSes are easy to swap out, and the question of paying for the OS whether you want it or not is a matter for the market to settle, not the courts.
If you don't like Microsoft's policies, don't do business with them. If you make PCs, and you don't like Microsoft's policies, don't do business with them. If you're buying a PC, and you don't like the fact that manufacturer X won't sell you a computer without charging you for a Microsoft OS, don't do business with them.
Can't make as much money as you'd like that way? Well, I guess you're going to have to make a choice, aren't you? In real life, you don't always get to select from all the choices you'd like. It's not government's job to step in and force other FREE INDIVIDUALS to offer the choices you desire, even if those free individuals run multi-billion-dollar corporations that control the majority (not all, just the majority) of a segment of an industry.
You can buy a PC without Windows. You can buy a PC with Windows, and replace Windows. You can even buy a PC with another OS on it, and warranty support for both the PC and the non-Microsoft OS.
Anything else is unfair and unConstitutional interference by the government in completely legal free trade.
Microsoft management is a bunch of arrogant pricks; but it's not illegal to be an arrogant prick.
I remind you again that during the HEIGHT of Microsoft's supposed monopoly, it was still not only possible to buy a desktop computer without an OS, but it was possible to buy one with a factory-supported non-Microsoft OS. It was even possible to buy one with an Intel processor and a non-Microsoft OS. Indelible Blue predates the 1994 decision, and Sun, HP, and IBM have been selling Unix workstations forever.
Yes, they cost more; but it's not the purpose of government to force people to charge the same for all products in a market space.
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Re:Demonstrating harm is tough. Or is it? (Score:2)
Yes, but if you wrote something in Word Perfect 4.2, you CAN open it in the latest Word Perfect.
If you wrote something in emacs 3.5, you CAN open it in the latest emacs.
If you wrote something in Star Office 5.0, you CAN open it in the latest Star Office.
The same is not necessarily true of Microsoft Word. You often have to keep the old version around so you can use your old documents, which can mean needing two computers if the new version can't coexist with the old one.
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Re:Libertarianism and Promoting Choice (Score:2)
Yes; and I also think they should be free to sign contracts giving up those rights, if they think it's worth losing them in return for gaining access to somebody else's property, I.E. Microsoft's operating systems. I wouldn't want to choose that, but that doesn't mean I should have the right to force other people to agree with me.
Don't you think software makers should have the ability to make compatible software and use the same functions of Windows that Microsoft currently prohibits?
Why? Why shouldn't Microsoft be able to say "if you want to use my property, you will sign this contract saying how you will use it. If you don't like those terms, don't use our software."?
Is Windows a right?
If the license terms are onerous, don't use it. If that means people don't buy your computers, well, they have that right, too.
Before you accuse me of not being a Libertarian because I don't agree with you on this, you should perhaps check out the party's official position [lp.org] on the matter.
For those too lazy to follow the link, I'll tease it with the title from the press release: "Microsoft antitrust ruling: More costly than all the bank robbers in history."
This isn't a secret; we even made the front page of the Wall Street Journal [lp.org] with it.
The government should stay the hell out of this. The market as a whole, and consumers as individuals, should decide.
If you don't like the choices given you, make your own. If you don't have the skill to make your own, whose fault is that?
Not even your computer is a right, much less the operating system on it. But even if it were, you still have choices; run Linux. Run BSD. Or if you're just all fired-up set to pay somebody, run BeOS or Solaris.
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Re:Libertarianism and Promoting Choice (Score:2)
You don't get it; that's only PREVENTING you from selling OS/2 if you CHOOSE to buy Win95.
IBM could have chosen to concentrate on OS/2 and blow off Win95.
They were free to choose. The market will make it's own choices.
Sometimes doing the right thing hurts. That's life.
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Re:Libertarianism and Promoting Choice (Score:2)
You have at least a dozen choices, and that's just on the particular hardware platform in question.
Microsoft doesn't even compete on most hardware platforms, and only competes effectively on one.
Monopoly? That would be like if Standard Oil had only operated in California and New York, but still got declared a monopoly.
Microsoft's "monopoly" is a joke that one judge agrees with, and a whole bunch of others don't.
If I don't pay for their crap, why do you think you are forced to?
As for IBM, they always have offered, and continue to offer, their own OS; AIX. It's superior to Windows in many ways. However, most consumers don't want it. This demands better programming and marketting from IBM, not government intervention.
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Re:Libertarianism and Promoting Choice (Score:2)
The retailers let Microsoft put them in that position, and they aren't all in it; there are several retailers who don't sell Windows with their PCs, and there are lots who sell both it and other OSes.
The fact is that you can choose to buy a computer and not put Windows on it, and that's the bottom line.
And yes, you've always been able to buy one with another OS preloaded. Sun, HP, and IBM have been selling workstations forever. Indelible Blue predates the web. VA Linux has a great reputation, despite being fairly new.
So it costs more. Is the lower price a RIGHT, or a consequence of economies of scale? I think the latter.
It's like trying to call Rolls Royce up and ask to buy one of their cars without an engine, so you can put your own engine in.
If Rolls says "sorry, no, we don't sell them that way", should the government step in and tell them they have to do it?
No, in the real world you have three choices; give up and buy nothing, buy the Rolls and remove the engine, or buy a Lexus. (Probably can't get them to sell it without the engine, either.)
Should the government then declare them a monopoly?
Microsoft doesn't make PCs. They don't make the only operating system available to consumers. They make a LUXURY, that is tied to another luxury.
If we were talking about General Mills securing an agreement with the majority of grocery stores that they would not carry any other brands of food, and would not sell any food to anyone without them buying a particular kind of food, you might have something, but we're not talking about food, we're talking about computers. We're not talking about removing all your choices, we're talking about reducing your cheap choices.
You aren't born endowed by your creator with the inalienable right to a cheap computer with a free OS on it.
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Re:ctrl-alt-del to invoke DLL of choice (Score:2)
And that's what happened in the incident list. Some smart person got SYSTEM access through an IIS bug and then replaced the Gina with a password interceptor.
For an example of similar software that hooks into the gina, look no further than the Novell Client32 software.
The point of Ctrl+Alt+Del is that a unprivledged user that uses it can't be busted by a trojan on a uncomprimsed installation of the OS. Once you are owned, all bets are off. (Not to mention that you could create a 2-bit VB program that asked for a password and probably dupe 90% of the dupes, SAS or not.)
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Re:My biggest nit on the hearings (Score:2)
Which is somewhat true. The launch of Windows 95 in Aug 1995 was all about connectivity via the "integrated" MSN client. By December 7 1995, Microsoft had totally turned around and announced that future connectivity would be via integration with Internet Explorer. It took them all of 3 months to flush millions of dollars of R+D and MSN hype down the toliet (not to mention MSN contributing to the Win95 schedule slip), and this was based almost purely on a limited understanding of Andresson's comment about Netscape turning Windows into "a poorly debugged collection of device drivers". In retrospect, small thanks are in order for Microsoft to at least have the sense to not to try to lock us into MSN.
What lots of Slashdotter's miss is that after Dec 1995, Microsoft immedately started acting as if IE was "integrated", even though it took 2-3 more years before it actually was. That's right -- a good chunk of the trial evidence surrounded Microsoft's behavior with Internet Explorer versions 2.x and 3.x, both of which were not a superior product and were not really integrated in any way. A good example is OEMs, who are perfectly happy with IE5, but rightfully thought Microsoft was crazy when they suggested that IE 3 should be the default browser instead of Netscape (which had the most features and a 70% marketshare at the time).
Furthermore, nobody questions that Zero Cost Browsers (or psuedo-Zero Cost Browsers like Netscape was) benefit consumers. However, what real benefit has "Integration" (real or proposed) given anyone but Microsoft.
