It seems you don’t fully understand how crucial competition is to a market based economy. It is the most important reason why capitalism is as successful as it is.
The bundling is exactly what the EU is unhappy about. The EU ruling fines Microsoft, and also requires them to stop bundling the player with the OS. Note that this doesn’t necessarily mean you have to download it - system vendors like Dell are still free to bundle the MS media player, or Real player or whatever they chose with a new system. The point is that users, or system vendors, should chose, not MS.
I don’t see how MS is getting a raw deal out of this, they are getting a fair deal. Imagine if government legislation required that Real player be included with all new computers. This legislation is then cancelled after five years. Would that mean Real were getting a raw deal? No, it would mean they used to have an unfair advantage, but that was being removed.
Not quite. MS is allowed to bundle the player, as long as they offer an alternative, uncrippled, version of Windows unbundled. I wonder if LilShieste has ever helped a novice computer user. Having to download is a big obstacle for most people, something they won’t do unless they’ve had someone holding their hands. It took over five years before my father-in-law was comfortable enough to download Mozilla by himself.
I see. That makes sense. But my question then is: wasn’t the whole “monopoly issue” taken care of already? I guess I’m not very familiar with what happened to MS after the anti-trust suit. I thought they were split up in a way, that would help eliminate the ways (or keep in check) MS conducted any monopolistic actions. Is this what happened, or were they simply fined? (I am asking this in all seriousness.)
Ok, well I definitely have to say “WTF was MS thinking with that last comment?!” I have a B.S. in Computer Science, so I do know the general workings of an operating system (or rather, how they should be). I would certainly have a hard time believing MS made Media Player a center-piece for its OS. If they did… <sigh> good Christ.
I guess I had just been looking at it a little differently. I figured that IE was feature-less because all people generally need out of a browser is the bare essentials. I would agree that a lot of people like to play around with other browsers (but like you said, not your average Joe or Jane), and see what different types of options are available.
Well, I thought I had understood how crucial competition is to a market based economy. Could you please enlighten me on what was wrong with my example involving the cable company?
Well, my parents - with all due respect - are among the most computer illiterate people on the planet (especially my dad). So I definitely have been in that boat. It is people like this that I am primarily thinking about, though, with all of this (or rather, I would like to think so). If what Planet of the Shapes was describing is true (about PC distributors being able to bundle the software), then that’s fine by me. Sounds perfectly reasonable. I am just worried that things are going to get out of hand, with this bundling problem, and people like my parents are going to have to download applications, or ask for certain features to be explicitly placed on their computers (if they were to buy from a vendor).
I’m just worried that all of this is going to backlash onto the consumers, in the end.
Well, that, and the idea that Windows might be centered around Media Player. :eek:
First of all, the anti-trust suit only applied in the US, and the remedies got eviscerated by the appeals court. So, besides some fairly minor things about pricing by OEMs, not much happened. Even the court is now beginning to wonder if MS is abidiing by the judgement, but I doubt anything is going to happen - certainly not under the current administration.
You must not have been following the US trial then, when MS claimed that IE was an integral part of the OS. There is a book on the trial based on a long account in Wired (where I read it.) Take a look. It is fascinating. But MS making this claim is an indication of their arrogance, not their technical ignorance. They are not dumb. Maybe not smart enough to overcome the fundamentally broken architecture of Windows, but not dumb.
Pop-ups are a big deal to a lot of people, and AOL now is making pop-up blocking an advertised feature. When I was using an old Netscape I downloaded a standalong blocker, which was a pain. Adding it is not that difficult - any company with real competition would do it.
I worked for the Bell System before the breakup in 1984. Though everyone I knew was committed to the public interest, the very fact that we were a monopoly hurt innovation. Forcing people to lease phones made it very simple, but it also meant that there was a disincentive to churn the installed base. Microsoft makes money from upgrades and new PCs. Why improve IE when you can try to get people to sign up for MSN, or perhaps put the feature in Windows - next as an incentive to upgrade?
Just like with cars, vendors would sell PCs with bundles of apps to maximize sales, all pre-installed and pre-tested for compatibility. Chances are the market would soon find a set that would minimize the need for downloading. I doubt many people really care about WMP vs. Real, as long as it works. Competition would minimize cost also. (Windows is darn expensive, though you don’t have much of a choice. A Linux box can be much cheaper.) Won’t happen here, though.
