The meaning of Monopoly, at least in legal terms, appears to have changed from the traditional meaning:

"The only player in the market"

to a somewhat more nuanced:

"The player, or co-operating cartel of players who have such a grip on the market that no other potential (or existing) player can be expected to have a reasonable chance of entering (or effectively participating in) the market".

This does not mean that all potential or existing players in a market should be expected to achieve parity, or be capable of it. What is important is the exclusion of ALL other parties from having the potential to effectively participate in the market. There is also the matter of related markets and the practice of players forming cartels where they essentially carve the larger marketplace up into smaller specializations and agree to split control of them such that each has a market that is "theirs".

As things stand at present, in the desktop market, there are two main commercial players, MS (Windows) and Apple (OSX). Both seem to have slightly different target markets, so aren't really considered to be in direct competition for the most part (when was the last time you heard about Apple trying to get a Mac on every desk in a large company, outside of the creative industries?). There is, however, enough of an overlap (Windows in some creative companies and OSX in an increasing number of homes) that neither can effectively be accused of dividing the market between themselves. This leaves the fight as being essentially between Microsoft and Linux. Granted, Linux is a very fragmented proposition, as competition goes, so you're not really comparing like with like, but it can be argued (and appears that it often has been successfully before the courts) that Microsoft's grip on the market, in particular via its commercial agreements with its OEM partners, has meant that whilst it is POSSIBLE to get a PC without Windows on it, it is sufficiently more difficult to do so, to the extent that they have an unfair commercial advantage over their competitors.

They may not be the only player in town, but to the average user, they might as well be. It is largely for this reason that they are regarded, including by several judiciaries, as monopolists.

Although... IANAL, and this is just my understanding of the matter...

The aim was to do away with the mindless tautology of referring to a Windows Phone Phone. An Android Phone is called such, because the OS is called Android, not Android Phone, therefore, technically, until this move is completed, we should be referring to WP-based handsets as Windows Phone Phones. This simply allows you to drop the first "phone" when referring to them.

WRONG. They're doing both.

For the OS itself:
Windows Phone => Windows

For the hardware:
Nokia Lumia => Lumia

If they did make a complete break with the past code-base and did a complete redesign from the ground up, as you seem to be suggesting, how would you propose that legacy apps continue to run on it?

It would appear, from the tone of your comment, that you are suggesting MS's answer should be "F@#k 'em"!

If they were to take your suggestion, they would kill one of the biggest drivers in keeping MS entrenched in businesses. They may have made some pretty questionable moves over the last few years, but an all-out bid for suicide doesn't quite seem to be part of their game-plan.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that such a long-lived code-base could do with a complete rewrite to make it easier for them to support and build on going forward. They are, however, in the unenviable position of having a significant portion of their customers dependent on legacy applications that work only because the code-base is so long-lived and backward compatible.

Do you remember, for example, when Vista came out and a major component of the NT security model was updated (i.e. it actually started to have something resembling one with regard to what privilege levels an application could run in), killing the ability of many applications to run/install? At least there it was a new feature that had been added and could be turned off that was causing the programs not to work. How much worse do you think it is going to be if your proposed full rewrite broke a wide range of popular legacy applications and the only way to get them to work was to wither replace them, or downgrade back to an earlier version of the OS?

I think the point he was trying to make was:

Large and useful != bad thing

Large and mostly full of useless crap = bad thing

Would I be safe in guessing that you didn't include the quotes when you put it in the Google search bar/box? Have you considered whether this might be your problem, not Microsoft's? Or are you suggesting that Google should perhaps automatically assume that when Windows and Phone appear side by side in search terms, they should enclose them in a set of quotes and combine them as a search phrase invisibly/dynamically, but not do the same for other comparable two-word combinations?