When MS announced the plan on Pearl Harbor day, everyone knew web browsers were slow and crashed alot. For more than 2 years after the plan was executed, Microsoft had a "Integrated shell" that was slow and crashed alot. It's widely felt that Windows 98 (which really was nothing more than a $99 browser upgrade) was a downgrade to the OS as a whole, but OEMs and IT Depts didn't really have the choice not to use it and use Win95.
Browser Integration was one of the biggest farces pawned off on the IT consumer ever, and Microsoft and their monopoly instincts are nearly 100% to blame. This came out in the trial when a MS Exec got on the stand and testified that not one of their supposed "integration" features (such as Windows Update) really depended on integration from a technical standpoint. Perhaps in Windows XP, there really will be some new functionality to come out of shell integration, but that's 7 years after Microsoft announced the idea.
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Re:Libertarianism and Promoting Choice (Score:2)
Lots of people at IBM (including most of the PC Group) were in favor of dropping it as a standard configuration because it was a big expense that competitors (Compaq, etc) didn't have to carry. I worked at a big IBM PC shop in 1994, and IBM sent a rep out to personally apologize for the nightmare of their preloaded OS/2 2.1 / Windows 3.1 machines duel-boot machines.
Furthermore, the "reasonable price" you are referring to was $11 for a copy of Windows. IBM was getting that low price because they co-owned Windows 3.0. Do you think Compaq and Dell were getting anything near this price? So, of course IBM took the bait -- they were getting a significant rebate for doing something they were going to do anyway (drop OS/2 as a standard configuration).
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Re:Demonstrating harm is tough. Or is it? (Score:2)
IBM/Microsoft decided that 286+ support would be in OS/2 and and DOS would be legacied. PC customers rejected that decision, and it set the state of PC software back for a number of years. OS/2 was such a loser in the market that Microsoft was pretty much forced to come up with the protected mode DOS hack that is Windows today. That doesn't mean that they weren't holding their nose while they were doing it (see Windows NT).
Trying to blame MS for the long life of DOS is a no-go. Blame the consumers for not buying OS/2 (or later, NT), or blame IBM for making OS/2 into a viable product until many versions later.
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Re:Demonstrating harm is tough. Or is it? (Score:2)
You really are suggesting this? With a 90% marketshare, the OS independance of PC hardware is already hanging from a thin string, and I don't think most people would like the outcome of giving Microsoft more control over hardware. (See the "Secure Audio Path" issue...)
Bottom line is that there's nothing Microsoft can do about some OEM stuffing cheap ass RAM into a cheap ass machine for sale for $999 at Office Depot. Consumers are going to have to get smarter.
Other points:
+ Windows NT hardware certification list was originally intended for complete systems. Guess what? Folks don't want to have to buy some overpriced Compaq or IBM Certified "Workstation" when you can get a screwdriver box that does the same thing for half the price, and folks will bitch if Win2000 doesn't run on that mystery box. So testing when to shit to get broader hardware support and more drivers.
Again, blame the consumer -- when people were bitching about their Not-MS-Certified GeForce drivers running on their Not-MS-Certified Athlon motherboards with their Not-MS-Certified IDE controllers and their Not-MS-Certified SoundBlasters on Windows 2000 just to get maximum Quake fps, it's totally unreasonable to yell "Save Us Microsoft!".
+ Microsoft's PC OS Tax is nothing compared to Intel's CPU tax. The problem is that people want a 1000Mhz machine for $1000. They won't buy a better 700Mhz machine for that price. So the OEM have to skimp on everything, or give people value that they can *see* (stupid stuff like volume knobs on the keyboard are the only way they can get their margin up). Intel or AMD takes all the profit, not the OEM and not MS.
+ PCI hardware detection is documented. Linux uses it. Microsoft does have some real voodoo for ISA legacy non-PnP device detection (eg: old Token Ring and SCSI cards), but that is 99% a non-issue with new hardware.
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Re:ctrl-alt-del to invoke DLL of choice (Score:3)
It was written:
I feel that I should say something strongly worded and possibly obscene, but I really bare you personally no ill will; this misunderstanding is easy enough to make (once).
The fact is, though, that this is simply and utterly as untrue as saying that rot13 is encryption. For the actual MS documentation on how to write a logon replacement window, see the msdn site [microsoft.com]. For some preliminary information on a windows NT rootkit observed in the wild which intercepts the login screen, see the archives of the incidents mailing list [securityfocus.com]. (Some of the followup posts are very helpful; use the thread index)
One thing I do hope is that Microsoft can be forced to admit that the little helpful info tip they give on Win2k logon screens about keeping your password secure with Ctrl-Alt-Del is about as close to a total lie as is possible.
Re:Libertarianism and Promoting Choice (Score:3)
Microsoft never prevented me from choosing, even on the x86 platform.
OS/2, DR-DOS, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, BSD/OS, Solaris, SCO, BeOS; that's just the choices I've used, there are others I haven't. Most of them (all but one, in fact) are still available, and OS/2 can still be used although of course it's a little difficult to find.
What Microsoft did was arrogant, immoral, and in the long run will be futile, but it was very rarely illegal. They pay a ton of top lawyers to help them NOT be illegal.
I don't think anybody should buy Microsoft's crappy products, and I won't buy them myself. However, I don't go running to Big Brother to force them to run their corporation the way I want it run. I'll start my own if I want that.
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Re:Demonstrating harm is tough. Or is it? (Score:3)
You're making generalizations based on these two experiences? As a developer working closely with admins of 100's of NT boxes, I can tell you that your experiences may be typical for small servers running all MS software and being "hammered" on by one person. Put, say, Sybase or Oracle on them. Allow 100,000 people to hammer on them. You'll have to reboot them almost daily, or they will eventually DoS themselves. Blame Sybase and Oracle, you say? Nah, Sybase and Oracle run rock-solid on Sun. There are weaknesses in the OS that allows these things to happen.
But to say "oog, I reboot windows every day" or "oog, blue screen!!!!" just shows ignorance and the inability to think objectively for yourself.
We reboot our public Web servers every day. We have to, or services will mysteriously stop, or stop responding, among other things. Yes, we've worked with MS and the other vendors involved ad nauseum. I don't think this is ignorance or the inability to think objectively.
-bp
How I was 'harmed' (Score:3)
Forcing the consumer to install a program they may not want and generating artificial dependencies for other software on that program is NOT beneficial to the consumer. Especially since in these days lots of people didn't have an extra few megs harddrive space for some unwanted program.
The court issues may be with win98, but I think the real important, possibly illegal events were in the lead up to win98 and IE4. If we could go back and look closely at MS's distribution of IE, I think we'd see some pretty shady activities.
Re:I think MS has been the victim of hypocrisy. (Score:3)
Please remember, not everyone wants to play the same stupid games. A social system that is so designed that not only must everyone play the same games, but so that many will feel that it is rigged against them ab initio will have a lot of discontent. This does not contribute to social stability.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Libertarianism and Promoting Choice (Score:3)
The problem as I see it is that Microsoft reduces personal choice for me. I can choose to run MacOS only because Microsoft has chosen to keep Apple around. A few years ago, Microsoft could have just let Apple fall into bankruptcy and today you'd only have Linux and Windows as reasonable choices. Today I use Linux, for many reasons, chief amongst them being that I want to preserve my right to have a choice in the matter. Sometimes doing things under Linux is more of a challenge and sometimes things can't be done at all, but I make that choice because I want to have an alternative to Windows.
So really, my Libertarian side is looking to see Microsoft smashed so that competition is restored and to insure that I will always have a choice about what OS, browser, and office software I use.
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Re:Harm to consumers (Score:3)
With the Open Source movement, there are plenty of non-MS alternatives
Maybe today the situation is approaching something you can call "choice", given the existence of projects like KDE and Gnome. But back around the time this whole netscape/IE thing was brewing, I remember still having to recompile the kernel just to get my sound card to work. That doesn't even begin to compete, for average computer users, with Windows95. Gnome did not exist, and KDE was an early alpha obscure blip on the horizon. Apple at that time looked like a seriously dying company, IBM had all but completely pulled out of the OS market, and the only other "platforms and altervatives" were the extremely expensive Unix mainframes, such as the SGI's and SUN's. SGI only fairly recently began to produce "affordable" computers, and this trend is still slow to take in big Unix companies. Alternatives? Hardly. The situation is starting to improve. Apple is back on its feet, and Linux is really getting there in terms of applications and usability. But the situation was quite different when the antitrust problems began. The damage has been though, and the law broken. Of course the new IE beats the old netscape - but that is exactly because of the damage inflicted by Microsoft. Many people look back now and say "oh IE is now better, so that must be why it beat Netscape out". Puh-lease - IE 3 stunk like shit, and IE 4 was as unstable and shitty as netscape 4, I remember using all of them. By the release of Netscape 4, though, Netscape was pretty much already dead, and couldn't afford to put the same development effort into NN. IE 5 is basically IE4 with bugfixes, which is hardly groundbreaking given the number of years it has taken them to do only that. That is what happens when a competitor uses cross-funding from other products to drastically undercut your main products pricing - no income, no programmers. No programmers, crappy software (NN4).
Re:Microsoft are good for consumers and society (Score:3)
What does MS have to do with the current drop in RAM prices? Did they enable the AMD and other cheap processor makers? Considering that the price of the OS is the only component of the PC that has RISEN in the past ten years, just how do you attribute the price drop to MS?
On a related note, how do you attribute the price drop in MAINFRAME computer prices to MS?
2. MS have consistently brought down prices - they cut prices in the spreadsheet market; they are producing software that is cheaper than what was their before. And they're still doing it. MS Sql Server, which is at least on a par with Oracle, is much cheaper than it, and thus benefits consumers that way.
This is good?! The courts have a name for this. It's called DUMPING. Let me explain. A big company comes into town. Just for shits and giggles, we'll call this company Wal-Mart. Through much fanfare, they advertise ridiculously low prices which they tell everyone they can offer because they 'buy and sell in volume' (ie, we lose money on each widget, but we make it up in volume). Small-fry local competitors can't compete, and within the year they have all shut-down. Wal-Mart then discovers, to their incredulous suprise, that their superstore in the middle of rural nowhere isn't making money. Their solution is either:
1) Raise prices. Usually above what the small-fry guy was charging because there is so much corporate overhead to cover.
2) Close the store and make the people travel an additional 40 miles to the next town (where there is only a Wal-Mart since they've also locked out all the competition there.)
Either way, the customer ends up with crappier products at the same or worse price, worse service since the minimum wage checkout person who used to have his own store really couldn't care less if the wheels fall off you kids bike, and no one to complain to (as if Wal-Mart gives a damn what one customer thinks, unless that customer is a radio talk show host.)
I know that I'm responding to a troll, an ignoramus or a fool, as evidenced by your claim that SQL Server is anywhere close to being on par with Oracle.
3. Believe it or not, Microsoft actually do produce good software.
More troll/ignoramus/fool evidence. Define good. (Hint: "I can write a letter before the system crashes," is not it.)
4. Microsoft have benefitted the US economy. It really has. Compared with the UK, for instance, the strength of the US IT industry is vast - and much of this strength is due to Microsoft.
Because of it or in spite of it?
5. Nearly all opposition to MS comes from jealous competitors. Netscape have been beaten fair-and-square by MS, for instance - just compare Netscape 6 with MSIE, for instance.
I'm not an MS competitor. I've just used their products as well as others. I choose to oppose MS because I'm consistently appalled by the fact that even though competitors offer superior performance, they are consistently shut out by monopolistic practises. It's not just Netscape either. Can you say DR-DOS, just to name one?
Strangling distribution channels with monopolistic threats is not 'fair-and-square'. Illegal tying and dumping are not 'fair-and-square'. Comparing
1)a product that didn't receive proper development funding because cash flow was cut by monopolistic practise of a competitor
2)a product that was over funded by the monopolistic competitor with monies derived from other monopolized sources in order to attempt to hide that harm is being done to the consumer
is not a fair comparison.
whereas the truth is that Microsoft produce damn fine software
I think I've done a very good job of avoiding personal attack and refuting your presumptions with facts and logic. On this point, however, I'm completely at a loss to dam up the rising tide within me that must say:
The truth is, sir, that you are a clueless shithead. Please do not confuse other people until you have removed your head from your ass.
perspective (Score:3)
Its better to not look at this from a moral standpoint. M$ has a clear history of not playing nice with other software and systems, and only do so when market demand forces them to. However, this is their right. Do we really want the government mandating exactly how software should be designed?
The browser integration was a poor issue to use as a major point in the case. Its M$'s decision to integrate it. We in the UNIX world prefer a modular design. M$ does not, and any programmer can see that the integration _does_ offer some benefits, at the expense of other things. M$ has the right to choose this approach.
However, the real problems in my mind are:
MS has practically never "invented" anything. Every core idea was copied, stolen, or bought from someone else. Their innovations have been small asides amidst a vast sea of other companies/peoples ideas
MS shuts people out of the market. I don't know where the line is. If I owned a commercial software company, I would see great benefit in working with a Dell/Gateway like company and selling my software more cheaply in the interest of more sales. However at some point MS became more of a bully, making it difficult for these companies to NOT sell MS software. I'm not familiar enough with the laws to explain where the line is, but practices like this clearly harmed consumers, who had to pay for this software whether they wanted it or not.
Its also clear that MS has taken specific steps to hamper other companies software from working well on their systems. This to me is a fairly clear line. Its one thing for MS to take advantage of the fact that they make the OS and the software in order to design things well; this is their right. Its another to take effort to break other peoples software.
What MS calls "innovation" is really a combination of vast resources to quickly buy or copy other peoples ideas, and a huge market share to compensate for shortcoming in their software.
I hear repeatedly about all the things MS has given us, the boost they gave our economy, etc. If they were making all these innovations themselves, perhaps this would be the case. Its not. The wealth and economic push MS has been a part of is taken at the expense of all the other companies that could be part of the market but are shut out.
Perhaps you look at your windows environment and think, "Look at all they have given us". Instead, look at it and imagine all the superior products which could not suceed due to MS bullying resellers or sabatoging developers.
I don't know where to draw the lines or what the consequences should be, but it is clear that they have harmed consumers and hampered innovation.
The better solution would be a more enlightened public, but the technology can be hard for the average person to understand, and the lack of interoperability can make it hard for consumers to choose non-MS software. This is really the core of MS's talent - getting themselves in a position of doing little original work and having consumers buy it up. This market setup, just like MSs other "innovations", is of course nothing new in the economic world.
You have to admit, it's getting better... (Score:3)
You can say what you want, but I believe that this improvement in quality is caused by the DOJ hearings, at least in part. With the world spotlighting their practices and software quality, MS simply has to put its best foot forward.
Would the people benefit if they get split? I think so. After all it's always better to have a company focus on one thing instead of many product lines. I don't really want features going into my OS that will make it easier for Word to run, but not WordPerfect for example.
Let MS::OS make the best possible windows, and then MS::APP try to build the best possible Office Suite on top of it. If the two product lines stant on their own, they will have to be of better quality.
Re:ctrl-alt-del to invoke DLL of choice (Score:3)
Good thing, too, unless you missed the first paragraph where I explained that I'm just passing along info I heard somewhere else, and that I don't know what the original intentions were...
Besides, I never said it was good or useful. I totally agree that, if that explanation's right, it's just as silly as encryping your bank records with ROT13. But it's the only good explanation I've heard for why MS would pick Ctrl-Alt-Del -- the traditional "reboot" key sequence -- as "login".
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You're wrong (Score:3)
What IS harm? (Score:3)
Obviously, I'm not PHYSICALLY harmed by an operating system (with the possible exception of STRESS).
Am I harmed by an OS that doens't have any competition? I don't know. If you assume that Windows is the ideal operating system, and that, if there was a competitor, they would be equal in quality, price, and features, then NO, I guess I'm not harmed.
Conversly, was I harmed by a telco that charged me $0.25/minute for a 'local toll call'? As soon as the opened up the 'local toll call' business, I found out that I could pay $0.10/minute. Wow, I was being harmed, and I didn't even know it.
So, from the fact that I don't have limited CHOICES, and that Microsoft is trying to LIMIT my choices (I couldn't buy a PC w/out Windows until this trial came up), I would say that until there IS competition, you will never know to what extent you are being harmed by a monopoly. Necessity drives innovation and competition drives necessity. Without them, I think I am DEFINATELY being HARMED.
Breaking up MS? (Score:3)
The order would break up MS into different companies with different products. The new companies would not compete against each other, because they are in different market segments. This would NOT help competition. There would STILL be a big OS company, a big APP company, etc. MAYBE information would be more available to third parties who wanted to write competing apps compatable with those of MS. However I think that a horizontal break up of the company, similar to what happened to standard oil would better help consumers, not the vertical breakup proposed.
Re:I think MS has been the victim of hypocrisy. (Score:3)
Simple then - get a new judge.
What part of 'remand to the original judge' didn't you get?
Sure, Jackson could be recused, but if he weren't already biased (or tainted with the appearance of prejudice), then remanding to the original judge has a lot of benefits: the appellate court can have the original judge clarify or repair portions of the ruling without starting from scratch.
A new judge below the circuit court would have to start from scratch. Do you think that another two years on this case is good for competition and legal clarity on the general monopoly issues, or good for the consumers potentially harmed in 1996?
DMCADMCADMCADMCADMCA (Score:3)
Is "One dollar == one vote" the future of American democracy?
No. It's the present. Otherwise, we wouldn't have laws such as the Bono Act and the DMCA [everything2.com].
All your hallucinogen [pineight.com] are belong to us.
Re:yes.. capitalism (Score:3)
Yes, but capitalism rewards control even more. Being a monopoly means never having to say you're sorry.
question: is control controlled by its need to control?
answer: yes
Re:For starters netscape isn't a symptom (Score:3)
There is no need "to prove microsoft is anti-competitive." (By the way, the definition of anti-competitive being used is kind of counter-intuitive. What I mean is, for example, Microsoft is being very competitive; they want to win against all other competitors.) Business entities in the current U.S. economy are by their nature "anti-competitive". There is nothing illegal about that. In fact, there is nothing inherently wrong with it either. For you to succeed in business you must compete with the others in your sector (and occaisionally some others outside of your sector).
In general, companies tend to take a slightly non-zero-sum view of the competition. For example, they might group together a little to propose standards (usually for quality and protocol) and to fund research. But, there is no legal or moral reason they should have to do this. (Actually, there is a legal reason in the U.S. -- if they can be shown to have a monopoly in a sector, the Sherman Act is interpreted to mean that they must cooperate to some subjective degree in that sector and not tie business in other sectors to their monopoly in a subjectively unfair. The subjectiveness is one of the problems with the law, IMHO. Oh, and IANAL.) MS takes the view that such cooperation is their choice, and, for the most part, they don't do it and even try to prevent it in many (maybe even most) cases.
Knowing that, and then saying that an anti-cooperative company like MS doesn't want to work with Samba or Wine or [insert your favorite example here] is like saying the Allies didn't want to give the Axis RADAR. It's blatantly obvious.
I'm not saying Microsoft isn't bad in its own way. I'm also not saying that the current corporatization of the economy is good. It's just that neither is as inherently bad as folks here seem to want to think.
So... is MS a monopoly? IMO, yes in the OS sector, and now they may even be so in the Web browser sector. Was that because of tying? I think so. Therefore, I think MS has broken the law. But then, IANAFederalJudge.
Ehm, yes..... (Score:3)
They where certainly hurt financially. Do you think that the upgrade-race of recent years doesn't force people into buying more & more now apps and computers? My parents use one of my older computers, but it's a bit hard nowadays to buy software for it, because the machine is too slow, and the software too bloated. Conclusion, buy a new pc. Through this 'embrace' people pockets are being emptied at an alarming rate
the government and you guys BOTH get it wrong (Score:3)
The proof lies in how they killed OS/2.
The proof lies in how they killed DR-DOS.
No Dr-dos machines can easily run win3.1 or newer.
In fact, the install for win3.x checks to see if you have DR-DOS and complain if you do.
Similar issues for IBM PC-DOS.
the proof lies in how they punished small and large oems alike for what apps they chose to bundle on the computers they sold (no smartsuite, no netscape or you pay more for windows.)
The proof lies in how difficult it is to purchase a computer with anything other than Windows. Want os/2? tough, IBM has to pay for Windows for the machine shipped with os/2 or else Microsoft raises the cost of Windows for IBM.
Want Linux? tough, same rule. Microsoft even used to say, no other operating systems allowed or we'll either sell you Windows at so high a price you'll go under, or we won't even sell it to you at all.
Microsoft is a monopoly, but bringing them to court for greed and ancillary issues that came from them being monopolistic is not the proper path to justice.
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
Re:Who cares about {Hitler,Saddam,...} (Score:3)
The problem is that there were always be some monopoly/dictator/evil empire.. what can we do?? Pass laws? Limit freedoms?? No.. people need to be more educated and aware in order to protect society in general from this sort of thing.
--
Re:How I was 'harmed' (Score:3)
Does anybody get mad that just about EVER Linux distro comes with Netscape preinstalled? Nope.
These are the exact SAME things. Browsing has become central to computing. I don't see anyone crying about Microsoft including a TCP/IP stack in Windows.... yet they put several companies out of business that made quite a bit of money selling IP stacks for Windows. The fact is that eventually voice control will become very important, and Microsoft will put several speech software vendors out of business when they make that a standard part of Windows (actually, Whistler will have a native, standard voice API and engine.)
I think many people just hate Microsoft so much, that they want this case to go forward, facts be damned.
If you don't like Microsoft, or their products, that's fine. But at least be honest and truthful. Don't try to manufacture reasons to get them.... let the market topple them on its own.
-
The IHA Forums [ihateapple.com]
Re:yes.. capitalism (Score:3)
Pricing games are the best example. Netscape's only product is a browser. Microsoft has many products, one of which is a browser. MS can give away the browser without going bankrupt. Netscape can't. You can't compete unless you're already in the business - innovation is prohibited in effect, though not in theory.
But that's only one of the anti-capitalist tricks in MS's bag - bullying OEMs into using only Windows, using vaporware like there's no tommorrow, tying products together, using its applications monopoly to prop up its OS monopoly, none of these tactics are based on market forces - they're dirty tricks to subvert market forces.
Re:MS inspired open source? (Score:3)
Microsoft is directly responsible for the creation of Linux. Because of Microsoft, computer hardware became standardized to the i386 platform and hardware prices dropped to where a young Finnish college student could afford a computer to tinker with.
Re:For starters netscape isn't a symptom (Score:4)
There is nothing illegal about having a monopoly. If I was the only person in the world to produce thingamagiggies, I'd be perfectly legal.
If Bob entered the market for thingamagiggies, producing them in his own, non-patentable infringing way, but I still sold 95% of them to the world, I'd still have a legal monopoly.
But if Bob's sales numbers started to increase, and to combat it, I drastically undercut the price of the product, taking possibily a loss while increasing sales, such that the reduced profits that Bob might have made forced him out of business, then I could be illegal in using my monopoly power to stifle competition. And that's the heart of this case.
Re:Microsoft are good for consumers and society (Score:4)
Ok, 2 faults here. First, you're completely wrong. There were a wealth of personal computers before MS came along. The C64, the TRS-80, the Apple-II, the BBC Micro. MS had some minor parts in some of these computers, but they certainly weren't instrumental in making computers affordable. If any single person could possibly make that claim it would be Wozniak.