This is a thumbnail sketch, but it goes like this: in the trial, Penfield threw the book at them: ordered them broken up into multiple entities. The appeals court overturned several of his findings of law (the equivalent of saying not guilty’ on several counts), but fundamentally allowed the finding of ‘abusive monopolist’ to stand, and turned it over to another judge for new penalties. Then Bush got elected, and the Justice Department settled with a set of ridiculously ineffectual oversight requirements that amounted to a presidential pardon (referred to by some as a “Seattlement”).
There was nothing wrong with the example, but the degree to which real competition is crucial to capitalism is pretty strong.
Exactly, and that’s why the proposed original remedy (breaking them into an OS and apps or an OS, Office and apps company) would have made so much sense and avoided all the ugliness that has transpired since the court’s ruling. Instead, nothing has really changed.
But its free. Windows Media Player is free. Reduced-feature versions of Quicktime and Real Player are also free (it bears repeating: Reduced feature. You do not get as much functionality out of the free versions of Real Player and Quicktime as you do from Media Player.) This is annoyingly like the Netscape issue some years back: Company A is taking Company B to task for…giving away free stuff. Trick is, Company A is also giving away products for free!
I would be quite interested in a update-free secure OS; Which one are you talking about?
Again the issue of free rises up. Anyone can get Linux, free as can possibly be. But still, they pay whatever the OEM cost is (when buying a bundled PC) and get the MS product. If the competition cannot even give away their product to beat their competitor, well, it’s a lost cause.
Is this anecdotal, or are there demonstrable cases showing that a browser could not be run? (or be difficult to run; Need to triple-click it? :))
And I truly mean no offense, but this is a very typical and telling statement. Anti-MS sentiment is now repleat with its own urban legends about functionless code? I don’t doubt that many believe it, but look at it logically: If the code truely did nothing, it would be removable. If application stability suffers from the removal of the code, then the code serves a purpose.
As I addressed above, (some of) the competion gives away its product, and they still ‘cannot compete’. I am firmly in the ‘MS makes a superior desktop product’ camp (though OSX would have some potentional if only Apple ported to x86). Still, the competetion is out there. Their own inability to make a comparable product can hardly be Microsofts fault.
‘Stacks’ are most certainly not useless little widgets; they are method of handling dataflow from memory. One cannot load a ‘stack’ as they would load a program, it is part of the logic of the OS.
Never, eh?
At the user level, perhaps. But when you look at it in terms of ‘percent uptime’, even an hour a week lost to reboots (an absurdly high number I just threw in there), you are still over 99.9 uptime. To the IT Manager, that is generally considered acceptable. I would wager that far more time is lost from workers surfing the web, or engaging in otherwise unproductive behavior, then it is from applying the occassional patch.
Well, a few seconds at Google.com gets you all the pop-up blocking you would ever need, and MS can avoid yet another ‘bundled feature’ lawsuit! I prefer IE on my eMac (as well as PC). I don’t really understand what features you would expect a browser to have, but IE can…display web pages! Not bad for a browser, eh?
As I recall the Netscape issue arose initially when Netscape was charging for their browser. Then MS came in and bundled Explorer with Windows, thus destroying Netscape’s business. You can say Explorer was “free” if you want. In reality it was just something they tacked on that you had to buy along with Windows. Monopoly leverage, just as the other posters have said.
Strawman. Windows is notorious for security holes, viruses, trojans and so on that need frequent updates. LilShieste understood what I was talking about. Linux, Mac, well hell anything else doesn’t need nearly as much attention.
Since most of the software people need to run is only for Windows you do not have much of a choice. That’s sort of what “monopoly” means. In cases where there is a choice (OpenOffice) most people are unaware of its existence. But you knew this.
No, never. User space program installation does not need a reboot on Linux. If you change the kernel or modify the system config you might want to reboot to make sure the system comes back up alright but that’s it.
Totally irrelevant. Sort of like saying “I’m going to shoot this guy because after all cancer kills millions a year and it won’t raise the death rate”. Another poster also mentioned viruses and trojans. That’s another vast sinkhole of wasted time and money we can thank the Redmond monopolists for.
How about Linux and Solaris? Not that they are patch-free, no software that complex is, but they are far more secure. That someone getting into a system who is not me (or root) and being able to delete my files is just stupid. Insecurity in 'nixes almost always came from idiot admins not changing passwords, that is pretty much taken care of these days. No OS, is perfect, but some are more perfect than others.