Except this is not truly a Microsoft or Windows issue, it's largely an architecture issue, and won't be solved unless they decide to drop RT (and thereby ARM support). Doing that would kill them in the smartphone arena, as the number of x86/ x86-64 CPU-based handsets is small enough to count on just one hand in most markets. It would also seriously disadvantage them in the tablet market, as the same dearth of x86-based devices exists here, too.

It has ever been thus. Compile for one architecture, and it will run fine on that, but not on others. Anyone here remember Windows NT on lpha? You could run applications compiled for it, but not those compiled for x86. The reverse was also true (no lpha-compiled apps on x86).

You cannot blame Microsoft for third-party developers compiling their apps only for the x86 architecture and therefore those apps not being available on/ compatible with the ARM-based installs of their OS.

If more developers of software for Windows ported / cross-compiled their apps for both the x86-based (let's use the terminology you seem to be hinting at and call it "Full Windows") and the ARM-based (Windows RT) platforms, this discussion would not be happening.

I would agree that they could do a better job of differentiating Windows RT based devices from x86-based Windows devices to make it more immediately apparent to end users, but is that not ultimately the hardware vendors responsibility (except where Microsoft/Nokia is the hardware manufacturer, too)?

Article is referring to a device that can kick devices off ANY network, not just the operators own. If you have the ability to kick one of my devices off of MY network, how is that NOT a violation of 47 U.S.C. Section 333, and how is my device being on MY network an infringement of the CCAA?

IANAL, and am in the UK, so this is a genuine question!

I, for one, share your beliefs on the subject. I do not, however, refer to myself as a feminist, but rather as an egalitarian. The reason for this distinction is that, rightly or wrongly, feminism has become associated by many (especially those too lazy to consult a dictionary) with female supremacy. The extremist views, statements and acts over the years by some who have claimed to be acting in the name of feminism certainly hasn't helped, neither has most of the press, which will report on such matters without clarifying the inappropriate use of the term feminism /feminist. It is also fair to say that it's not just the sexes that I think should be equal, either. Hence my use of the term egalitarian.

Yeah, but he had a cute cat. Maybe the backers just wanted to make sure it remained fed for the forseeable future...

Your analogy can be taken one step further, too... Bulletproof vests do sod all to protect you from knife attacks, either. Similarly, AV is competent (at best) in protecting you from some kinds of threats, but useless in protecting you from others. In fact, it could be argued that it's worse than useless, as it gives the user a false sense of security.

OK, so we should use the word "malware" instead. Just remind me again how many outside the IT industry use that word, though. To nearly all users, virus is not a subset of malware, it is a synonym.

Bulls#1t!!! Whitelisting may deal with 0-day viruses, but 0-day exploits in legitimate apps is a whole different proposition.

Except that saying that in an open system it's the user's responsibility to stay safe would need to include some form of sanctions for those situations where the user is putting not just themselves, but others, at risk. Sure, the malware may only INFECT their machine, but many malware variants can AFFECT other machines too. Take, for example, CryptoLocker and its variants. An infected machine can encrypt any documents it can see, not just those stored locally. If you're on one of your proposed "safe" systems, but you access the same file-shares that an "unsafe" machine uses, just because you are safe from being INFECTED, doesn't mean you aren't AFFECTED when the user on the unsafe machine gets hit by a CL variant and encrypts your whole document store.

That WAS his point! He was saying that your censorship analogy is on a par with money you can have a little, or a lot, of either. Both are situations where you have it. Whitelisting is a binary situation where it's either on or off.

I would, however, counter this with the situations where you say whitelisting only applies to those applications that are installed in the user's profile. In such a scenario, you could say users cannot install apps anywhere other than in their profile without privilege escalation, then apply whitelisting to the profile's apps, whilst still allowing sanctioned apps, I.e. those installed outside the profile, to be run. Technically, this would still be whitelisting, with sanctioned apps dynamically included in the whitelist by virtue of their installed location, but many would argue that this is not true whitelisting. Perhaps this would qualify as the greylisting option you were looking for? (Already possible under MS Windows, by the way).