Good post.
Dave Milne, Scotland
'99 TJ 4.0 Sahara
"Ted Mittelstaedt" <
[email protected]> wrote in message
news:
[email protected]...
:
: "DTJ" <
[email protected]> wrote in message
: news:
[email protected]...
: > On Thu, 03 Jul 2003 12:52:02 GMT, 'nuther Bob
: > <
[email protected]> wrote:
: >
: > >>Here is where I take issue. I used to support MS no matter what. No
: > >>longer. However, the companies that claim MS is unfair are
: > >>complaining because MS is better at producing competitive products.
: > >>There is no monopoly, certainly no illegal one, unless you use your
: > >>clout in the market to reduce competition AND THEN use the reduced
: > >>competition to increase profits. >MS has never done this.
: > >
: > >I'm not talking about those complaints. MS ordered hardware vendors
: > >to sell their OS, and only their OS, on their systems. If you want(ed)
: > >to sell Windows on a PC you had to agree to install only windows.
: > >That was clearly illegal under US law. Also, although not quite as
: >
: > Not quite. Microsoft had agreements that required the vendor to pay
: > for Windows whether they installed it or not. Yes it was found to be
: > illegal. No, it was not clearly so.
: >
:
: I hope you can stand another "no, not exactly"
:
: Those agreements of Microsoft ONLY applied if you were a PC manufacturer
: that was purchasing "OEM" licenses at the cheap rate, of course. If you
: were
: including discounted "retail" licenses you could do what you want.
:
: Considering that the OEM license are about $12-20 and the retail licenses
: (in quantity) are about $50, and the PC manufacturers were tacking on
about
: $100
: extra for the license, I don't really feel that sympathetic to them.
:
: > Let's assume a fair price for Windows to a vendor is $50, and the
: > vendor sells 100 copies a year. They also sell 10 systems with Linux.
: > That comes out to $45.45 per system, or $50 per Windows system. If
: > Microsoft sells it to that vendor under the agreement that it is based
: > on systems sold (regardless of OS) for $40, the vendor wins. That is
: > not unfair or illegal, no matter what the sleeping judge found.
: >
:
: This is true if that is what was happening. But was WAS happening is that
: vendors (like Dell) that had a corporate policy of NEVER selling ANY
: systems with Linux preloaded, they got the Windows copies at the
: $40 price. Vendors like IBM/Compaq/HP that sold a few Linux preloaded
: systems got the Windows copies at $50.
:
: Microsoft was very arbitrary on the costs to the OEM of Windows. It
: was not based on volume or anything like that, it was polically based. It
: was no different than if a Negro-owned business that sold 500 tractors
: a year had to pay $10,000 per tractor, (less shipping) while a White-owned
: business
: that sold 50 tractors per year only had to pay $7,000 per tractor (less
: shipping) for
: the same tractor.
:
: > >crystal clear, is that MS as a vendor of both the application and
: > >OS was keeping things secret about the OS that they were taking
: > >advantage of in their applications - that is also illegal. The
: > >list goes on, those are two major issues.
: >
: > This is so bull**** though. It is impossible to "keep things secret"
: > in Windows. Any programmer with even a few days experience should
: > know how to view the exported functions in a DLL. It is simple to
: > look at what DLLs are being loaded. Since the Windows OS is mainly
: > DLLS, there is no possibility for MS to "hide" functions from anyone.
: >
:
: Once again this is a simplification of the issues.
:
: Yes it is not possible to "hide" functions. The problem is, that
Microsoft
: has
: no responsibility to maintain consistency with functions that are
: undocumented.
:
: So what was happening is that Microsoft Office would make use of an
: undocumented function, and a competitor like WordPerfect would make use of
: the same
: function. Then Microsoft would plan on changing that function in the next
: version of Windows, and they would inform their MS Office development
: team. So that team would stop or change using that function and release a
: new version
: of Office, as well as patches for the old versions of Office that
mitigated
: the
: change in the function.. Wordperfect would not of course be informed of
the
: pending
: change, and so then when the next version of Windows was released,
: the new version of Wordperfect would crash on it, while the new version of
: MS Office
: wouldn't, and most people would have patched their old versions of Office.
: And if people were doing in-place upgrades of Windows, the new version of
: Windows would search their hard drive for the old version of MS Office
: during installation and patch it if it wasn't patched.
:
: > Improvements? It sucks. Ever try to network XP with 98 where one
: > system has NetBeui installed? Can't do it! MS likes to say NetBeui
: > is not supported. So? It didn't magically stop working - until MS
: > MADE XP networking NOT WORK when one system has NetBeui and another
: > does not.
: >
:
: Very little supports NetBIOS Extended User Interface (NetBEUI) these
: days other than Windows and old IBM Lan Manager/OS2. The few
: networking devices like print servers are dropping support for it, and
: why not? NetBEUI isn't routable anyway.