Never read the Halloween memo then. Did you know that MS has a big slush fund in Europe, used to cut the prices of their systems when up against Linus and Star Office? Can you guess why you can get Office now at a much reduced “student” price? Even a little bit of competition is good for consumers.
I don’t know about this case, but there are documented instances of Microsoft putting code into Windows to break competing applications.
snort Does DLL hell mean anything to you at all? I’ll ask you - can you guess how much money is spent dealing with Microsoft’s security holes?
I’ve patched my Solaris machine without rebooting. I don’t remember ever rebooting it. I’ve had to rlogin sometime to kill runaway apps in an old version of Solaris, but that doesn’t even happen any more. Having to reboot to install a consumer program is just dumb.
1 / 168 > 1/1000 guy. And 99.9% is not acceptable these days. Reboots are not the only uptime killer - app crashes, BSODs, virus stuff, etc. etc. When you reboot a desktop, only one person loses, rebooting a server kills uptime for lots more people.
Perhaps you didn’t notice me saying that I had a pop-up blocker, free. It was not nearly as good as the one built into Mozilla, since I had to turn it off for sites that legitimately opened new windows. The point is that consumers actually want this, and MS felt they didn’t need to provide it. I rather think that is more useful than the incredible amount of bloat going into Office, but I learned to program when memory and efficiency meant something.
I’ve installed XP and a full stack of software from scratch - and the only reboot that was necessary was during the windows update process. Which is comparable to a kernel patch in Linux. Nothing else NEEDED rebooting, even though it tells you so. Virus software, Office, Acrobat, Photoshop, Mozilla, various peripherals, printer - all worked perfectly without a reboot.
Glad that works for you. The fact is that most people, including even me, are VERY reluctant to ignore Windows when it tells you “we really think you should reboot now” from past instances of being burned when we strayed off the beaten path. Linux installers do not even suggest that a reboot is needed. I will grant that XP is quite an improvement over the 95/98/Me series. They are still playing catch-up in a lot of areas though.
To address the OP, a big reason why various developers keep blaming Microsoft for strongarm and/or illegal tactics is because Microsoft does stoop to those levels. Heck, just cdheck out this headline from today’s paper:
I’ve read Barbarians Led by Bill Gates, and found it a little dry, myself. If you want juicy, behind-the-scenes dirt of Microsoft’s assorted shenanagans, the best book on the subject seems to be The Microsoft File: The Secret Case against Bill Gates
And regarding the Microsoft anti-trust case from the late '90s, try U.S. v. Microsoft: The Inside Story of the Landmark Case, which reprints every column covering the case from the New York Times, with additional analysis after-the-fact.
Well, a good nights sleep later and I can see that my post may be read as total and unapologetic defense of MS. It wasn’t intended as such; I am a Windows 2000/Exchange 2000 admin, and believe you me, I am intimately aware of various flaws with MS products. Though I still believe that many overstate those flaws or ignore various flaws in their own favorite OS’s. But that is neither here nor now; Maybe we can start a ‘Best OS’ thread. (I bet that has never been done! :))
Back to the EU decision:
We have a 497 million euro fine. Billy can cut a check for this.
If I understand correctly, Microsoft will now have offer a non-WMP version of Windows to vendors. This one is a bit more interesting, as I would love to see how many vendors actually distribute a non-wmp version of windows. How will they advertise it to their customers?
This is the real news item in the story, IMO. What code, specifically, will they be giving up? I am also curious what oversight is in place to monitor the process. How will the EU be able to determine if MS is giving the needed code, or if the code that is being asked for is truly needed?
I suppose this is much ado about nothing, as the appeals process has begun, and we will likely be old and grey before final decisions are handed down, but point three is the most interesting to me. If MS has to share bits of code, then Linux may (or may not; Who knows?) get the potential to play the latest and greatest games. The only thing that stops a lot of us from running Linux at home is stunted gaming capabilities.
Software is like no previous product. Once produced it lasts forever, never wears out and costs next to nothing to produce more copies and the customers can do that. Also millions of ways to write other software to do the same thing.
Microsoft has the money to buy advertising to keep the consumers brainwashed. How many competitors can do that? The economy has changed since the invention of television. Our concept of monopoly may need to change but the technology of the internet may change things again.
