PayPal self-contradicting WTF
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@DOA said:
@durendal.mk3 said:
Yeah, because god forbid we can't switch from Google to Live Search.@DOA said:
Besides who trusts Mozilla to make an impartial browser? Putting one of their biggest sponsors' search engines in Firefox as default instead of Live Search (which isn't even on the default list of search engines you can switch to) sends only one message: "We'll gladly sacrifice the quality of your online experience just to make a buck". Not that you can't change the default of course, but if that's their general attitude you might as well go elsewhere now and save yourself the agitation later on.
FTFY
I think he was more or less pointing out the stupidity and hypocrisy of your argument. IMO, MSN isn't quite as good as Google but it's still fine enough and by not including MSN in the default search engines for FF Mozilla is engaging in the same practices everyone criticizes MS of. Personally, I don't care because it's their fucking browser and they can do what they want with it, but the same thing applies to MS.
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@durendal.mk3 said:
@DOA said:
Besides who trusts Mozilla to make an impartial browser? Putting one of their biggest sponsors' search engines in Firefox as default instead of Live Search (which isn't even on the default list of search engines you can switch to) sends only one message: "We'll gladly sacrifice the quality of your online experience just to make a buck". Not that you can't change the default of course, but if that's their general attitude you might as well go elsewhere now and save yourself the agitation later on.
FTFY
Not to mention the fact that Firefox defaults to Google for the home page and even if you change it you will still get taken there anytime you upgrade Firefox.
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@bjolling said:
It's also about (ab)using your position in the market to (un)willingly stiffle competition, innovation, choice etc.
"Stifle" competition? What exactly do you think that competition means? Hint: It's not synonymous with "charity".
Innovation? Who defines that? The EU? Let the consumer decide what's innovative.
Choice? Overrated. Only the fringe freetards want it, and for them, there is always the option to install something else. Oh boo hoo you can't uninstall the other thing, who cares, is it eating up space on your hard disk? I'm against any law that panders to some tiny vocal minority. It runs completely counter to the fundamental principles of democracy and free market.
You guys really need some new material. Seriously, this garbage is over 10 years old.
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@morbiuswilters said:
IMO, MSN isn't quite as good as Google but it's still fine enough and by not including MSN in the default search engines for FF Mozilla is engaging in the same practices everyone criticizes MS of.
What I don't understand is why Google seems to be immune to such criticism. Google gets a startling amount of praise for a deep-pocketed company that gobbles up little companies frequently, hordes every scrap of data they can find, and earns revenue primarily from ads. Is it really as simple to sway people as having a motto like "do no evil"?
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@Aaron said:
"Stifle" competition? What exactly do you think that competition means? Hint: It's not synonymous with "charity".
Agreed. The only actual "unfair" practices MS has engaged in is the patenting of all kinds of things that shouldn't be patentable. This is hardly isolated to MS, though, and is simply a result of the mediocre patent system. Otherwise, everything they've done seems in line with normal competitive practices. What most people seem to forget is that MS is one of the better behaved software companies. Compared to the likes of Sun, Apple, Oracle, DEC, etc.. MS has generally been far less active in locking out competitors and locking in customers.
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@Aaron said:
I'm against any law that panders to some tiny vocal minority.
I'm just against minorities.
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@bstorer said:
@Aaron said:
I'm against any law that panders to some tiny vocal minority.
I'm just against minorities.I'm against any law that panders to majorities, really. Democracy is one of the many mechanisms for securing the blessings of liberty and it's not always the best one. The United States was not founded on the concept of "tyranny of the majority".
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@morbiuswilters said:
I'm against any law that panders to majorities, really. Democracy is one of the many mechanisms for securing the blessings of liberty and it's not always the best one. The United States was not founded on the concept of "tyranny of the majority".
I don't think that not pandering to minorities necessarily means that you are pandering to majorities. Laws shouldn't pander to anyone, period, but I personally find it more distasteful when there's a blatant Robin Hood mentality at work.
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@Aaron said:
@morbiuswilters said:
I'm against any law that panders to majorities, really. Democracy is one of the many mechanisms for securing the blessings of liberty and it's not always the best one. The United States was not founded on the concept of "tyranny of the majority".
I don't think that not pandering to minorities necessarily means that you are pandering to majorities. Laws shouldn't pander to anyone, period, but I personally find it more distasteful when there's a blatant Robin Hood mentality at work.
Agreed. I wasn't saying you supported pandering to majorities, just pointing out (mostly for the benefit of others) that it can be just as much a threat to freedom, peace and prosperity as rule by an elite few.
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@DaveK said:
Wow. Can we get a "utterly missing the point" award over here anyway? Your silly semantic quibble alters nothing. The DLL absolutely IS IE, not the 1-line executable wrapper around it. By your definition of "is", rundll 32 is every single control panel applet, because it's the actual exe that invokes the .cpl (= dll in disguise) files, no?
IE is the COM object that renders HTML content in a container. That is what the DLL implements. Therefore IE is the DLL, not the trivial wrapper.
That's the dumbest crap I've ever heard. Trident is not Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer is the chrome around Trident, not the other way around. It's the same for Safari - Safari is the chrome around WebKit. Unless you're claiming that the WebKit library is Safari, not the application you run? And that Gecko is Firefox, not the application you run?
There is a lot of code in that "one line executable" (here's a tip, it's a lot) that makes IE what it is. Trident merely provides the HTML rendering to Internet Explorer. It doesn't even fetch the pages from the internet (WinInet does that)!
IE is the application. Trident is "the DLL".
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@morbiuswilters said:
I think he was more or less pointing out the stupidity and hypocrisy of your argument. IMO, MSN isn't quite as good as Google but it's still fine enough and by not including MSN in the default search engines for FF Mozilla is engaging in the same practices everyone criticizes MS of.
At least they had the foresight to partner with the service that would be best for their end users as opposed to say building an inferior one from scratch and peddling it as the default. And "fine enough" isn't gonna cut it. Which is why everyone, you included, use Google.@morbiuswilters said:Not to mention the fact that Firefox defaults to Google for the home page and even if you change it you will still get taken there anytime you upgrade Firefox.
Really? I don't remember that... probably because I was going to use Google anyway.
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@DOA said:
At least they had the foresight to partner with the service that would be best for their end users as opposed to say building an inferior one from scratch and peddling it as the default. And "fine enough" isn't gonna cut it.
So you completely ignore your own hypocrisy and just spout more pro-Google bullshit. Oh, and MSN search is older than Google, dumbass.
@DOA said:
Which is why everyone, you included, use Google.
Plenty of people use MSN or Yahoo. The quality of Google's results has declined significantly in recent years and I can say from experience that there have been times I've tried MSN and it returned better results. I mostly use Google simply out of habit and because it is "good enough".
@DOA said:
Really? I don't remember that... probably because I was going to use Google anyway.
WTF. Are you one of those suckers who bought GOOG at $700 and are now trying to talk the stock price up? I've got nothing against Google, but it only has a few useful products that are hardly superb.
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@Monomelodies said:
The main difference of course being that it's much easier to buy a non-Ford car if you don't like them.
I really shouldn't touch this thread, but... That's what I thought. I bought a Ford back in 1996, and while it handled well enough, considering, and could go fast enough, considering, and seemed durable enough, considering, I decided that I really would prefer a Volvo for my next car.
Fast forward a decade, and by the time I had enough money to buy my next car, Ford fricking bought Volvo.
So I ended up having to get another Ford... although it does at least claim to be a Volvo, rather than a Ford. I think we all know the truth, however.
(I do admit, it handles far better than my old Ford, it accelerates much quicker (when pushed), and seems far more durable. That having been said, my coworker was able to dust it with his old turbo-brick, despite the age difference1. On the other hand, I get far better gas mileage than my coworker.)
1 Of course, this was anticipated, as I was well aware of his fondness for dusting new cars with his decade old, two ton family car.
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@blakeyrat said:
Fine; but then you're arguing that Microsoft should keep IE. Removing the DLL would break a high percentage of applications on Windows, as removing WebKit would break the same percentage of applications on Macintosh. An HTML renderer is required by the OS. (Your argument might be different if there were a drop-in replacement to the DLL that could be used on Windows; there isn't.)
You're right about that - the Wine project has had to deal with these types of issues. But there IS a drop in replacement for the DLL windows uses (well sort of): http://www.iol.ie/~locka/mozilla/control.htm. Also http://wiki.winehq.org/Gecko. This has been used (with some success) by the Wine project for running real applications. In theory, anyway, you could swap Gecko into Internet Explorer. You can already put Trident into Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1429.
I can see both sides of the force Microsoft to include Firefox / don't force debate. On the one hand, I can't see the harm in including Firefox. On the other, where does it stop? Do you make Microsoft include every other current browser too (how about Konquerer, or even Lynx)? Also, what if Microsoft said that because of the revenue loss from reduced traffic to MSN that every copy of Windows is now $10 more? Probably ridiculous, but they could be justified in doing so.
I don't know what the answer is - I don't like Microsoft using their monopoly to promote IE, but I also very much don't like the ramifications of forcing a company (even Microsoft) to do something against their will. My inclination is free market: leave Microsoft be and have Firefox prove itself, either through promotion or technical superiority.
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@shadowman said:
@Monomelodies said:
No you can't, at least not if you use Windows. One cannot uninstall IE (well, okay, you can with a lot of trouble and if you don't mind some things breaking). It's still there, lurking in the background, being vulnerable to attacks.
Not if you aren't using it and have another default browser it isn't.
That's what most people think, and generally, it works like that. There are, however, a few things which ignore the default and open IE anyway. Not all of these are Microsoft's direct fault. Or, at least, there were; my home PC's a Mac and two Linux boxes, and my work PC must conform to the corporate standard. (i.e. I'm not enough of a Windows geek to figure out how to free it from said standard, and I prefer retaining that ignorance.)
@shadowman said:
But are you really naive enough to think Firefox does not have vulnerabilities? Firefox seems to have the same process of discovering-exploits-and-pushing-out-a-patch-as-needed that MS does for their browser.
Some are that naive. Some feel that Firefox is more likely to update in a timely fashion. Still others simply prefer a choice of vulnerabilities.
From a legal standpoint, however, none of that matters. What matters is that Microsoft didn't enter the browser market until there was an established browser market sector, and then Microsoft leveraged their OS monopoly to all but eliminate that market, including the use of backroom deals which were neither public nor truly voluntary for the other parties involved.
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@DOA said:
I don't understand why people bash IE, when in fact it's an invaluable tool. I mean how else would you download Firefox? :)
Command line:
a) netcat
b) wget
c) curl
d) ftp
Linux:
a) Order an Ubuntu CD via shipit and use it to install both Windows Firefox and Ubuntu.
b) Download Ubuntu ISO using IE and use it to install both Windows Firefox and Ubuntu.
c) Download any Linux distro that includes Firefox and install it
Getting a new PC:
a) Order Linux PC from Dell, etc. with Firefox pre-installed
b) Get a Mac and then use Safari to download Firefox
Misc.:
a) Get binary from another PC, copy using flash drive, CD-R
b) IP over avian carrier
c) Print source code from other PC which has firefox, scan it in, compile it
d) Print hex dump from other PC with firefox, scan it, unhex.
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@tgape said:
From a legal standpoint, however, none of that matters. What matters is that Microsoft didn't enter the browser market until there was an established browser market sector, and then Microsoft leveraged their OS monopoly to all but eliminate that market, including the use of backroom deals which were neither public nor truly voluntary for the other parties involved.
You're absolutely correct. Companies should never be permitted to enter an existing market to "compete". I also seem to remember something about Steve Ballmer breaking the kneecaps of OEMs that didn't bundle IE. That's clearly coercion and the government is completely within its right to force arbitrary business decisions on Microsoft using the threat of violence.
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@morbiuswilters said:
@DOA said:
You call it pro-Google bullshit, the world calls it a fact. And I never said Microsoft built their search engine after Googgle, dumbass.At least they had the foresight to partner with the service that would be best for their end users as opposed to say building an inferior one from scratch and peddling it as the default. And "fine enough" isn't gonna cut it.
So you completely ignore your own hypocrisy and just spout more pro-Google bullshit. Oh, and MSN search is older than Google, dumbass.@morbiuswilters said:
@DOA said:
Edge cases don't prove anything. The vast majority still uses Google. You included. And you call me a hypocrite.Which is why everyone, you included, use Google.
Plenty of people use MSN or Yahoo. The quality of Google's results has declined significantly in recent years and I can say from experience that there have been times I've tried MSN and it returned better results. I mostly use Google simply out of habit and because it is "good enough".@morbiuswilters said:
@DOA said:
...what? Did your paranoia medication run out? Yes... I peddle Google at the TDWTF forum to drive up the stock prices.Really? I don't remember that... probably because I was going to use Google anyway.
WTF. Are you one of those suckers who bought GOOG at $700 and are now trying to talk the stock price up? I've got nothing against Google, but it only has a few useful products that are hardly superb.
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@morbiuswilters said:
(edited the quote a bit to provide more context - replying to both of the posters above)@Aaron said:
"Stifle" competition? What exactly do you think that competition means? Hint: It's not synonymous with "charity".
Innovation? Who defines that? The EU? Let the consumer decide what's innovative.
Choice? Overrated. Only the fringe freetards want it, and for them, there is always the option to install something else. Oh boo hoo you can't uninstall the other thing, who cares, is it eating up space on your hard disk? I'm against any law that panders to some tiny vocal minority. It runs completely counter to the fundamental principles of democracy and free market.
You guys really need some new material. Seriously, this garbage is over 10 years old.Agreed. The only actual "unfair" practices MS has engaged in is the patenting of all kinds of things that shouldn't be patentable. This is hardly isolated to MS, though, and is simply a result of the mediocre patent system. Otherwise, everything they've done seems in line with normal competitive practices. What most people seem to forget is that MS is one of the better behaved software companies. Compared to the likes of Sun, Apple, Oracle, DEC, etc.. MS has generally been far less active in locking out competitors and locking in customers.
How can the consumer decide what's innovation if he only sees one product? Microsoft considered IE6 to be the final version until Firefox became popular.
I've seen many car analogies on this thread so I'll re-use that one. Competition means that there is plenty of choice for consumers (Ford, GM, Toyota, Honda, Peugeot, Volkswagen,...).Car companies compete with each other for access to the limited number of people that would buy their product. This provides incentives to make product cheaper and better. When there is no competition (oil companies for example grouped in OPEC) the companies decide quality and price and there is NOTHING anyone can do about it except pay too much for mediocre stuff or STFU and GTFO. The EU tries to avoid the latter.
Please don't make me dig up my economics 101 books.
Morbs is right when saying MS is behaving not so badly compared to other companies. The point is that MS pro-actively has to think about how their actions affect to market in which they are overly dominant, because of their dominace. The 800 pound gorilla has to tread careful in a room full of mice.
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@Aaron said:
You guys really need some new material. Seriously, this garbage is over 10 years old.
This is besides the point. The Theory of Evolution is 150 years old today and there is still no reason to discard it.
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@bjolling said:
@Aaron said:
You guys really need some new material. Seriously, this garbage is over 10 years old.
This is besides the point. The Theory of Evolution is 150 years old today and there is still no reason to discard it.Weak. Evolution has changed fairly significantly since Darwin's original theory. What's more, it is backed by fact, not appeals to emotion.
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@tgape said:
From a legal standpoint, however, none of that matters. What matters is that Microsoft didn't enter the browser market until there was an established browser market sector, and then Microsoft leveraged their OS monopoly to all but eliminate that market
Actually, a large reason the competition (Netscape IIRC) was eliminated was because it was crap.
However much one may not like Microsoft, the fact remains that in a few areas their software was better (either technically, usability, or whatever) than the competition they 'eliminated by leveraging their OS' - Netscape, Novell, Lotus Notes and so on. If Microsoft hadn't eliminated the competition, someone else would have done.
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@DOA said:
everyone, you included, use Google.
Do you have some kind of proof that "everyone switched their IE7 search engine to Google?"Seriously, get your head out of your ass. Google may be your favorite, but it is not everyone's.
I can't believe that anyone would be stupid enough to believe this shit, but then again, you're DOA.
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@DOA said:
Edge cases don't prove anything. The vast majority still uses Google. You included. And you call me a hypocrite.
Why would a company with its own search engine business make a competing company's search engine the default when it is actively trying to grow its search engine business? Because the "vast majority" (last report puts google use at around 61%) uses the competitor? So now when a company gains > 50.00% of the market everybody else in the market should pull out and let their competitor get all of it? Your business sense is TRWTF here.
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@bjolling said:
How can the consumer decide what's innovation if he only sees one product? Microsoft considered IE6 to be the final version until Firefox became popular.
How is your point made at all by referencing a dominant product which had grown complacent until something else came along with new innovations? This is the very definition of competition.@bjolling said:
I've seen many car analogies on this thread so I'll re-use that one. Competition means that there is plenty of choice for consumers (Ford, GM, Toyota, Honda, Peugeot, Volkswagen,...).Car companies compete with each other for access to the limited number of people that would buy their product. This provides incentives to make product cheaper and better. When there is no competition (oil companies for example grouped in OPEC) the companies decide quality and price and there is NOTHING anyone can do about it except pay too much for mediocre stuff or STFU and GTFO. The EU tries to avoid the latter.
Or bring out a superior alternative,such as Mozilla did with Firefox. Is it hard to compete starting from nothing and taking on a giant? Absolutely, which is as it should be.@bjolling said:
Please don't make me dig up my economics 101 books.
If Econ 101 books were anything more than vague generalizations of how real markets work, they'd be Econ 601 books.@bjolling said:
The point is that MS pro-actively has to think about how their actions affect to market in which they are overly dominant, because of their dominace. The 800 pound gorilla has to tread careful in a room full of mice.
Only if the gorilla cares about the mice, which he has no reason to do. They pose him no threat, let them scurry around. Some may be crushed, but others may find crumbs under the sofa where the gorilla can't reach. What the EU wants to do is to interfere in this process and punish the gorilla for having the audacity to be bigger.
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@belgariontheking said:
@DOA said:
I never said that. Learn to read.everyone, you included, use Google.
Do you have some kind of proof that "everyone switched their IE7 search engine to Google?"@belgariontheking said:
Seriously, get your head out of your ass. Google may be your favorite, but it is not everyone's.I can't believe that anyone would be stupid enough to believe this shit, but then again, you're DOA.
Quit being an idiot or I'll tell your mom what you do alone in the basement at night.
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@DOA said:
@belgariontheking said:
No, I read it perfectly fine. You should learn how to write what you mean and not just pound the keys and hit enter.@DOA said:
I never said that. Learn to read.everyone, you included, use Google.
Do you have some kind of proof that "everyone switched their IE7 search engine to Google?"
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@TheTXI said:
Why would a company with its own search engine business make a competing company's search engine the default when it is actively trying to grow its search engine business? Because the "vast majority" (last report puts google use at around 61%) uses the competitor? So now when a company gains > 50.00% of the market everybody else in the market should pull out and let their competitor get all of it? Your business sense is TRWTF here.
Business sense applies to companies, not end users. I never said it was a WTF that they went with their own engine in IE7 or that they should be forced to use Google. I said that their choice is not in my best interest as a user.Should Microsoft care about what's best for me? They don't have to. And I don't have to use their product.
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@belgariontheking said:
@DOA said:
Quote please?@belgariontheking said:
No, I read it perfectly fine. You should learn how to write what you mean and not just pound the keys and hit enter.@DOA said:
I never said that. Learn to read.everyone, you included, use Google.
Do you have some kind of proof that "everyone switched their IE7 search engine to Google?"
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@bstorer said:
Or bring out a superior alternative,such as Mozilla did with Firefox. Is it hard to compete starting from nothing and taking on a giant? Absolutely, which is as it should be.
Win. The real problem is that nobody has the balls to *really* compete with Microsoft. Nobody's even trying to replicate all the features of Office, or of Exchange, or of Active Directory, which is 90% of what gives Microsoft the monopoly in businesses.
The best competition Exchange/Outlook has is Domino/Notes. And while Domino is certainly passable back-end software, Notes is so full of monumental suck it negates any advantages it has, and IBM's made zero effort to get Domino/Notes support on devices like the iPhone or Blackberry where Microsoft rules surpreme.
The best competition Office has is either OpenOffice or WordPerfect Office, and both of those suck. They're still trying to catch-up to Office 97's featureset while completely ignoring all the more fringe Office apps (Project, Visio, Sharepoint), and falling way behind in the UI arena where MS Office has been really innovating lately. And nothing they have can touch Access. (Although Access has good competitors, like Filemaker, which isn't a part of an office suite.) Oh and Apple's suite, which only runs on OS X, has no chance at all.
I don't know anything that even comes remotely close to Active Directory. Netware is vaguely, slightly, kind of the same thing, but they're basically dead in the market at this point. And all the open source equivalents are feature-bare. (Mostly because open source people hate the Registry so adamantly they refuse to replicate it, even though it's necessary for most of the features enterprises buy AD for!)
Anyway, I'd love to see somebody *really* compete with Microsoft. It seems that everybody's just given up on it.
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@blakeyrat said:
The real problem is that nobody has the balls to *really* compete with Microsoft. Nobody's even trying to replicate all the features of Office, or of Exchange, or of Active Directory, which is 90% of what gives Microsoft the monopoly in businesses.
Nobody wants to compete with Microsoft because trying to compete against someone with such a huge market share more often than not will lead to failure. Your product has to be much better (or equal and much cheaper) to make a foothold, and most microsoft competitor products just don't measure up (office suites, active directory, etc.)
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@bstorer said:
@bjolling said:
The point is that MS pro-actively has to think about how their actions affect to market in which they are overly dominant, because of their dominace. The 800 pound gorilla has to tread careful in a room full of mice.
Only if the gorilla cares about the mice, which he has no reason to do. They pose him no threat, let them scurry around. Some may be crushed, but others may find crumbs under the sofa where the gorilla can't reach. What the EU wants to do is to interfere in this process and punish the gorilla for having the audacity to be bigger.That pretty much sums up the entire argument. Way to take all of the stupid analogies (started by me, I know) and make sense of them.
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@blakeyrat said:
OpenOffice [...] suck[s]
[Citation Needed]
Seriously, I don't understand most of the hate OpenOffice receives; while I don't spend all day every day using office software, I do use it quite a bit, and OpenOffice has more than fit my needs, at home and at work. It supports reading from (and writing to) Office formats, and I've never needed to use a feature that hasn't been available in OO. It also supports automation, and in some ways offers a superior API to Office's interop. Plus, the interface feels a lot cleaner than the Office 2007 ribbon (which I hate, as it is harder for me to visually parse than the old format).
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Admittedly I'm not 100% up on the most current version of OpenOffice, but as of 2.0 it still had no Normal View (a feature that was in Office 97), the Outline mode really, really sucked, and the Word Count feature didn't work correctly on any language other than English. The Word Count feature I can look past, but I need Normal View and a decent Outline mode. I don't do a lot of presentations, but I've heard nothing but griping about OpenOffice's presentation program.
Look at it this way, if OpenOffice were as good as Office, or even good enough for most companies, then why isn't it as popular? Despite being *free*?
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@blakeyrat said:
Tivoli Access Manager? They have an OS security solution somewhere; I have only used the "e-business" (WebSEAL) part of that suite. It had most of the AD stuff, with the advantage that it works with most LDAP servers out there. AD's advantage is how well integrated AD is with the Windows security model; then again, I might get the same level of security under Solaris.I don't know anything that even comes remotely close to Active Directory. Netware is vaguely, slightly, kind of the same thing, but they're basically dead in the market at this point. And all the open source equivalents are feature-bare. (Mostly because open source people hate the Registry so adamantly they refuse to replicate it, even though it's necessary for most of the features enterprises buy AD for!)
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@morbiuswilters said:
I find it truly ironic that Apple bashes MS with those "I'm a Mac / I'm a PC" ads, when Apple is far more draconian regarding user liberties. OSX is restricted to Apple Mac hardware only, despite "Macs" being nothing more than overpriced PCs with an apple logo.What most people seem to forget is that MS is one of the better behaved software companies. Compared to the likes of Sun, Apple, Oracle, DEC, etc.. MS has generally been far less active in locking out competitors and locking in customers.
If it were Apple the one with the monopolistic share in the OS market, they would get slammed harder than MS; their OSX restriction would be slammed down, just like IBM had it with its mainframe software.
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@TheTXI said:
Nobody wants to compete with Microsoft...
lolwut? I better call Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman,
Steve JobsSaint Peter, Eric Schmidt, Jerry Yang, Sam Palmisano, etc.. and tell them that they don't really want to compete with Microsoft.@TheTXI said:
...trying to compete against someone with such a huge market share more often than not will lead to failure.
Trying to do almost anything in the business world will more often than not lead to failure. The two real questions you should be asking are: 1) is the failure due to practical reasons such as cost, quality, expense of migration, etc.. and 2) is government interference likely to result in a better outcome? People stick with Microsoft for a variety of reasons, but even then there are limits to what people will accept. There are several companies which are currently kicking Microsoft's ass (or giving them a run for their money) in a variety of markets. Sure, Microsoft can abuse its customers, but ultimately those customers will not stick around if there are better alternatives. Better alternatives take time to come about, but they eventually will. There are plenty of people with capital who would gladly back a new product if that product could overtake Windows. However, there simply has not been a product as of yet that can do that.
The monopoly argument is so tired, especially in this day and age. Apple and Linux are the main competitors in the OS market and have more ground now than ever. Microsoft was not broken up and none of the actions of the antitrust ruling have assisted Apple or Linux in expanding market share. Hell, a browser made by a bunch of FOSStards that has to be downloaded and installed has managed to significantly affect MS's share of the browser market, without needing the EU to force "bundling" of it. We are in a time of unparalleled success in challenging Microsoft's dominance and this has been entirely due to market effects and not the actions of governments. To believe that further "assistance" from governments is needed to spur competition wantonly ignores reality.
What's more, it has been over a decade since governments started meddling with the software market and they still haven't been able to pull their heads out of their asses long enough to come up with a comprehensive "strategy" to improve competition. By the time any governments do come up with a "solution", it will be long overdue (if you assume it was due at all) and out-of-touch with reality. At that point it simply becomes another burdensome bit of bureaucracy that skews the market and harms competition. Do we really want Apple, Linux or Firefox becoming the next "monopoly", and not only that, but a government-mandated monopoly? This leads down the path of having all decisions about market competition made by politicians instead of producers and consumers. And that is the grim spectacle of a centrally-managed economy. It has never worked in the past and it never will. At best you end up with economic activity that is hilariously out-of-touch with the reality of consumer needs (e.g. toilet paper shortages or the shitty cars the former Soviet Bloc countries used to manufacture). At worst you end up with mass-starvation, war, pestilence and genocide.
You'll note that I haven't even touched on the ethical implications of using violence to coerce people into following the whims of one group. That's because Liberty succeeds enough on a practical level that appeals to morality should be unnecessary to support the continued defense of free peoples.
The only real monopoly is government. Microsoft is not going to throw you in prison or torture your family for not buying Windows, even its executives held such gruesome plans. Only a government is capable of doing that.
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@bstorer said:
@bjolling said:
Of course I was vague - I didn't dig up my books. But yesterday I talked to my wife who does have a masters in Economics and she didn't always agree with me.Please don't make me dig up my economics 101 books.
If Econ 101 books were anything more than vague generalizations of how real markets work, they'd be Econ 601 books.@bstorer said:
Is it hard to compete starting from nothing and taking on a giant? Absolutely, which is as it should be.
It is not about making it less hard to compete against Microsoft. The EU wants to give a more breathing space to other companies to allow them enter the market for the sake of the consumers, not just for punishing the biggest company for being succesful or for giving an artificial edge to companies who can't be successful on their own.@bjolling said:
The point is that MS pro-actively has to think about how their actions affect to market in which they are overly dominant, because of their dominace. The 800 pound gorilla has to tread careful in a room full of mice.
Only if the gorilla cares about the mice, which he has no reason to do. They pose him no threat, let them scurry around. Some may be crushed, but others may find crumbs under the sofa where the gorilla can't reach. What the EU wants to do is to interfere in this process and punish the gorilla for having the audacity to be bigger.
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@bjolling said:
Competition means that there is plenty of choice for consumers
Actually, competition doesn't mean anything of the sort. Competition means that businesses have the right to price and sell their products on an open market. "Consumers" may not be involved in this process at all. For example, a business might want to outsource and so they send out an RFP; other companies send in their bids and one of them gets picked based on their reputation, quality of proposal, price, etc. This is competition, but there is not really any "consumer" in here in the sense that you are using the word.
In fact, if you talk to a good CEO you might find that there are actually very good reasons for a strong and well-funded company to buy little startups or one-offs, aside from merely eliminating the competition. Sometimes there's some dinky little outfit making a product that seems to be a perfect fit and you really really want to use it in your business, but you're worried about their long-term financial stability. This comes up all the time in business and I'll bet it's come up at least once in yours - it's why businesses buy these big bulky inferior products from IBM and Oracle instead of objectively much better ones from JoeThePlumberSoft. So you're faced with a choice: be safe and buy something pretty crappy that you know you'll have support for, or buy something good that might vanish into thin air.
Well, if you've got the $$$, there's another option: buy the entire company, or the intellectual property rights to their product. Keep the talented employees and their kick-ass project, and pour in the resources to make it even better than it was. Almost everybody wins here. Your company is still safe. Their company is much safer. And suddenly there's a new contender in the ring which used to be full of losers (like, oh, say, Lotus? Novell?).
History is rife with examples of big corporations getting taken down this way. Small, agile company develops niche or even in-house product that's not really meant to compete and might not even be meant for public consumption, but does have some really cool features; big company or venture capitalist takes an interest and gives them virtually unlimited funding; originally small company is either well-managed and explodes with business, taking the big boys to the cleaners, or it is poorly-managed, burns through all its cash and dies horribly, and some other rinky-dink shop rises from the ashes to take its place.
It's the wonders of a free market - most people lose, but anybody can win with talent, hard work, and a little bit of luck. That is what competition is. And if you don't believe me, go right ahead and check your Econ 101 textbook.
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@Aaron said:
It's the wonders of a free market - most people lose, but anybody can win with talent, hard work, and a little bit of luck. That is what competition is. And if you don't believe me, go right ahead and check your Econ 101 textbook.
And just to clarify: the people who lose are competitors that simply cannot make it. Ultimately, the free market tends to work towards the most efficient allocation of resources. Shit, even Lenin realized this and during the early days of the Soviet Union markets were set up for rare materials because the efficiency of markets is most dramatic in shortages.
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@Monomelodies said:
They manufacture both the platform as well as the software, so they need to tread carefully.
Let me tell you the history of IE, because I was rather close to it.
Microsoft needed to add this internet thing to their O/S, and fast. The network part was easy, but HTML parsing was hard. So they bought a company called Spyglass. (My company was using this as the foundation for a major product, hence my closeness to the process.)
Using the technology in Spyglass, and the model championed by UNIX systems - make networking an inherent part of the O/S that is easy for anyone to use - they built an ActiveX control that you could drag into a VB form and boom, browse the web. And that was awesome.
So how do you showcase this awesome thing to people? Simple. You throw some chrome around it to demonstrate the featureset, and you put it in front of the user. And that was IE.
From the people at Microsoft who actually spoke to me about it, I gathered that their expectation was for people like me and you to build the real-world applications that end users intentionally started so they could use the internet. But it was a chicken and egg problem; here was this platform capability that was really great, but they needed an app. A free app. Something simple, basic, and easy that could be bundled with the O/S for the explicit purpose of a new Windows user having something that worked immediately, instead of needing to find and install something else first.
And with much irony, the developers of commercial browsers raised a massive stink about how Microsoft had written a crappy browser to try and compete with them. Well, yes, it was crappy. It wasn't intended to be a real browser for real people. It was mostly a "hey, cool" application you could use to bootstrap your way into a "real" browser. It was a service to everyone. Your customers would have a way to get onto your website and download your browser. Why would they download a browser that cost $30 when they had a free one? Well... because the free one is very, very limited.
But the public demanded that if Microsoft were going to release a browser, it should be good. So they made it good. After all, once your potential partners have called you enough names, you don't care about their success anymore.
It's only in the past couple years that Firefox and Opera have been able to erode IE's market share, you know. Microsoft took a no-name company and wrote a crap UI, and the rest of the industry took over a decade to catch up. It's not that people are stupid. It's that the competition is phoning it in.
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@CDarklock said:
Let me tell you the history of IE, because I was rather close to it.
Interesting. That's how I always sort of imagined it panning out. This story is so common in business - you throw together some little one-off project more as a demo or prototype than anything else, thinking maybe two people will even care enough to look at it, and it turns out to be huge; people are not only using but using it in ways that you never in a million years would have foreseen, and of course, they're wondering why you put so little effort into it. So you respond to the demand with a few marginal improvements to keep them happy, and soon people who you didn't even realize were your competitors are screaming bloody murder because your slightly-less-sucky-than-the-original version is actually sorta better than the one those incompetents spent two years developing.
When you're a small company, this is called "scope creep". When you're big, it's called "anti-trust".
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@Aaron said:
the one those incompetents spent two years developing
Hey, if it weren't for those incompetents, Alex wouldn't have this site. Then what would we do when we were supposed to be working? ;)
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@morbiuswilters said:
@Aaron said:
Well, I'm not going to dig up those books because I promised bstorer to stop being vague about economic theories. Besides I recognize the mechanisms and examples you have described and I know that that is the way it more or less works.It's the wonders of a free market - most people lose, but anybody can win with talent, hard work, and a little bit of luck. That is what competition is. And if you don't believe me, go right ahead and check your Econ 101 textbook.
And just to clarify: the people who lose are competitors that simply cannot make it. Ultimately, the free market tends to work towards the most efficient allocation of resources. Shit, even Lenin realized this and during the early days of the Soviet Union markets were set up for rare materials because the efficiency of markets is most dramatic in shortages.
I think it all comes down on how we feel about the government stepping in to regulate the free market. Is it the EU's business to interfere with Microsoft's strategies because they think it will be better for the market? Is it the goverment's business to bail out a failed bank (save jobs and stabilize market) or should it let them crash and burn to make room for the banks that have been more carefully managed?
IMHO, democracy and capitalism are the best systems around today but there is plenty of room for improvement. We in Europe are more inclined to let the government step in and protect the weak even if they do not nothing to better themselves. The US allows people to take care of themselves and everyone is encouraged to be the best they can be, even if it means leaving the weak behind. "The European Dream" is about not having a major war every 50 years in Europe and we're still a long way from that.
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Let me see if I have this straight. A site with "WTF" in its name, which if I understand correctly is shorthand for "What the fu*k", has the balls to suspend users for the use of "pissy" ?
They also, with a presumably straight face, screw over another member because he had the temerity to use "goddamn" in a post, even though it was not used as an insult or put-down toward another user?
Well, I know I'll be banned now, but, WTF, I don't belong here either because I don't see anything remotely offensive in those comments and I had the gall to mention them again.
JFC, that's taking uptight to new heights, err, lows. Political "correctness" is slapping the shit out of individuality and freedom of expression. Sad, sad, sad......
Goodbye from this banned user.
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@Amazed by the prissy rules said:
Let me see if I have this straight. A site with "WTF" in its name, which if I understand correctly is shorthand for "What the fu*k", has the balls to suspend users for the use of "pissy" ?
They also, with a presumably straight face, screw over another member because he had the temerity to use "goddamn" in a post, even though it was not used as an insult or put-down toward another user?
Well, I know I'll be banned now, but, WTF, I don't belong here either because I don't see anything remotely offensive in those comments and I had the gall to mention them again.
JFC, that's taking uptight to new heights, err, lows. Political "correctness" is slapping the shit out of individuality and freedom of expression. Sad, sad, sad......
Goodbye from this banned user.
Self-righteous retards are the best kind of retard.
(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)
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(USER WILL BAN FOR THIS POST)
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Did I miss something?
