The Future of Innovation At Stake? 210
Neuropol writes "Next week, Microsoft will launch a challenge against the European Union's highest court. The European Commission will need to decide if they are to overturn the EU Court's 2004 Anti-Trust case ruling. Amid arguments over the usual suspects like Windows Media Player, one of the key points of the CNN article that caught my attention was this quote from a EU Commission lawyer stating that Microsoft aims 'to eliminate the openness of the Internet, to proprietize the Internet, the lawyer said, adding the groundwork will be laid in Microsoft's forthcoming new operating system, Vista.'"
where's the urgency? (Score:5, Funny)
Well if that's the case then we have nothing to worry about.
Re:where's the urgency? (Score:2, Funny)
Old dog, old tricks. (Score:5, Interesting)
Key article quote:
and:Seems Microsoft, et. al., especially Balmer are back to their old swagger when they talk so boldly about "conquering". Remember Ballmer, during the US DOJ investigation was the one who said "Janet Reno can go to Hell."
(And, before any business experts go off on "a company's business is to make money by conquering a market", remember, Microsoft is already convicted of abusing its monopoly position to introduce an imbalance in other markets. This is exactly the position Balmer takes so boldly in his interview.)
Amazing.
Re:Old dog, old tricks. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Old dog, old tricks. (Score:3, Informative)
In fact, a company I worked at saw this happen first hand where MS forced Compaq to use its product; which was riddled with bugs, and had far less features than the competition, despite requiring twice the
Re:Old dog, old tricks. (Score:4, Informative)
The EU doesn't much care if every server in the EU is a windows server, but they do want to make that others have a chance of actually interoperating with those servers. Splitting up MS isn't going to achieve that, but fines will.
Re:Old dog, old tricks. (Score:2)
Re:Old dog, old tricks. (Score:3, Insightful)
Stacker. Caldera/Novell. IBM's OS/2 division.
Those are three examples that I can think of off the top of my head. In each of those situations MS "allied" with a company, than stabbed them behind the back. Stacker went under because of it, even though they won in court years later (after the company was gutted).
MS's strategy of "commit crime now, pay fine later after opp
Re:Old dog, old tricks. (Score:2, Insightful)
Abuse of monopoly power to conquer a new market is illegal, and MS have been convicted of it in the US and the EU. Free market capitalism needs a level playing field.
Re:Old dog, old tricks. (Score:2)
Re:Old dog, old tricks. (Score:2, Insightful)
why weren't they dealt the same blow as AT&T and the railways?
Because they paid big bucks to aid with the Bush Campaign.Re:Old dog, old tricks. (Score:2)
You left off Netscape. And OpenDoc (the Apple/IBM/Sun project). And DRDOS. And the hit Quicken took when MS preannounced its competing product which took years to appear with far fewer features than advertised. MS didn't exactly do Java any favors either. These are all cases where MS didn't have anything that could compete on merit IMO. They won (where they did) because they leveraged their monopoly.
And those are
Re:Old dog, old tricks. (Score:2, Insightful)
Balmer shifts a single bead on an abacus labeled `War Chest'
Balmer : So?
Re:Old dog, old tricks. (Score:2)
A friend of mine who lived in Finland a few years ago says that such things there are adjusted to your income. If you earn 10x the national average, you pay 10x the fine, on the principle that it should hurt you the same.
Re:Old dog, old tricks. (Score:2)
Re:Old dog, old tricks. (Score:2)
This would provide the oppurtunity for microsofts europeon customers to successfully sue microsoft for the full cost of failures in microsoft software specifcally where microsoft have used their monopoly postion to attem
Re:Old dog, old tricks. (Score:3, Insightful)
Not even that. Since when is it innovative to simply bundle an application that works in the same way as multiple competing applications? Just become it comes with the OS instead of having to be installed separately, it doesn't mean it's innovative.