:
: Windows 98SE has TCP/IP in it and supports Automatic IP Number Assignment
: (ie: negotiating IP numbers when a DHCP server is not present) as does
: XP, so this is not a serious problem. While it's facinating to me that
: they dropped support in XP as I didn't know that, I rather see this as an
: improvement. I've seen many corporate networks with unauthorized
: filesharing
: going on from people using NetBEUI that has caused problems for the
: system administrators.
:
: >
: > Interesting point, but Netscape was trying to force their standards on
: > the Internet the same way. Java Script was not invented by Sun, but
: > by Netscape. Ever heard of JSS? Netscape doesn't follow W3C
: > standards any better than MS.
: >
: > Every company tries to get an advantage. There is nothing illegal
: > there. It becomes illegal when you try to prevent your competition
: > from succeeding by designing your product to prevent theirs from
: > working. To my knowledge, that has never been proved.
: >
:
: It also becomes illegal when you design your product to not work
: unless the customer ALSO buys all the REST of his products from
: you.
:
: > >WHen it comes to applications,
: > >I've yet to see any real "improvements" in MS Office, Front Page,
: > >etc, in the last several releases. The only real changes were in
: > >the way the products integrate with each other and the Internet.
: > >That's all part of the MS OD-Application-Internet power grab.
: >
: > Because other companies stopped innovating also, so they have less
: > reason to do so. Also, possibly because there is nothing more Office
: > can do, but ...
: >
:
: Many would say there's nothing more that Windows can do either,
: and question why upgrade at all, when your Win98/Win2K/Office 97/
: Office 2K setups all work fine, and do what the users want to do.
:
: >
: > Wait. Microsoft had a contract that allowed them to add extensions.
: > Many documents from Sun's president proved this - he was upset that
: > Sun agreed to let them.
: >
: > The COURT ruled that MS had to remove Java support. It did not say
: > they had to replace it with Sun's version until it realized the error
: > it made.
: >
:
: Most of this of course is a moot issue since there's no real proof that
Java
: does anything any better than many of the other 4GL scripting languages.
: And worse, since it ties you to the browser (if your developing "thin
: client"
: apps) there's a movement to push all the scripting back onto the server
: (whether it's Java or something else) and only have the browsers
displaying
: pure HTML. Then it doesen't tie your app to specific web browser
versions.
:
: > I do
: > agree that it is an issue, I just don't agree that MS is any worse
: > than Sun, Netscape or AOL.
:
: Then your not in accordance with current US law. The law says that
: monopolies are illegal, and Microsoft is a monopoly by any reasonable
: definition, and also now legally. So legally they are worse than those
: other companies since none of them have been ruled a monopoly.
:
: >
: > >You need to look at the global issues and goals of MS to understand
: > >how these "little" issues add up to the big picture of squashing
: > >the competition through any means, legal or illegal.
: >
: > Agreed, and if it is illegal it must be stopped and punished, WIHTOUT
: > punishing the consumer.
:
: The current legal notion and not just in the US but in most developed
: countries, is that monopolies punish the consumer by their very existence.
: Microsoft did in fact try a rather novel approach to fighting the
anti-trust
: trial by claiming that the plantiffs needed to show that this was true,
and
: moreover that there was evidence that their practices did in fact, harm
: the consumer. However ultimately they did lose the war, because the
: plantiffs basically stated (properly IMHO) that this wasn't the issue.
: Where Microsoft's arguments did in fact matter was during the penalty
: phase of the trial. Since there really wasn't enough evidence that
: Microsoft
: was in fact harming consumers, they escaped without the judge ordering
: the company to be split up.
:
: However, this issue isn't going away, and I predict within another 10
years
: that we are going to see another anti-trust trial get fired up again,
: because
: I don't see strong enough market trends to see Microsoft's claim on the
: North American software market to be reduced to a non-monopoly
: level. Until that happens, Microsoft is going to be vulnerable to another
: anti-trust trial. All it would take is a change in administration in the
: White House and you would see this start up all over again. And the
: next time it does, they won't get away with a mere slap on the wrist,
: because Justice will argue that they've been warned once already, and
: had plenty of time to change their market practices so their competitors
: could gain a healthy market share.
:
: Ted
:
: PS and for those spoilsports that want to know what all this has to do
with
: cars, you might ask yourself why are the automakers allowed to screw over
: the repair shops by not standardizing on a single kind of engine computer
: diagnostic interface? They are adding more and more software to cars
: every year, and many of the same issues (software bloat, etc) are going to
: become increasingly important. If you keep an eye on what is going on
: in PC software, you may get a jump on what could happen to
: engine computer software in the future.
:
: