Time For Anti-Trust 2.0?

An anonymous reader writes, "PC manufacturer Acer is complaining that Microsoft has jacked up the price of Vista, and that the basic versions are so basic no one will ship them. Since the collapse of the Microsoft anti-trust case under the Bush administration in 2001, manufacturers have no choice but to accede, adding hundreds of dollars to the cost of each PC. With Gates now proclaiming victory over European regulators, Microsoft once again seems unstoppable. But Microsoft had drawn itself close to the Republican Party. With the Republicans now evicted from the House and Senate, is it time to look at the Microsoft anti-trust suit? Could Microsoft be compelled to lower its inflating Vista prices, or to open their tech or even supply funding to Linux-flavored Windows such as Wine? What do Slashdot readers think about the likelihood of another go at breaking up the Windows monopoly?"

Re:Why do you even use Windows?

[Sqwubbsy]

Isn't it enough that something works right out of the box? Sure, I could buy an Apple/Mac and it would work, but I'd have to live without right-click.

I don't have much against Linux. Maybe I'm not sufficiently informed, maybe my entire life could be made simpler by a switch to Linux. But for now, Windows works.

You sir, should sit in the /. timeout corner. I'm not down with all the Microsoft bashing on this thread - the topic should be modded -1 Flamebait, but you are woefully ignorant.
** Windows almost never works 'right out of the box'. If you're using it that way, then your system is already compromised.
** You can use a mouse with right button in OS X. Or you just hold your click for 2 seconds to get the contextual menu.
** You're not sufficiently informed vis-a-vis Linux. Try a friendly distro like MEPIS or Ubuntu.

I was having problems with my video camera on my Windows machine. Worked like a charm on my Mac mini. Worked like a charm with my MEPIS box.
Never could get my wife's iPod to even be seen by the Windows box. Obviously the Mac saw it. MEPIS does too.
But boy, could I play games on the Windows box.

Re:Antitrust because of prices? no thanks

[truthsearch]

You get a "special" lower price if you don't sell any competing products.

That's no longer the case with Microsoft. The reason computer sellers still put Windows on every computer is to keep their bulk OEM license price down. If they lower the number of Windows licenses they purchase the price goes up. That would then raise the price of their computers.

One of the few positive things to come out of the anti-trust case was the Microsoft "penalty" for selling competing produts.

Re:Antitrust because of prices? no thanks

[mspohr]

Interesting that last week's Economist published the results of a study which shows that you are exactly right. It studied the growth in the US budget for years when there was a "divided" executive/legislature and years when one party was in control of both. The budget grew about twice as much in the years of one party control as it did when there was divided control.

Things Changed in 2002!

[grossvogel]

It's been mentioned on a post or two already, but folks are still making posts that ignore this: OEM deals based on EXCLUSIVITY are outlawed. The only thing Acer has to lose by selling linux is perhaps a step down on the Vista bulk pricing scale due to sheer quantity. This is from the NYTimes (subscription)...an excerpt directly from the Judge's ruling in 2002:

In its order of remedy, the court has heeded plaintiffs' call for broad protection for O.E.M.'s, I.S.V.'s, and I.H.V.'s [independent hardware vendors] against retaliation and threats of retaliation by Microsoft for the support of products that compete with Microsoft's monopoly product. The court's remedy further curtails Microsoft's ability to enter into agreements that have the effect of excluding competitors from the marketplace. The court's prohibition on exclusionary contracts is carefully drawn, however, so as to foster, rather than prohibit, procompetitive joint ventures, work-for-hire agreements, and intellectual property licenses. . . .

size of government

[falconwolf]

If George W. Bush wasn't there to stop their evil plans we'd be looking at stagflation, runaway tax increases, enormous increases in the size of our federal government, and massive amounts of new regulations on our businesses that will make it impossible for them to compete with foreign competitors.

Really funny. Not! Bush has increased the size of government and took the US from the biggest budget surplus to the biggest budget deficit ever. Republicans are supposedly fiscally conservative but while they've cut taxes they've also balloned federal spending and created entire new agencies and departments. Reason magazine [reason.com], Free Mind and Free Markets has an article in the current issue, "The Budget-cutters Who couldn't Stop Spending" which isn't online yet, that details just how Republican have gone on spending sprees. There's the expansion in medicare spending estimateds to cost as much as $1.2 trillion in the first 10 years. Then they stuff billions more in so called supplimental approriations bills such as $150 million to the NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminitration, added to a bill to pay for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq along with another $2.3 billion for avian flu preparedness, which already get $3.8 billion, added to the same bill. This year's supplimental bill is $94.5 billion which makes it the largest supplimental bill ever. In 2005 supplimental appropriations represented 16.7% of new discretionary spending which was $143 billion compared to $7 billion in 1998 when discretionary spending was only .9%.

Falcon

Re:It is obvious

[BalanceOfJudgement]

I guess you're really buying the corporate justification argument. Copyrights, patents, trade secrets, were not created to benefit society at large, but to create IP rights.

Actually, it seems to be you who has an insufficient understanding of the issue - what corporations have done is take that original, VALID justification for copyright and manipulate it to their own purposes. THEY say the same thing that our founders did when the founders codified those rights into the Constitution - only the corporations say it in order to remove "intellectual property" from the culture, rather than share it.

It's not either-or, but rather "how things started" and "how things became this way."

Copyrights, patents, trade secrets, were not created to benefit society at large, but to create IP rights.

You would do well to understand What Thomas Jefferson actually thought about Copyright [as he wrote that section of the Constitution] [uchicago.edu] as well as a nice discussion of copyright law from a Jeffersonian perspective [kuro5hin.org].