Re:Old dog, old tricks. (Score:4, Funny)
I heard they weren't going to conquer the intrnet.
I head they WERE GOING TO FUCKING KILL THE INTERNET! *THROWS CHAIR*
Re:Old dog, old tricks. (Score:2)
I head they WERE GOING TO FUCKING KILL THE INTERNET! *THROWS CHAIR*
Well, if there is nothing but M$ software to run the internet, it could very well happen. *throws old DOS floppy out the window*
Sharks with friggen lasers (Score:4, Funny)
If MS does manage to 'conquer the internet' [bink.nu], that would be like the Catholic church successfully conquering that irritating 'printing press' when it first showed up. After, it was being used to print unauthorized material that was distributed by a network of individuals via unauthorized channels, worst of all information critical of the holy mother church. The horror.
The more they tighten their grasp, the more of the internet will slip through their fingers....
Re:Sharks with friggen lasers (Score:3, Funny)
Microsoft: Not after we demonstrate the power of this new operating system. In a way, you have determined the choice of the market that will be destroyed first. Since you are reluctant to provide us with control over the Internet, we have chosen to test this operating system's destructive power on your home PC!
Consumers: No! We are peaceful! We have no weapons, you can't possibly...
Microsoft: You pr
Re:Sharks with friggen lasers (Score:2)
Re:Sharks with friggen lasers (Score:3, Insightful)
Can we blame Microsoft for having the spot it does? No. I don't think so. Millions have been paying for Windows to be their system of choice. PC took off, Windows/DOS was easy and known and was able to keep up with changing software and demands (Though, perhaps as unstable as it could be sometimes).
I guess what starts to come about is when do we draw the line
Re:Sharks with friggen lasers (Score:4, Insightful)
bollocks... millions have never had a choice... they're victims of Microsoft's monopolistic abuses in the OEM market... OEMS forced to pay for windows even though they were shipping OS2 on machines... cliff-tiered pricing for OEM copies that made it completely uneconomical to put anything else on the machines... kickbacks in the form of market development funds for OEMs promoting only windows on machines... why else do all the PC makers have that XXX reccomends Microsoft Windows XP on their machines??? they get paid for it and if they promote any other OS actively they lose the market development funds... why else do you find the Dell Linux machines well buried in the website with no direct links to them... you have to actively search for them.
Re:Sharks with friggen lasers (Score:2)
PC makers are VARS (Value Added Resellers) for Windows. See, at first the PC makers LOVED the fact that Microsoft would pay for THEIR marketing as long as it contained something about Windows in it. This is normal operating procedure for any VAR relationship. The PC seller quite often offers its own tech supp
Re:Sharks with friggen lasers (Score:2)
Thing is, that's a pretty standard practice - so I'm not arguing with myself. There are alot of other software companies doing the same thing. In fact, some say you have to choose their product and no one elses or you can't resell their product.
It's not blackm
Re:Sharks with friggen lasers (Score:2)
The OEMs have been crying all the way to the bank for the last twenty-five years.
The commodity PC running MSDOS and Windows sold in the kind of numbers no one had seen before. It was affordable. It was adaptable. There was big money to be made in after-market sales.
why else do you find the Dell Linux machines well buried in the website with no direct links to them... you have to actively search for
Re:Sharks with friggen lasers (Score:2)
An exceedingly apt analogy [fourmilab.ch].
Re:Sharks with friggen lasers (Score:2)
Re:But Islam did block the press (Score:2)
No...innovation is not at stake (Score:3, Interesting)
The only people who see innovation as dead are those who don't thin it is possible to create. I'm not creative...I'll admit that. But I don't think everyone will throw in the towel, and I think some of the best is yet to come...from the Open Source community.
Re:No...innovation is not at stake (Score:2)
I've got no idea what SPLUNK is so I'll assume 99% of the population doesn't. Anyway, the coming future is that you will not be allowed to make competing products freely. They are so prot
Re:No...innovation is not at stake (Score:2)
This Latest Microsoft Arguement Reminds Me... (Score:3, Interesting)
And that is watching someone get so mad that not only do they stop making sense, but they lose the ability to even form grammatically sensible sentences.