Second fault, you are implying causation when all you have is correlation. Computer prices were dropping ANYWAY.
Microsoft Windows has consistently gotten more expensive. It has quadrupled in price since the first real release (Windows 3.0) even when taking out the effect of inflation.
Nonsense! SQL Server is junk. People who deal with large/complicated datasets recommend either DB2 (the proper mainframe version) or Oracle. MS SQL Server is a toy.
MacOS, GEOS, Desq-View, OpenLook, CDE, OS/2, GEM, WorkBench, ... Every single one of them was arguably better in at least one category. And I would say that 3 from the above list were better than Windows 3.1 in every category.
Linux was released in 1991. It was usable for my purposes in 1992 (I dumped Interactive for it).
More confusion over the difference between correlation and causation. Here's an extreme example of your mistake: 100% of people who ate carrots in the 1800s are now dead. Your logic produces the conclusion that carrots cause people to die. This is because you confuse correlation with causation.
Check the price of computer hardware 20 years ago. Microsoft doesn't produce hardware, yet you would seemingly give them credit for the reduction in hardware prices too.
When Word started to dominate the market it was demonstrably inferior to WordPerfect. Word had an inferior interface. Word was slower and consumed more disk. Word corrupted your documents on a regular basis. Word supported fewer printers. Word had fewer features. At the time I always thought Word was a rather poor knockoff of MultiMate, and nowhere near as good as WordPerfect.
So why is Word dominant today? It certainly isn't because Word was a better product.
I've said from the beginning (Score:4)
It would work! Engineering would be forced to make products with MERIT, and marketing would be forced to hire a new round of engineers (and probably destroy themselves by being a well-funded dotcom with all hot air and no product). And in both cases, we get what we want - an opportunity for third parties to move in and reclaim market segments that were lost to questionable MS tactics years ago.
Obviously this will never happen - it's too likely to work, so no one will have the nads to attempt it.
Re:Demonstrating harm is tough. Or is it? (Score:4)
After all, Microsoft didn't use threats of increased prices and delayed shipments of Windows stop OEMs from making new systems start with Netscape as the default browser instead. Oh, wait, they did. Microsoft didn't use their monopoly position to demand that ISPs remove references to competing browsers from their literature and web sites and limit the percentage of users using Netscape or risk losing access to the Windows Referral Server. Oh, wait, they did too. Well, Microsoft certainly wouldn't use their monopoly position to force the exclusion of Netscape browsers from web sites on the IE Channel Bar. Oops, I guess they did that too. Well, Microsoft couldn't have threatened to kill Microsoft Office if Apple didn't make IE the preferred brower on Macs. Oh, they did that too?
Gosh, I can't see any possible reason why customers lacking knowledge of options is Microsoft's fault. It's not like they orchestrated a campaign to deny information to consumers.
Check the Findings of Fact [usdoj.gov]. Especially the section Excluding Navigator from Important Distribution Channels [usdoj.gov].
Consumers Hurt? Reread the findings of fact. (Score:4)
Integrating Windows into the OS. (Score:4)
No doubt I'm going to get jumped on for pointing out a logical error in this article, but this line made me think.
Why wasn't Microsoft procescuted for requiring Windows to run on top of it's OS. They don't give you a choice of Window manager. You only get one choice. Microsoft Win32. What happened to Desqview for NT? Why couldn't IBM port Presentation Manager to NT, along with the PM API? Because MS has used a secret API (the Native NT API) and only allowed people to use the Win32 Window Manager and it's API (which in Many cases is just a wrapper to the Native NT APIs.
We should sue
Re:Microsoft are good for consumers and society (Score:4)
1. Before MS came along, computers were unaffordable. Now we all reap the benefits of a computer in every home.
Apple? Anyone? I know that I was in Elementary school in the mid 80's everyone had Apple IIs
2. MS have consistently brought down prices - they cut prices in the spreadsheet market; they are producing software that is cheaper than what was their before. And they're still doing it. MS Sql Server, which is at least on a par with Oracle, is much cheaper than it, and thus benefits consumers that way.
Really? Linux is free, so is free BSD. Even Linux companies selling the software sell their Proffesional editions for less than Win98. The same stuff that Win2k can do. And I won't even touch lisencing issues for the number of users. Still don't believe it? If they aren't a monopoly then why did WinME start off at $50 and go up to $89 after everyone had been locked into it?
3. Believe it or not, Microsoft actually do produce good software. Certainly Windows 3.1 wasn't very stable, but in 1992 what competition was there? Certainly not Linux. And even given that, if you ask me if I want my secretary on the current state of the art Linux, or on Windows 3.1 and Word 2, I'll bet you a dollar to a hundred that she'll be more effective on Windows 3.1
Competition? What about Mac? I'm not a Mac lover but I can tell you that Mac was better in 1984 when it came out than 3.1 ever was. And I'd give my secretary Linux with star office. Its more compatable with Office now than Word 2 would be!
4. Microsoft have benefitted the US economy. It really has. Compared with the UK, for instance, the strength of the US IT industry is vast - and much of this strength is due to Microsoft.
It would probably be stronger here and strong in other countries had MS not stiffled competition all over the world.
5. Nearly all opposition to MS comes from jealous competitors. Netscape have been beaten fair-and-square by MS, for instance -just compare Netscape 6 with MSIE, for instance. This just backs up my point - Microsoft software is of exceptional quality. They hire the best programmers because they can afford to, and they release top software. Word beats anything else on the market, and as a usable OS, so does Windows (and on stability, Windows 2000 ranks pretty highly to). Combine this with easy administration - the idiot in my office is in charge of DNS administration, which he can easily do using MS DNS manager, because it's just point, right click/properties. He'd have no chance with Bind. The fact is, for a small business with not many staff, Microsoft software allows them to compete with the big guys - they can offer ISP provision, because they don't need highly paid admins. This is great news for the economy and great news for them.
I've worked as a Unix admin and I doubt that I could pick up Win2k or NT and just know it out of the box like you suggest. Just because something is point and click doesn't mean its easier (fact is alot of people find it to be a pain). Win2k isn't all that bad I agree, I have friends that use it but they are highly trained proffesionals, Joe user can't pick up DNS and operate it until he even knows what it does. If MS products are so easy why does MS have the MCSE? And why are there countless Word for Dummies type books?
6. The fact is, as I have stated, there is a lot of jealousy and resentment out there - whereas the truth is that Microsoft produce damn fine software, and their very low prices (believe me - just check the price of a spreadsheet 20 years ago), mean that although they have a monopoly, that has come through selling good software at low prices and therefore high volume. Damaging Microsoft would damage the consumer. What do you want people to use? Star Office?
Actually as has been shown countless times their power has come through threats and lying and theivery. Not just netscape but as mentioned above, Samba, Wine to name a few. Microsoft doesn't play fair and we'd all have better software if they had to compete. And for the record some people like Star Office and Netscape and don't have compatability issues with it.
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
Context Is All (Score:4)
Katz has IMO missed one or two things in his summary. The key to Microsoft's guild is, I think, in the motive.
One could suppose, as Katz put it, that any company that didn't try to tie it's browser to it's "much-hyped OS" would be committinc corporate suicide. Fair enough. The real question is not "Should they be allowed to do it?" but rather "Why did they try to do it?".
The key to that question is not to try and answer the question through hindsight. We have to put ourselves in Bill's shoes when he made the decisions he made. Let's break it down back in 1995 or thereabouts:
Which brings us more or less to today. It's easy to look back and say "Well, Microsoft should be allowed to integrate the OS and the browser, it's an obvious step." Sure it is. Of course, Microsoft probably stumbled onto it by accident, and it's ludicrous to decide that they should never be allowed to do this natural step just because they did it orginally for malicious purposes.
