Microsoft should spank em'
 

Seriously, "give secrets to their competition" how stupid is that?
If they can't hang they don't belong in business.
I think Microsoft should start doing what Japan does to the US and start selling them shit that is five years behind & sell everyone else current software and hardware... idiots.

Microsoft hit by huge EU fine

Gates says they're trying to comply and have 300 people working on it. He may be bullshitting them, or not, but I agree he should tell them to pound sand.
I've a feeling they'll never be satisfied, even if he handed them the whole kit and caboodle on a silver platter. :mad:

No one's compelling him to operate in that market. If he doesn't like their laws, why doesn't he take his ball and go home? It *must* continue to be a net positive business decision. Mr Gates is many things, but a poor businessman is not one of them.

I do sympathize with MS's plight insofar as the difficulty of dealing with government entities. That can be unpleasant and painful. But just as I would expect foreign companies to obey our laws while operating in my country, I feel American companies should obey the laws of the countries in which they do business. If a foreign company wants to drive out the technology leaders, that's their misfortune. But you can't expect to take their money but not respect their laws. It's a package deal.

The EU also had Microsoft offer up versions of Windows without Media Player and such integrated software on it so as to give people a choice of which media player they'd want to install...

Now, almost a year or so after that, research has shown that the version without Media Player hardly sold. People like it when the Media Player and browser and such are included, it saves them work in finding software for themselves.

I agree with that, I wouldn't get a windows version without MP and others. Not to say that I use the Media Player a lot (I prefer WinAmp), but I like to have it for times when I do want to use it (I use MP to rip my cds onto the computer).

Same goes for browser. I use Firefox but want IE on my machine as a backup browser, just in case.

Meh. Just because you have software preinstalled on your computer doesn't mean you have to use it.

Unless it's the "Microsoft Genuine Advantage" software...

The computer market is hard to crack sometimes because it's often not the best product that sells best. The percentage of people who have any amount of computer savy is abysmaly low, so whatever people are used to is what they'll buy. For years after Windows 98 Microsoft released dud after OS dud and people bought them because that's all they were familiar with and couldn't be bothered to learn how to use a new and better one. I'm not really trying to defend either side here, just pointing out one persistant and frusterating nuance of that market.

So you feel if Coca Cola wants to sell in Europe they should be compelled to give their "secret recipe" to European competitors because of a rule passed to help the locals push out foreigners? :tinfoil:

Only if Coca-Cola were a platform upon which competitors were expected to build their products. I can't think of any non-monopolistic reasons to not publish the full API for an OPERATING SYSTEM in the first place.

I can.....it's called good business sense. :rolleyes:
Same reasons we have patent and copyright laws.

Most monopolistic acts make good business sense. You just can't do them once you've become a monopoly.

Anyone with an invention is a monoply... it's just silly. S-called envy.

What nonsense. That's only true in the presence of a patent system gone wild...including now widespread abuse of the DMCA.

You favor stealing people's hard work inventions and art?

Only so far as the government allows. Outside of government protection, there's no such thing as patents or copyright at all. If a company is found to have misused its powers, they can be reigned in. Microsoft has been convicted of abusing its monopoly in the US and the EU, and the EU is actually enforcing that conviction.

I favor fair use. That includes at least the ability to reverse engineer interfaces. I also beleive in open engineering standards, and "freedom to tinker".. I resent the use of engineering practice to restrict my use of devices that I own, or to unfairly restrict competition and invention.

I especially think the idea of patenting an algorythm is ludicrous, and have ever since that court decision came down in the 1970's.

As for "stealing art", you'll have to clarify what you mean by that. I admire the work of Lawrence Lessig in this area. I'm in substantial agreement with Cory Doctorow's thoughts about Digital Rights Management too.

MaggieL has cited a problem occurring in a nation where 'experience with innovation' is diminishing - especially among those who make laws.

For example, had Microsoft split Windows from Application Software groups, then Windows would not be manipulated to selfishly serve Applications group. Then Windows would have been more helpful; telling us what various functions did. Currently, too much in Windows is held secret for little reason technical. For example, do you know what each *.DLL does? And yet no 'proprietary secret' exists there. Reasons to hide that information may be due more to avoiding embarrassment.

Once Microsoft did tell us what the various functions inside Windows and DOS do. We are not discussing 'release of code'. We are discussing what each general function (ie *.DLL file) does. The only reason to keep that secret is self serving. Therefore it amazes me how many computer experts don't even know what happens in an OS. What does alg.exe do and why can we not even know what it is doing? Secret. Don't ask or Cheney will have us arrested? That's bull. Again, violating 'rights to tinker' only for self serving reasons.

For example, PING (like in all other OSes) returns a code based upon its actions. Generally a program that encounters no error returns an error code of zero (as Unix was doing 30 years ago). So what are the return codes (errorlevel) returned by PING? You don't need to know? That's a secret? No. That's bullshit to stifle 'tinkering'. Or to hide some glaring 'programmer has a disorganized mind' errors in PING.

Why should Mickey Mouse be protected under copyright for 70 years? Same nonsense. Whereas patents and copyrights should provide the creator with a decade or two of protection, today we keep chaning the laws - increasing the number of decades - protect a dead creator for only self serving reasons. Its also called buying a politician or called corruption.

This need to protect a manufacturer means he has maybe four plus years to profit. Four years later, if he does not have a better product, then cloners should take up that market. That is what happened to IBM in the late 1980s when IBM management was intentionally stifling innovation (because of 'computer illiteracy'). You should know the names of stifled innovation: Microchannel, VGA video, PS/2, Token Ring, OS/2, Taligent and even a need to keep selling 286 based machines. As a result (because we did not protect an anti-innovation IBM), then tinkers and other innovators advanced the computer industry. Too much protection for any manufacturer is bad and yet is too often advocated by those with little 'innovation' experience and a love for decisions based upon political contributions.

One final point. An innovator in GM develops a new suspension. GM refuses to use this patented idea. So the idea should sit stifled for 30 years? Bull. If a company chooses to not use or market that innovation, then its creator should have free access to his innovation. Current laws instead pervert innovation. This example was McPherson Strut suspension described to me by a mechanical engineer back in the late 60s and not seen in America because is was being stifled - not used. McPherson Strut was patented by GM in 1946 and kept out of the world for how long - how many decades? You tell me.

If you know what should and should not be patented, then you first know details of innovation stories such as McPherson Suspension. If you don't appreciate such stories, then you may have a lawyers or MBAs perspective; therefore be part of the problem. Those who want to stifle even tinkering are also another example of the Fatherland Security attitude.

95 at this point. Mickey's corporate.

I agree with a lot of what you are talking about TW. But, existing, current, patents should be respected.
Art & intellectual property should not be stolen within the copyright period.
Those copyrights should not be extended forever, I agree with that also.

The Patent Office is a currently a joke.

Well, that was enlightening.

Do all you computer/software geeks realize that most people that use a PC don't have a clue....nor do they want to. They want to buy a turnkey package even if they have to hire the Geek Squad to come and do it all, although they'd rather not have that additional expense.

For all intents a purposes, Windows works....as a package it works. And if they have a problem they can talk to their friends and neighbors about it because they have Windows too.
It's like driving a 1960 VW Beetle, piece of shit, but it gets people where they want to go....basic transportation.


I'm far from knowledgeable when it comes to PCs but I've tinkered a little, sometimes even successfully. But for the life of me I can't understand why Microsoft should be obliged to tell me how they did it? :confused:

Bitch about Windows and Bill all you want, but he/it is the reason the nation and much of the world is online.

What utter foolishness. Without billg we would have had Apple or Amiga or any of a hundred other possibilites. Gates was a superb opportunist, and did what he did better than anybody. But his key skill was being at the right place at the right time and just before anybody else; to say "nobody else could have done it differently" is balderdash. Gawdawmighty, look at how hard billg and friends mocked and resisted the Internet itself before 1994...when they finally realized if they didn't get on the boat they were going to miss it completely and ran out at the last minute to buy Mosaic?

Apple certainly isn't a paragon of openness of course (and keep a sharp eye on the Palladium stuff they've got in OSX-86) but Amiga certainly was. And *crowds* of people were working on user-friendliness.

Go read that link to Doctorow I posted earlier, too.

I can't say I'm thrilled with the EU in a whole host of ways, and some of the stuff that's come through WIPO lately is totally bogus. But DMCA is anathema in that it makes it illegal for anyone to even *try* to reverse engineer an interface, much less compel technical disclosure.

What if your car worked that way? People still seem to be able to drive...

Interesting to consider:

AOL got its momentum as Q-Link, a community ONLY AVAILABLE ON COMMODORE 64 and 128. In 1988 they added a Mac interface. They didn't have a Windows interface until 1992.

billg failed to mention the Internet AT ALL in his 1995 book about the future of computing, "The Road Ahead". He believed that MSN would be the network of the future.

"Embrace, extend, extinguish."

They're trying. And in many cases they're starting to do it. With the DMCA in place lots of car companies are obfuscating the outout of the control chip so mechanics have to buy an expensive chip reader from them.

'88? '92? '95? there was still sword-fighting and nickers and dragons until '98 or '99. That's when people that weren't interested in computers, or even electronics, except for what it would do for them by just plugging it in, showed interest.
Only after there was a proven package they didn't have to take classes to use and somebody they new personally told them what it could do for them, or the kids/grandchildren said they wanted/needed one.

I know people that never turn the PC on unless they're babysitting the grandkids......and god forbid the rugrats go home without turning it off. :lol:

Which is how long it took billg to realize he couldn't supercede the Internet and decide to embrace it as A Good Thing...and convince folks like you it was his idea all along. Software usable by nontechnical people was far from a new idea...look at Electric Pencil and Wordstar.

Where whould we be if Berners-Lee kept HTTP proprietary? I dunno, but we sure wouldn't be using HTTP. There surely would be something *like* the Web, because there had been similar ideas for at least half a century.

The idea that a perpetual monopoly has to be available to get people to create new products is bogus.

By 1992, *everyone* with a desk job used computers at work. The personal computer was a business device first.

By 1995 the country and globe were crossed by private networks as large as the Internet itself. TV Guide, for example, bought a T1 just to move their issue from the east coast to the west coast. 99.9% of the time, it was unused.

Private online companies like Compuserve, AOL, Prodigy, etc. brought in a few million customers. I will always remember looking at my yearly summary of Amex charges and realizing that Compuserve cost me $600 in 1989. Today that same monthly nut buys me a connection 10 times faster than that TV Guide circuit.

So are you saying that we should ban tinkers because it is good for and right for big industry to do so? Are you saying its good to let big business restrict others so as to do all innovating and enhancements? I don't understand how this applies to MaggieL's posts. MaggieL has defined the point in this thread. How do examples of 'big business suddenly discovering their oversight' agree or contradict what MaggieL has posted?

The simple truth is Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly. This is especially true in Europe....the home of Linux. Microsoft should NEVER comply with that court ruling. In fact Microsoft should tell the court to screw themselves, not pay a penny, and refuse to support their products within that country until they stop making unreasonable demands. Microsoft still has a large enough marketshare among the governments and major businesses in Europe that this would cause a big enough impact that the businesses would pressure the government to stop harassing Microsoft.

I was responding to xoB's post.

Wow.

Is that a big "libertarian thang", urging companies to defy the laws of sovereign governments because they can?! What the fsck? Would you advocate the same behavior of a foreign entity that operated in the United States? This position is 180 degrees from every other political post I've ever seen by you. "Respect other's boundaries" (I paraphrase). Aren't the laws under which companies do business within the boundaries of the governments who write and enforce them?

Because they can, pbtbtbt. That is the weakest, most immature reasoning possible in support for your position.

I don't dispute there was an internet in place or that some people were using software driven stuff. Hell, I took Fortran classes in 1965, and used punch cards to input a mainframe 300 miles away, for machine tool programming.
My point is how many people were using it, especially outside of work? Gates/Windows brought computers & internet to the masses and vice versa.
I'm not prepared to argue whether that was a good thing or not, however. :D
It's every companies duty to fight unfair trade practices that are so common abroad.

It's also a company's right to say "we refuse to cooperate and are leaving the market until the sanctions are lifted". What are they going to do, force them to come back?? If Microsoft can make more money there than it looses then they might decide to give in and cooperate, but if they see it as a dangerous infringment on their corporate welfare then they should just pack up. Where did the idea come in that they have a responsibility to the EU beyond coexistance and profit???:eyebrow:

They were responding to a tangential remark I made.

Who is banning tinkering? Banning and not assisting are different positions.

Windows became ubiquitous because it provided people and businesses with a complete package they could use without doing a mix & match of products from different sources. Most people don't want to tinker, neither do businesses want their people tinkering instead of doing their job.

Once people are comfortable with Windows they can jump from company to company. Employers like to have a large pool of prospective employees they don't have to train on basic PC skills.

There's no reason why anyone can't come up with their own OS and sell it to everyone, but it's not Microsoft's responsibility to help them..:tinfoil:

The laws of the country don't say, "If you do business in our country you must give away your trade secrets to your competitors" and if it did, Microsoft wouldn't do business there in the first place.

Also, the EU isn't a country.

Perhaps. "Duty" is a loaded term these days. Duty in service to what or whom? Duty to their shareholders, a fiduciary duty? Ok, then run the numbers a decide what is the most profitable course of action, and proceed. A duty to ... US industry? to Truth, Justice and the American Way? Duty to what? I think MS is a good corporate citizen, a law abiding citizen. In fact, they're most successful in places where the rule of law is strongest. In the US they're everywhere and we have a strong rule of law. In Asia, they're getting their butts kicked by pirates. In response to this expensive hemmorhaging of business, where do you think they turn? Meaner pirates? They certainly could. They could afford a global army of software mercenaries. They have the wherewithal, the means motive and opportunity to act as they will. But no, they turn instead to the law, the courts. "If it please the court, these people are stealing from me and I want relief". They work within the law. Hell, they work the law. But not in outright defiance of it. The validity of Radar's "solution" expired in about third or fourth grade, in every place that Microsoft does business. Probably still works in the jungle, though.
In what way is this a valid suggestion? Venting, ok. Pointing out an unfair judgement, possibly. A possible course of action, especially for a marquee American company such as Microsoft? Hardly. This isn't libertarian thought--it's Anarchy.

And my point was that he did it only because he beat everybody else in and then locked them out, not out of altruism and not by being better at it than others but by being very sharp at anticompetitve marketing and engineering practices...and breaking contracts he had signed when it suited him.

We would have missed out on exactly nothing if he hadn't been the dog in the manger.

That's correct. Most people don't want to advance mankind. Most people are happy to maintain status quo. Only the 1% advance mankind. Tinkers, doubters, questioners, the few who push out an envelope and therefore advance mankind are not found among myopic workers who use a PC and therefore call themselves 'computer literate'. We are not talking about those in love with a status quo mentality.

Meanwhile, many big businesses don't want tinkering- a nature of businesses that fear 'disruptive innovation'. Such only comes from that 1% - not from the majority who prefer to stay ignorant.

Why is the Prius being modified for AC electric recharge? Not by Toyota. But due to those tinkers and due to a company that does not fear innovation, future Toyota products will be modified for an AC electric recharge option. Why? You and everyone you know did not do that tinkering. But the less than 1% who did therefore caused another innovation.

Meanwhile, Microsoft, whose product once encouraged tinkering and therefore created so many new compatible businesses and new MS markets, now all but discourages tinkering.

Just because you and so many peers don't tinker means nothing in this discussion. Just because some companies don't want tinkers means those companies never belong anywhere in this discussion. Non-tinkerers are a majority that also don't advance mankind. We are not discussing those who fear or who have no useful curiosity. We are discussing those who would learn and therefore make something even better than a current MS product. Those who don't appreciate a need for tinkering and the underlying learning also would be same who never appreciated why innovation, new ideas, new concepts, and new products are the only source mankind's advancement.

IOW don't even mention the majority who are totally irrelevant to this topic and to the advancement of mankind. Even mentioning what the majority do with their computers and what they companies want would only be mentioned to confuse the issue - does not belong anywhere in this thread.

Can you put an MS OS on a different hardware platform to do something MS never intended? Once that 'tinkering' was encouraged and had started to create new MS markets. Now MS fears you might do that. Same reason why MS is having so many problems getting their OS products on other platforms such as cell phones and intelligent machinery. MS simply hides too much of what was once always made freely available by MS - and therefore once contributed to MS's phenomenal growth.

It was a simple and so accurate example. Why are the return codes from PING a trade secret? Those who are only 'computer literate' and therefore would not appreciate the value and need for innovation should not even bother answering. The example of a secret that never need be a secret demonstrates how much MS hides rather than encourage innovators - the tinkerers. MS now has too much of a 'we fear the innovative' attitude which would also explain their stock price AND why MS does not succeed in other new markets.

http://www.paulgilbert.com/Judas_Prius.html

I love Paul Gilbert.

Your "enlightened", politically correct attitude is exactly why and how this country is screwing itself. Keep telling yourself it's not a jungle out there, until you get hit with a poison dart.

Why do you think the EU was formed in the first place, so they could all hold hands and buy the World a coke? No, so they could gather the clout to screw the rest of the World in general and the US in particular.

If you think there's ANY country out there that's concerned with our welfare you're sadly naive. :headshake

Your telling me that we would have a single dominant operating system from someone else?

I doubt it, I think we would have a dozen competing systems that all did the job, but acting differently. Then if I had a problem, or just a question, I'd have to find somebody that was familiar with the OS I was using.

I, and I suspect the rest of the great unwashed, don't want that.
Those of you that understand how all this stuff works can mix and match various programs from here and there. You can be smug in your superior skills and curse Bill Gates for allowing the barbarians access to your cyber world.

But, we're here now and I thank him. :2cents:

It's a tool, the PC/Work Station is a tool, people use, to complete a task, either for pay or there own purposes.

I doubt your employer wants you to spend your day tinkering with it, instead of what he's paying you for. I also doubt, at the end of the week, he'd be happy with you telling him you didn't do that work because you're tinker, doubter, questioner.......patriot.

I'll leave the tinkering to the 1% that understand this stuff, and use the PC to do things that.... Hey look at what's on Boing-Boing! ;)

Well, you still do. But if your problem is with Windows, you'd better hope it's with a part that MSFT has chosen to reveal and is willing to let you continue to use, or you're screwed, and in addition you have no other options.

But I've seen technology convergence (yes, in operating systems too) before and I beleive we would have seen it again. In fact there's a not inconsiderable amount of convergence today amongst non-Windows OSs: OSX, Linuxes, BSDs, AIX, etc. Most of them have package managers today that are *easier* to use than a typical Windows product install not all that long ago. In fact the features you like best about Windows are all copied from such and their predecessors.

Not sure I buy into your claimed to represent the mind of "the great unwashed"...I think most of them will be happy with whatever they find as long as it works for them most of the time. That would be as true with, say, Ubuntu, as it is with the copy of XP that by contract between MSFT and the vendor is already loaded and involuntarily paid for on 99.9% of branded PCs.

But as it is they have no choice...and we'll see how happy they are about that state of affairs when we get to that MSFT nirvana where you get a software bill every month that left unpaid will cause your machine to stop working. Don't kid yourself: the phone-home-or-die infrastructure for that is being (quite visibly) laid as we speak.

In any event...the state you see today is not some magical thing billg did out of kindness for us all to make computing easy, something that no one else could have concieved of or done. That's MSFT spin, PR and propiganda, concieved after the fact.

Which is why I gave the solution that I did... sell them only software and hardware with which you are willing to comply with their demands and let the rest of the world move on.

I don't see MSFT as a problem unless you're using stolen software, which I'm not. But "they" didn't, Gates did, and for that I'm grateful. :D

Or unless you don't want to rent it when MSFT decides that's the only way they're going to offer it. Or happen to make enough changes to your machine that the phone-home system decides you have a new computer and must buy all your software over again.
No, he didn't.

Neither is famous Windows fanboy Paul Thullott...and yet he got burned anyway

Hyperbole. He didn't get burned.

Hold your breath until you turn blue, but he still did it. :p

The pirate detection circuit fingered him, and he was innocent. And even though he's one of the annointed elite (the one you're so starry-eyed that Sir BillG delivered you from) he doen't know how it happened.

He won't be the last.