Seeing someone, or in this case, company just fucking lose it is a rare and wonderful sight to see.
So what? (Score:2)
Tough. "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime." MS and its fans whine like ... I don't know what. It's like the three time-loser felons complaining that their civil rights are being restricted by being sent to jail. So what? It's nothing compared to what they have done. Restrictions like WMP are trivial compared to the enormity of their actions.
They really kille
It's been their goal all along (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft aims 'to eliminate the openness of the Internet, to proprietize the Internet, the lawyer said, adding the groundwork will be laid in Microsoft's forthcoming new operating system, Vista.'
That has been their goal since the inception of Microsoft Network. They saw how lucrative Prodigy and Compuserver and AOL were and wanted to get in on the action. The problem was that they were too late and those services were already on the decline in favor of more open Internet access. "You mean I can send a message to by friend who has Compuserve even though I am on AOL?"
Basically, they have been trying to bring the world back to the "bad old days".
Re:It's been their goal all along (Score:3, Interesting)
To get it right you need to either:
1) Offer unique content / services / paradigm which has more value than other freely (or cheaper) content from another source
2) Make a big wall - so the consumer has no choice.
Doing 1) Is tough - case in point - AOL.
Doing 2) Consumers will run away to the more 'free' choice.
There are counter examples - I mean this is on Slashdot - so clearly Slashdot holds some value which results in
Old argument (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, bundling Media Player with Windows gives MS an unfair advantage givent their market penetration. However, Windows does not prevent you from downloading any media software you want and using it. This is the same intellectualization people use when they talk about offensive books or TV programs. Yes, these things are readily available, but if you don't like their content, you can always refuse to read those books or watch those programs. And so it goes with Windows: use Media Player or don't -- you have a choice.
In the end, it isn't about Media Player, per se, but Microsoft's domination of the software market. However, all the EU is doing is poking Gulliver with their Lilliputian sticks. Unless the EU plans on banning Microsoft entriely (and how could they!), they will never be able to put enough of a chokehold on Ballmer and Company to seriously dent their market share.
Re:Old argument (Score:3, Insightful)
If you as content provider want to distribute something to a large audience you have to choose a codec. So what are you going to choose?
A. Real, that isn't installed on just about every computer on the planet, meaning a large part of you audience will have to search for a player and install it. Meaning most won't bother with your content cause it's too much of a hassle.
B. WMV, wich directly plays on just about every machine without problems...
Most pr
Re:Old argument (Score:2)
Also, Don't forget Macromedia Flash is now starting to take a big amount of streaming traffic away from MS and all other streaming clients out there. It's Cross Platform, automatic
Re:Old argument (Score:2)
Look at the codec of choice for pirated stuff though: a Divx variant of some sort (either Divx5 or Xvid) in an AVI container (a format that Microsoft created, but has pretty much abandoned). There is some slow movement towards OGM, but but I doubt that it will ever surpass AVI.
I think the market as a whole is still exercising some authority in the mat
Re:Old argument (Score:2)
Given the amount of content that is available only in WMA format, that's rather like saying "breathe or don't -- you have a choice." Can you say "network effects"? Sure, I knew you could.
Re:Old argument (Score:2)
I didn't stop breathing, I just started using my nose instead of my mouth. You might want to give it a shot
Re:Old argument (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Old argument (Score:3, Informative)
In theory you do, in practise they're using their monopoly so that it isn't rational. Imagine you're building a car from parts, and Microsoft has a monopoly on the engine block. Then they start shipping "free" carburators with each engine block. Of course, they're not actually free because you sure paid for them somehow but if you want anything else, you have to not only pay full price for new ones (which can't cross-subsidize like
Re:Old argument (Score:2)
Microsoft HAS done some bad things, such as adopting standards and then slightly changing them in their implementaton in order to sabata
Re:Old argument (Score:2)
The true monopoly that MS has is on 'platforms that run windows applications', and they don't have a competitor there (wine is not functional enough). Funnily enough they created this market, but due to its immense success this market is now too important to be (man)handled by the monopolist that created it.