But that's the point! They did it for malicious purposes! They tried to use their existing monopoly to destroy a competitor. That's an anti-trust violation. It all comes down to motive. It's like an old legal riddle. If a man tries to fire a gun at you but doesn't know it's filled with blanks, what is he guilty of? He's still guilty of Attempted Murder even if he couldn't have suceeded becuase in his mind he was trying to do the deed. Simillarly for Microsoft; there may have been no actual threat (not really) but they sure tried to quash it and they should pay the price for their abusive actions.
There are, of course, other issues in the trial. The OEM licensing thing is IMO a damned good illustration of abuse of monopoly in and of itself and was part of the trial but doesn't get the coverage to the same degree that Netscape or Sun does. And at the end of the day, the truth is the trial demonstrated that Microsoft makes use of all its applications and software to defend it's OS monopoly. Although breaking them is hardly an ideal solution (even IMO), it would at least divest their OS division of an arsenal that it's been using to stave off the slightest bit of compitition. Which creates new products and ideas (I will not use the dreaded I-word if I can help it!) which is good for consumers. And if you don't take that into account when deciding if Microsoft's monopoly is good for consumers, you're just not seeing the whole picture.
My (long-winded) $0.02
Wood Shavings!
Harm to consumers (Score:4)
Also, think of all the features offered today on your phone line. Compare that to the standard applications that come with windows. Call waiting, three-way-calling, caller id, etc., can be compared to "paint.exe", "wordpad.exe", etc. Since Microsoft has a monopoly on the consumer OS market, what incentive do they have to improve any of the feature already included with the opperating system. When is the last time and upgrade to windows included a better paint program? They've had since 1995! In six years, they should at least be able to upgrade it to be a mini-photoshop, much less handle more than one image at a time! If AT&T had not been broken up, whether we would have these inovations in telephone technology is a real question.
Look at KDE and Gnome. Even though they are not commercial products, they keep up with each other in terms of many of the "core" features. There is incentive to expand on the core features because there compititions has offered an enhancement. Microsoft does not have any of that incentive in the desktop market.
Also, the statement that Netscape had no chance of becoming a platform is dead wrong, and Microsoft knows it. It can be explained in four characters...".net".
Lastly, the punishment is not set in stone. I have heard lawers argue last week on CSPAN that it was never intended by judge Jackson to stick. A remedy needed to be entered for the trial to go on to the next step. The appeals court has the option of saying "we disagree with finding of fact A and D", therefore a trial must be held to come up with a new more fair remedy. More importantly, if they disagree with A and D, then B, C, and E are no longer open for discussion, since two courts have upheld them.
With that said, I would just like to say that the lawers in court right now have no clue what the case is really about. Get them off of their bullet point items, and they have no clue what their arguments should be. At least in many cases this is true for both sides of the case.
-Pete
DirectX lets _your_ code trap C-M-del (Score:4)
Using that key sequence to bring up a login dialog effectively prevents the "false login screen" style of password sniffers.
Control+Alt+Del only pulls up a login screen in GUI mode. Recent versions of Windows NT (4.03 and later including 5.x) include a technology called DirectInput that lets programs easily read the keyboard as a set of 104 buttons (which is how games prefer to read the keyboard). For example, if Control and Insert are player 1's and 2's fire buttons, and Alt and Delete are jump buttons, you don't want to put up a login screen when player 1 is firing and both players are jumping. Thus, a program that uses DirectInput can spoof a login screen.
"But NT isn't designed for games. Use Windows 9x instead."
Games are just another application. The only reason Windows 9x wasn't a version of NT is because of marketing.
All your hallucinogen [pineight.com] are belong to us.
Re:Microsoft are good for consumers and society (Score:4)
Thanks to Apple, who made the first affordable home computer, and Compaq, who reverse-engineered the IBM PC. If OS/2 had won the desktop war instead of Windows, computers would still be cheap. If neither had won, and each had 50% market share, computers would still be cheap. Microsoft deserves exactly no credit for this.
MS have consistently brought down prices - they cut prices in the spreadsheet market;
Kindly name 3 spreadsheet programs that cost more than Excel. Can't do it? Didn't think so.
they are producing software that is cheaper than what was their before.
I could flame your spelling of "there", but it seems like a very fitting malipropism this time. :)
And they're still doing it. MS Sql Server, which is at least on a par with Oracle,
Bzzt. People pay more for Oracle because it out-preforms MS SQL.
is much cheaper than it, and thus benefits consumers that way.
PostgreSQL is free, runs of free operating systems, and works great.
Believe it or not, Microsoft actually do produce good software. Certainly Windows 3.1 wasn't very stable, but in 1992 what competition was there?
There was the Apple Macintosh, which was a better GUI, more stable, far easier to learn, and even ran MS Office better than Windows 3.1 did at the time.
Certainly not Linux. And even given that, if you ask me if I want my secretary on the current state of the art Linux, or on Windows 3.1 and Word 2, I'll bet you a dollar to a hundred that she'll be more effective on Windows 3.1
I'll take that bet.
Microsoft have benefitted the US economy. It really has. Compared with the UK, for instance, the strength of the US IT industry is vast - and much of this strength is due to Microsoft.
Microsoft software is also used in the UK, so that statement is just silly. Or are you trying to imply that the economy would be weaker if we were buying most of our software from other US companies? That's even sillier.
Nearly all opposition to MS comes from jealous competitors. Netscape have been beaten fair-and-square by MS, for instance - just compare Netscape 6 with MSIE, for instance. But IE 5.5 beating Netscape 6 is not what happened. At the time when Netscape's business model was scuttled by MS's illegal practives, IE sucked! Had Netscape remained a strong company with lots of resources to command, the browser they would have developed by now may have been outstanding... but we will never know, thanks to MS and their illegal abuse of monopoly power.
This just backs up my point - Microsoft software is of exceptional quality.
Anybody who says that clearly has no experience working with exceptional software. It's like the old saying goes, "I used to think I never had a bad day, until one day I had a good one."
They hire the best programmers because they can afford to,
No, they hire green, mallable kids right out of college, and mold them into the One Microsoft Way.
and they release top software. Word beats anything else on the market, and as a usable OS,
Word is not an OS. It also is not the best word processor available. It's widely used because it's been bundled with "Business PC's" for a decade now, and people who don't know any better think that .doc is a standard.
so does Windows (and on stability, Windows 2000 ranks pretty highly to). Combine this with easy administration - the idiot in my office is in charge of DNS administration, which he can easily do using MS DNS manager, because it's just point, right click/properties. He'd have no chance with Bind. So, you are saying that Windows is the ideal server environment if you want your network to be run by idiots. That's pretty tough to argue with, I guess. :)
The fact is, for a small business with not many staff, Microsoft software allows them to compete with the big guys - they can offer ISP provision, because they don't need highly paid admins. This is great news for the economy and great news for them.
Small businesses would be much better off using free software and spending a couple hundred bucks on O'Reilly books. Not only would it be cheaper, but then they would be using a variation of UNIX, just like the big guys do!
The fact is, as I have stated, there is a lot of jealousy and resentment out there - whereas the truth is that Microsoft produce damn fine software, and their very low prices (believe me - just check the price of a spreadsheet 20 years ago), mean that although they have a monopoly, that has come through selling good software at low prices and therefore high volume. Damaging Microsoft would damage the consumer. What do you want people to use? Star Office?
Now you are just repeating yourself, because you ran out of arguments.
New proof coming out (IE 6.0) (Score:4)
However, their attempts to cut off Netscape's OEM channels did appear predatory, and it may have fallen under anti-trust law. Yes, lots of folks downloaded Netscape, but this was before fat pipes to the home - many home users would have had to do an overnight download over 56K.
Furthermore, a starting user who wanted Netscape would have to use MSIE to download the software - I seem to remember MSIE was pretty bad at downloading more than an hour at a time. Was that a strategy?