I keep telling people to standardize on LINUX. The city of Munich did. What will that do to the so called Microsoft monopoly.
I am waiting to see what cyber saturation does to the computer industry. What a person can do with a computer is limited by their wetware. 300 MHz is good enough for data processing and 1.5 GHz is probably enough for media processing. When you can get these computers used for less than $300 and slap LINUX on as many as you want, why care about MacroScam.
I just want to add a post to mention that I believe I am going to have to side with the arguments against Microsoft for these anti-trust cases.
The main reason for this, is because it seems I was a little misinformed/naive about the punishment that Mircosoft had received regarding their past anti-trust suit (i.e. I thought a valid action was taken against them, to keep some of their actions “in check”; instead it appears that a fine was the only punishment. I still don’t get how that was supposed to “help” things).
That being said… good God. I sure hope that MS starts getting some of their stuff together, and makes some big changes before the debut of Longhorn (that is-- I hope they don’t screw us Windows-users over by centering an OS around IE and WMP even more. I still shudder at the possibility of this.) I have to say-- usually I am pretty quick to jump to the defense of MS, when accusations start flying (mainly because the accusations I hear are pretty empty, and seem to only come from people with a “blind rage” against MS). But after some of the information provided by Voyager, Inoshiro, et. al, it seems I need to rethink some things.
I appreciate the contributions so far to this thread.
Interesting thread. One common thing I notice in these types of threads is that Microsoft gets pilloried for everything they’ve ever done (or at least in the past 15 years or so), and the software flaws generally focus on win98 and not the latest versions. How many times do you see “the blue screen of death” quoted, which hasn’t shown up since what win98?
I did some searching to back up my own experience that Netscape failed to operate correctly in the presence of MS, but their initial complaints were mainly of broken proimises and monopolistic market leverage:
Why Bob, you’re right! How could I have been so foolish? It’s all always been a fair playing field for inclusion on the world’s most widely used OS, and the better product has simply won out every time. And the fact that the dominant products and the dominant OS are made by one and the same company is cause to raise a cheer for convenience instead of suspicions of monoploy!
Because after all, Microsoft has shown a clear desire all along to keep their OS and their software separate, and never to use their home field advantage to unfairly undermine the competition through technical manipulation, haven’t they?
Thanks for the Computers 101 course, Bob, but my BSCS took care of that, pal. ‘stacks’ in this case referrred to a batch file command that had to be present for less faulty (fault-free? we are talking about MS here) operation of the program, rather than the useful ADTs and memory structures. ‘stacks’ itself in the .bat file did nothing. It was simply scanned when run, and resources were made available or not based on its presence or absence. If you didn’t manage to hack this out for yourself, you had to pay Microsoft to find out why your software wouldn’t run well.
Yes, it’s third party anecdotal, and my Word rumor is just that. But then I admitted as much when I posted.
But that doesn’t actually address your assertion that non-MS browsers were ‘difficult’ to run under recent versions of Windows.
And the unanswered point remains: Why doesn’t a absolutely free OS (Linux), along with its absolutely free partners in crime (Open Office, etc) take over the market from non-free MS operating systems and products? Open Source really can’t reduce costs past free, unless Linus and RMS are going to start cutting checks for home users to switch over, can it? But still, people prefer to pay whatever amount (fairly low amount, when you spread the cost out over the life of the OS/program) for the MS product. Why is that?
It is Microsoft’s product, not yours. It is not open source. MS does not provide a public service; It provides a product in exchange for some money. If you do not like that product, or wish to use another product that is not compatible with Microsoft, then you are obviously free to use alternative operating systems, no? Nobody complains that they cannot use Ford parts on their Chevy cars or Sun server bits on IBM servers; why the difference with software?
You really, really need to read some of the books coming out of the trial. Read what MS did to IBM when IBM got uppity. Just think what would have happened to a PC vendor offering a real Linux release. Fianlly, after the acceptance of Linux, and after the trial has stopped some of the more blatant anti-competitive acts, some companies are offering Linux based desktops. But go to your local computer store, and try to find a Linux box. Good luck.
You also need to read about some of the obligations of a monopoly. It’s more like GM owning 90% of the car market, also opening gas stations, and designing their cars so that gas from other stations cut mileage in half. It is illegal.