Re:Old argument (Score:2)
Re:Old argument (Score:2)
Bullshit. I've bought 2 pre-built computers for myself in the past, and I've helped others pick out new computers to replace their old ones. Every single one of those times, I've bought them thout a windows licence. Granted, every single one of them had windows installed, but if you ask the company will usualy knock $50 off the price and either wipe the hard-drive or just not give you the licen
Re:Old argument (Score:2)
Re:Old argument (Score:2)
Um, actually, you'd be surprised at how "easy" it would be for them to officially ban MS software from the EU. Oh, the difficult part would be keep
Re:Old argument (Score:3, Insightful)
The point is that those providing the media know that EVERYONE has WMP. so why not use Windows Media formats? Why not use Windows Media DRM? Ten years ago, when someone said they would "send me a file", I could get WordPerfect, WordStar, IBM Displaywrite, etc, etc. Now the ONLY format you get is MS Word. And though standardising is simpler in many ways, it would be even better if it were an open standard. With
What if (Score:3, Insightful)
NFS/SMB: If nobody can connect to your server who will use your filer?
MSIE: If you can't view the "best viewed
Re:Old argument (Score:2)
Close, but no cigar. This like the having the choice to delete the pre-loaded hard-core porn distributed by the entertainment division of the video player you just bought. Not that it would be a bad thing.
What a crock... (Score:2)
That's not the point. The point is that most people won't bother and because Microsoft is bundling it into its monopoly product it unfairly tilts the playing field. Abusing a monopoly position is illegal and something Microsoft has already been convicted of multiple times.
"This is the same intellectualization people use when they talk about offensive books or TV programs"
Out of who's ass did you pull that?
"In
Re:Old argument (Score:5, Funny)
Real Player has always been able to malfunction well enough without Microsoft's help -- they just enhanced the process.
Re:Old argument (Score:2)
In other words, he was complaining that the default player was changed from Real to WMP when you install WMP. Duh. Real did the same thing at the time, as did Apple.
Nowadays, most programs ask you, and both WMP and REAL ask you which specific f
Bundling (Score:2, Insightful)
I mean if you take the 'anti' bundling argument to the logical nth degree you could hear someone say:
1) No OS should come with threads - processes are enough, and bundling in 'threads' is an attempt to stop good hard working folks from selling their thread implementation.
2) TCP/IP stack? What! With the OS? That's anti competitive!
Re:Bundling (Score:3, Insightful)
Not "someone", *MONOPOLIES*. And *not* limiting the scope of their product is the slippery pathway to doom.
Ultimately the market will decide - that's a market economy.
No it won't. Monopolies are not "market economies".
If a company invests too much effort putting what I as a consumer consider useless/unimportant features into a product and thus have to charge more for it to cover the costs associated I can
Re:Every company strives to build a natural monopo (Score:2)
What's MS base its business on? Software? Windows? Office? WMV? DOC? APIs?
Let me spell that correctly for you: "Intellectual Property".
What is Copyright? What is Patent Protection?
A (limited) grant of monopoly power over a good by the government. Nothing more, nothing less. Copyright (and patent protections) are not some inalienable right. They are grants of monopoly power by the government. Period.
Microsoft is indeed a monopolist. But instead
Re:Every company strives to build a natural monopo (Score:2)
Then you'd be wrong
The ultimate goal of a business is to maximize market share, with the peak being 100% or full monopoly.
True, but a properly functioning market would make that pretty much impossible. That is why a functioning market called: "self-regulating".
In addition, certain types of products and services lend themselves to few providers.
Agreed. Natural Monopoloies are a separate category from other monopolies, principally because natural m
Re:Bundling (Score:2)
In ancient times, we had exactly that. Digital sold their VMS operating system with a proprietary DECnet stack. They released a TCP/IP stack for VMS as a layered product called UCX. Competitors such as TGV offered more stable/functional products for the same purpose. Eventually, DEC bund
Re:Bundling (Score:2)
Yeah, that the people who want to compete in the OS space expect the end users to do too much. Consumer ignorance is in no way a sign of a market failure. In fact, it is a sign that the consumer is generally happy.
While I agree with most of your statements, this argument seems to be based on the idea that marketing and branding can hold a consumer base captive, that's just not true. Consumer ignorance is
Re:Old argument (Score:2)
Point taken.
Yes, if MS made a car with an MS engine, they'd die a quick death. But only because there are options. If there were no other car makers out there, we'd have to buy the MS car and either buy their gas, or buy a second engine.
To run the car analogy into the ground, it is possible to put another type of engine in a car, if you're wil
Re:Old argument (Score:2)
Well, since you started with the car analogies, I'll use one too.
When you buy a new car, it comes with a stock stereo and stock speakers. If I want to go out an buy a Kenwood deck, and Sony speakers, do I get my money back that went into developing, building, and installing the stock speakers and stereo?
If I want to use 19" performance tire
MS Car (Score:2)
Re:Gulliver, eh? (Score:2)
And the EU's punishment should be fitting, as well. MS is a monopoly, by virtue of its monopoly grant of intellectual property protection on Windows, Office, and a variety of other products (both copyright and patent).
Remember that Intellectual Property (as a concept) is defined as a "limited grant of monopoly distribution rights over a concept".
The correct EU solution is to revoke MS's right to copyright. That would most likely teach them a thing or two.
Re:Old argument (Score:2)
I don't know man, my delete key got rid of Windows Media Player just fine....
And even if I hadn't bothered to delete it, setting all media types to play on VLC would ensure I never have to see WMP again.
So I don't get what you're going on about.
Proprietize? (Score:4, Funny)
Perhaps you meant proprietarize, to bring proprietary to the internet?
You should quitize using izes... you are havizing no needize to verbalize a noun all the time...
Re:Proprietize? (Score:2)
So, this why ... (Score:2, Funny)
I have always wondered how they have survived.
WinFX (Score:5, Informative)
For those who don't know, he's probably referring specifically to WinFX APIs including XAML that allow you to download and run an app through IE. So it's a clever attempt at replacing/renaming ActiveX and making the web a Windows-dependent app delivery platform. It will be sad if they succeed, since the formerly platform-independent web will become little more than a content house for IE-delivered Vista apps.
Re:WinFX (Score:2)
Re:WinFX (Score:2)
In fact, here's a WinFX chess game [valil.com] that runs both locally and in your browser.
Put down the MSDN brochure next time. I'm not spouting "rhetoric;" Ava
Legitimate Concerns (Score:3, Informative)
For those who do not understand, the TCP/IP stack in almost all OSes is based on the original BSD stack. The protocols all have specific rules. Every part of the OSI Layers serves a specific function. It works and should not be monkeyed with.
It is scary when Microsoft decides they can do something better than the IEEE. Anyone remember WINS? How well did that work? It seems they learned their lesson. Now, instead of trying to compete with TCP/IP, they are going to rewrite their own needs into the protocols. This is very, very scary.
Here are the boring technical details.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/column
Be afraid, be very afraid.....
Re:Legitimate Concerns (Score:2, Informative)
Heres an example of some of the features they added:
-Reconfigure without having to restart the computer
-New support for scaling on multi-processor computers
-Easier kernel mode network programming
There is nothing in the article that suggests changes/enha
Re:Legitimate Concerns (Score:2)
Re:Legitimate Concerns (Score:2)
Hogwash. Either you posted the wrong link, or Microsoft isn't doing any of the things you're accusing them of. I've briefly read through a couple of the articles, and Microsoft seems to just follow recent RFCs for various performance improvements, as well as redoing their APIs one more time. Nothing really spectacular.
And you seem to be a real expert on networks? TCP/IP has nothing to do with OSI, and it wasn't designed or specified by IEEE...
someone got a little confused here (Score:4, Informative)
definitions (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah. Good luck on that one. (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, good luck on that one. Considering most DNS/web servers run *nix/Cisco and Apache (respectively) I do not see how a desktop OS could 'proprietize' the Internet...there are too many server admins out there that are *nix junkies. If M$ somehow does stop networks from talking to each other, it will de
Give them what they want (Score:3, Insightful)
Mix 06 (Score:2)
The old days when they actually made non-windows counterparts to their technologies or allowed them to be easily used on non-MS technologies seem to be returning. Maybe someone is smacking Ballmer's business minded MS ONLY mentally back to the curb at MS. We can only hope, as they have a lot of bright people and if they start playing
Re:Mix 06 (Score:2)
What I hear is just from friends that work at the EU, and not having been to Brussels myself in almost two years, I have no way to validate the level of access they have to the case or if what they hear is truly a reflection of the motives.
The only validity I can give to what I hear is the reactions to people going anti-MS then buying Apple or Redhat. But again this could be because Apple is closed and it just all mixes together.
As for controlling the Internet, many have tried wi
Re:Mix 06 (Score:2)
Good point...
But this doesn't mean their methods are the best way to do this. Maybe they would be better to take the money and time invested in putting MS on trial and instead establish a grant system for competiting technologies.
If that is their intent as you suggest, they would be better served by doing a lot of other things than focusing only on Micro
New Slogan (Score:2)
Microsoft - "Your passion, our permission"
MjM
Innovation (Score:2)
Special limited exclusive commercial rights for ideas has been around a few centuries.
By now, we ought to have a good idea of how well it works and under what circumstances it works best.
Compared to the 18th century when patent terms and copyright lifetimes were dreamt up, the pace of innovation today with so many innovators who are able to communicate so quickly, it seems to me that the duration of special patent and copyright protection ought to be much shorter. After a few years, "IP" should drop into
Microsoft Innovation? (Score:2)
I thi
every internet transaction (Score:2)
Re:Just say "no" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:that attitude will get you far (Score:4, Insightful)
There are PLENTY of non-windows jobs. Take a look on Dice sometime. Just because part of the office uses Windows doesn't mean a Solaris admin needs to. The last two sysadmin jobs I had were for HPC clusters and Oracle DB clusters. The mail system was Notes, not Exchange.
All of my tools were Unix-based.
Now, if you're talking about sales, front office support, stuff like that, then yes Windows is probably required. But don't say that non-Windows jobs are few and far between. It's simply not true.
Re:that attitude will get you far (Score:2, Interesting)
Its probably different in the sysadmin world.
But if you are writing code that is going to be used by end users, its a pretty low chance that its going to be for a non-windows platform.
Re:that attitude will get you far (Score:2)
(The in-house sites on our corporate intranet are getting better, but some of the sites that are created by outside entities are not so flexible).
Because of this, I have a Windows box in my cube even though my job as such has nothing to do with Wind
Re:that attitude will get you far (Score:2)
Thanks for clearing that up. Should I polish up on Visual Basic or get my MCSE certification first?
Re:Semantics are important here (Score:3, Interesting)
Because KDE and GNOME are not in a monopoly situation.
Re:Semantics are important here (Score:2, Insightful)
also there is, to the best
Re:Semantics are important here (Score:2)
Re:Err... (Score:2)
Aw, give the guy a break. (Score:2)
Can't we get back to making fun of him for jumping up and down screaming "Developers!" like a drunken football fan?