Even if a new user wanted Netscape instead, he had MSIE, and could not excise it from the operating system. It may be free, but the end user already paid for it hard disk space. If he had to re-install Windows, there it was again, the default option, only a Windows Update away from the latest version.
MS will release IE 6.x soon [zdnet.com], and they are already debating whether to release it on Windows 95 or not. This means that existing users will have to upgrade their operating system to browse with the latest browser. Yes, it's been done before, but Microsoft has a way of adding features so that in a few years, you won't be able to browse many sites without IE 6.0 or later.
Government intervention may not be the best bet, but something will have to give eventually. We should re-double our open-source, free software efforts.
Re:The issue isn't competivenes (Score:4)
Introducing artificial barriers to interoperability when one is a monopoly seems to me to harm the consumer.
-Craig
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Microsoft isn't anticompetive? Huh (Score:4)
1) Microsoft makes money charging for software.
2) Netscape had grand visions of a browser-centric model of computing.
3) Microsoft gives away IE. This is a money-losing proposition. It doesn't make sense if you're playing "fair" - not trying to manipulate the market
4) Netscape gets obliterated.
There's nothing wrong with this?
The problem with the MS monopoly is that for average consumers there's no alternative to using MS software. This means that their no longer subject to the pressures of the market - you HAVE to buy Windows, and it can be whatever they want it to be.
The stealth DRM in Windows ME is a good example. MS will eventually disable your machine's ability to play any MP3 you haven't had "blessed" by MS. They plan to activate this feature once they have "acquired sufficent market share" - doubletalk for "once we've driven the competition out of business."
But unless I'm a real geek, I don't have an alternative. In a normal market, the competition would be running adds with slogans like "Don't let Microsoft control your computer. Use Bob's OS instead." But there's no choice. Linux, maybe, but the average person doesn't want to install a frickin shareware program on their machine. They're gonna run Linux?
The only competition that can survive is free software, because MS can't use it's predatory pricing to drive it out of existence.
Did Microsoft get a fair trial? Probably not. Bear in mind this America, you no longer have the right to a fair trial. You can be sentenced to death while your lawyer is taking a nap and that's not grounds for a new trial. Microsoft got something that approximates a fair trial better than a lot of trials. Tactless comments by the judge don't change the facts - they're anticompetitive.
Previous antitrust actions in overly concentrated markets have had the desired effect - Long distance is cheaper now than it was before. Going back to the heydays of antitrust, our petroleum-dependent economy would have been bled to death by Standard Oil. Our information-dependent economy will be bled to death by Microsoft if we let them - subscription software is how they'll suck the life out of you.
My biggest nit on the hearings (Score:5)
Similarly, how the judged seemed to downplay Netscape as a competitor -- certainly not now, but in 95-96, they could have been big. I remember distinctly Netscape and Sun saying that with the browser and Java, you could have your own operating system, and they were pushing that as the Microsoft killer. However, when MS included IE and their specialized Java VM (which they have already been punished for branding as such), they broke a lot of Java code, and since "everyone" was using IE, Netscape could not break into this market further.
Plus, you need to consider that Netscape at one point was payware for commercial use -- they only dropped the fee when IE started to gain market ground. That's rather strong evidence of a monopoly using their power. Of course, nowadays, a non-free browser that doesn't have something extra (read: Opera) is considered laughable.
Re:Demonstrating harm is tough. Or is it? (Score:5)
Machines that you expect to have to reboot every day.
This is where I have a big problem with your post. Yes, MS products in the past have had really shoddy stability. But NT 4 works well, and 2000 is even better. If you are using 95 or 98 in the office, you deserve to have to reboot it every day.
I've got two servers at work. One is running NT 4, and I never mess with it. It's a PDC for a small network. I've been ignoring it for months, and it's still going.
My other server is running W2K. It's a domain controller, DNS server, SQL server, and IIS server. I hammer on it every day. It's current uptime is about 52 days. So far this semester it's uptime is 99.995% and counting. That's not bad considering it's not on a UPS, and I'm just a lowly undergraduate student without any professional supervision.
I'm not MS fan. I run FreeBSD in my apartment, and I love it. I won't try to defend Microsoft's idealology or actions. But to say "oog, I reboot windows every day" or "oog, blue screen!!!!" just shows ignorance and the inability to think objectively for yourself.
Jackson and the DOJ blew it... (Score:5)
What further doesn't make sense about this whole situation is that Jackson seems to be targeting the ties between Office and Windows as the big threat. This is Microsoft's current power base and Jackson realized this, but I think the leap of logic to say that because of the netscape debacle they should break up the office products from the OS is pushing it. The great danger with IE has nothing to do with office, but rather that they can leverage that monopoly to push a monopoly in the server realm (proprietary ties between IE and IIS that push people away from open platforms). In fact, if you look at Microsoft's current models it looks like they want to get rid of the traditional packaging of Office and replace it with pay-per-use on-line software driven by a Microsoft server and browser.
So, I think that the DOJ and Jackson really dropped the ball on this one. I think that Microsoft is a dangerous monopoly, and once this suit falls apart (which I think is an almost certainty), Microsoft will feel free to start using both hands again to strangle competition. Microsoft won't really learn anything (except that it's a good idea to send large checks to politicians) and we'll continue to have a Microsoft dominated industry for the foreseeable future.
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Re:Demonstrating harm is tough. Or is it? (Score:5)
Demonstrating harm is tough. Or is it? (Score:5)
- The ILOVEYOU virus and its infinite children. Though MS didn't write the virus, the existence of the hole combined with the monopoly they have in the OS market are what really caused the problem. If somebody wrote a virus for a tiny hole in BeOS would it have affected the world like this one did?
- Incompatible file formats between its own products year after year. I love it when Office97 tells me "Oh, not everyone has Office97, you should save in Office95 format."
- Machines that you expect to have to reboot every day.
People *ignore* these things, because they figure that it is just par for the course. Know what? It's not. I call it demonstrable harm to the consumer. People hate Windows, we know that. All day, on the subway, at lunch, in meetings, you can hear people commiserating over their latest crash or virus. But they never blame Microsoft. They never say "I'm not going to use MS products." Why?Because they don't even know that other options exist, for the most part.
Why? Because MS is a monopoly.
Isn't that demonstrable harm to the consumer? This is not a case of "what they don't know won't hurt them". They don't know that better solutions exist. It's hurting them, they just don't know it.
I do not run Microsoft products. I pay less for hardware and software, my computer runs faster, and crashes less. That, too, would seem like demonstrable harm by Microsoft. When I point out Linux to users of Windows they do not argue the qualities of the software with me. Know what they say? "I have to run Office2000 because everyone else does." That, again, is a sign of the monopoly that MS has.
Re:Demonstrating harm is tough. Or is it? (Score:5)
"Let's look at what else MS has given us:
The ILOVEYOU virus and its infinite children.
Though MS didn't write the virus, the existence of the hole combined with the monopoly they have in the OS market are what really caused the problem. If somebody wrote a virus for a tiny hole in BeOS would it have affected the world like this one did?"
Oh come on! You can't show that Microsoft "harms consumers" because some idiot wrote a worm and other idiots helped spread it by executing a script file attachment to an email. It's not like the thing just auto-spread. There was a lot of stupidity involved. You could as easily send a Perl script to any UNIX out there ask the users to save the attachment and then execute it. Same result. Granted Outlook didn't have enough warnings about executing scripts but to say tht it shows that *Microsoft* has harmed consumers is just plain stupid. I mean really, wake up!
"Incompatible file formats between its own products year after year. I love it when Office97 tells me "Oh, not everyone has Office97, you should save in Office95 format.""
Incompatible file formats is nothing Microsoft specific. If you wrote something with the latest version of Word Perfect, you can't open it in Word Perfect 4.2, nor can you open it in emacs or possibly in Star Office (not sure about that but you get my point). Yes, Microsoft isn't any better than the rest, and quite possibly is the worst of them all, but again, it's nothing that Microsoft introduced. The same problem has always been there. And at least Office supports a ton of formats so you can communicate with the rest of the world if you know what you're doing.
"Machines that you expect to have to reboot every day."
We have shitloads of servers at work - both Linux and NT, about 50% of each.. We run pretty similar stuff on them; a database (MS SQL and Oracle mostly), a web server (IIS & Apache), a Java servlet engine (JRun) and a variety of other stuff like SMS gateways, SMTP servers, LDAP servers etc. etc. and uptime is not a problem for any of these machines. Yes, the Linux boxes have less problems but we consistently have uptimes of several months on all of the machines. Rebooting typically happens when we need to do some major upgrage - not when something crashes.
As workstations, we have NT4's and Windows 2000 and there too uptime and crashes are not a problem. I can't remember when I would have rebooted my NT4 workstation last - must be several months ago. On my laptop, I have Windows 2000 and I haven't seen a single blue screen of death or OS crash.
To say that crashing machines and daily reboots are such a horrible problem, caused by Microsoft, is just a plain lie - or maybe you just haven't used anything Microsoft has made in the past couple of years. Maybe you should try so that you know what you're talking about.
Please people, realize that this isn't some blind pro-Microsoft post. I would just prefer that people stick to FACTS when they post their anti-Microsoft ramblings.
And you know, there are always two sides on the coin. I had HUGE problems with various Linux distros some time ago on my desktop machine at home. It would freeze every once in a while (maybe every 2-3 hours or so) under X, no matter what I tried. I changed hardware, changed my motherboard, CPU, memory.. no change.. Finally I installed Windows 98 on it and I had no problems. Sure, typically it would be the other way around, but if you have had 100 blue screens of death in one day on a Windows box, remember that there are people who have had similar experiences with other OS's. It's nothing Microsoft specific.
ctrl-alt-del to login (Score:5)
I heard a good explanation for the control-alt-delete to login thing. Whether or not this was MS's intention, I'm not sure, but it certainly works out well.
Using that key sequence to bring up a login dialog effectively prevents the "false login screen" style of password sniffers. If one of those were running, you'd press C-A-D to login, and get the wrong screen, so immediately you'd know something was wrong.
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Second Thoughts... (Score:5)
A number of errors here. Microsoft certainly triggered no such revolution - it rode a wave that was well underway, and excelled at profiting from it. At most, one might argue that they accelerated a revolution that would have happened no matter what. Microsoft certainly did not in any way "spawn... Free Software" - the GNU project started when MS was still a very small player, providing an early and primitive version of dos for IBM, along with their basic engine and the like. Free Software was a reaction, yes, but to the actions of the likes of SUN and DEC, not MS.
While I think I agree with the overall point of your article (certainly I agree that "One of the problems is that our media has become a mob, lurching one way, then the other. Perspective and clarity is hard to come by." and that Jacksons decision has some flaws...) I really can't imagine that you would want to spread such misinformation as this.
As to the judgement, a deeper issue that you don't mention is that antitrust law itself is a tangled mess of subjective criteria to begin with. Monopoly is a concept solid enough to be fairly useful in economics, but not quite solid enough to be objectively definable in law. A monopoly is a single supplier in a given market. In order to determine whether or not MS "is" a monopoly, one must define the relevant market. Personal computer software? Not a monopoly. Desktop x86 computer software? Not a monopoly. MS-Windows compatible software? There they are a monopoly, and given the share of the total personal computer market that represents, that makes them a juggernaught, for sure, but there are some definate reasons to find such a narrow definition of the market for legal purposes quite troubling - it nearly makes them a monopoly by definition. By that criteria, Apple must be a monopolist (just a monopolist in a smaller market) and so is SUN, and hell, Symantec has a monopoly on Norton Utilities, right?
So I've watched this whole story with very mixed feelings. Microsoft has a tremendous market clout which they've used in VERY questionable ways. They do stifle innovation, they do harm consumers, and it's tempting to view anything that strips them of a little part of their all too great and all too often abused power as a good thing. But antitrust law is just as scary and abusable.
At any rate, a thought provoking article. Please do correct the factual errors before publishing an article like this in the future though - it's bad enough that an army of MS Marketdroids are out there misinforming people about the history of computing - the last thing that should happen is people like you helping them.
"That old saw about the early bird just goes to show that the worm should have stayed in bed."
Re:Demonstrating harm is tough. Or is it? (Score:5)
Basic everywhere. At time of smalltalk and lisp, they pushed basic. Thanks for that. They ruined my life.
DOS, EMM, XMS, 640Kb limit, A20 gate. The whole DOS api. It was not at stone age, folks, it was in the 80's. This harmed a lot of children, that ended-up re-developing unix in the 90's. Digital civilisation lost about 10 years in the process.
The paperclip. This harmed millions of users.
The login panel that is dismissed with the escape key. The 'control-alt-del' to login. Someone should pay for that.
Winmodems. Don't forget winmodems.
Oh, and the 10bits in the cylinder number. The 504Mb limitation of hard drive ? And the 8Gb limit ?
And FAT, the Fragmented Allocation Table ? Who should pay for the countless hours morons spend looking DEFRAG.EXE painfully moving blocks around ?
And the windows API ? Winsock ? The API where you need a hidden window to receive data on a socket ?
Oh my god. I don't want to break microsoft apart, I want to dissolve bill gates in an acid bath.
Cheers,
--fred
Re:yes.. capitalism (Score:5)
yes.. capitalism (Score:5)
Yes, it's not the government's business to mess around in the marketplace. Capitalism rewards innovation. Letting capitalism take its course may not produce results as quickly as the government would, but it will produce better results in the end.
And "Open Source" fits in with capitalism nicely (though RMS would disagree).
wishus
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I think MS has been the victim of hypocrisy. (Score:5)
Having said that, some elements of this trial do worry me. As an American ex-patriot, now living in London, I am worried about the ideaology that this trial represents. It didn't seem to be about Justice, it seemed to be about the government imposing its economic ideals.
Since I have lived in Britain for a few years, I have come to think that in affairs like this expediency is often the best way. Idealogy should be left to students and High School pupils - there is no place for it in the grown up world, because it leads to a divorce from reality/
Also, the hypocrisy of many people in the tech industry worries me. It seems that they are libertarian in their outlook everywhere, except for when it comes to Microsoft. Why the two-faced attitude? It is emotion clouding their viewpoint.
I am an expatriate; events like this are turning me into an ex-patriot.
Re:Demonstrating harm is tough. Or is it? (Score:5)
Why? Because MS is a monopoly.
And thats Microsofts fault? No, its the fault of the ignorant consumer. If you don't research your options you're going to have to put up with what you're given. For the 'average' user at home Windows is the best operating system. Most people couldn't even install, for example, Linux. Its simply not as obvious and easy to use as Windows. Consumers are a stupid bunch. They tend to like little paperclip assistants, 'Wizards', and autorunning CDs. It doesn't require any thought. That suits most people fine. Microsoft have dumped vast amounts of money into simplifying computer systems so that they can sell to as many people as possible. Maybe one day Linux will be as easy to use as Windows. Until then though Microsoft will not have a rival in consumer operating systems, irrespective of what the US courts rule.
Re:Harm to consumers (Score:5)
With the Open Source movement, there are plenty of non-MS alternatives. No one is twisting your arm here. Even before Linux became the hot buzzword of the day, there were other alternative platforms and systems, some of which are still around today.
Microsoft may have used dirty business practices in promoting Internet Explorer, but I don't know anyone who would argue, in their right mind, that Netscape 4.x is better than IE 5.x; even NS6 doesn't have the polish and features that IE has.
I only hope that the rumors of IE being ported to Linux systems is true.... that would ease my pain and suffering when dealing with Linux machines quite a bit.
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The IHA Forums [ihateapple.com]
Re:Microsoft are good for consumers and society (Score:5)