posted 10-25- 09:30 AM               

At is again, the same old tactics. Did you know that MS single handedly cornered the floppy drive driver market? They also implement a standard VGA driver that comes bundled with the MS operating systems for free! This has destroyed the VGA driver industry and we are now seeing a total monopoly here.

I'm sure that soon MS will charge hundreds of dollars for the VGA driver, they are just waiting until we are dependant on their technology, then they will screw us all!

But the list goes on... they also force you to use their file system- and you are pretty much stuck with their implementation of the TCP/IP protocol.

How can Norton Utilities possibly compete when MS bundles a disk defragmenter with windows?

Even Apple is jumping on the bandwagon... the OS enhancement industry is plagued with rip-offs by the MS alternative. Or is it just coincidence that yesterday's shareware MacOS enhancements become today's Apple OS features? I think not.

posted 10-25- 11:47 AM               

Why does a new home come with built-in appliances? There are plenty of stores where you can buy them.

The answer is obvious. The manufacturer can bundle them cheaper than a stand-alone product would cost, and it is a convenience to the customer to buy bundled products. Successful after-market dealers offer selection and service that the manufacutures can't so they also stay in business. In software, if a competitor could offer a better product than comes bundled with Windows for a better price then MS would lose a marketing advantage. It's called competion for the consumer dollar.

posted 10-25- 12:31 PM               

So if the general feeling is that MS practice is hurting the computer business, then you call it a monopoly... this is based on nothing real... no sensible law. If it were, EVERY business would be a monopoly at some level.

Netscape and Sun sure thought MS was a monopoly, but the rest of the computer industry loves them for bringing wealth and stability to one of America's greatest industry and exports.

posted 10-25- 01:38 PM            

Your car analogy should go like this:
Ford has exclusive rights to piston powered engines. Gas for piston engines is cheap and plentiful, plenty of mechanics understand them.

Chevrolet sells cars too, but they use expensive, fragile turbines that require you to mail-order your fuel from them, because their market share isn't big enough for the gas stations to cater to. Nobody cares about Chevrolet.

Now Ford starts telling dealers that they can't sell cars unless they only put Ford brand radios in, they can only sell them with Ford tires, Ford approved colors, Ford bumper stickers. There is a large demand for alternatives to the lame Ford colors (purple and taupe), but dealers are prevented from being able to repaint them. No one likes the sucky Ford tires but dealers are prevented from installing quality tires.

Ford feels that selling cars isn't enough. They want to own the roads, too. Now they start adding auxilery wheels to their cars (which are of a patented design), which will give you 1 mpg better milage when used on train-style tracks (of course propriatary-to-Ford tracks). They pay construction fees for new communities to include these tracks in housing divisions, at the expense of traditional roads.

Soon, the consumer can use their Ford at home and on the highway, but the quirky Chevrolets and the homebuilt cars can't drive in the neighborhoods because they don't have access to the patented Ford track design...

I could go on

posted 10-25- 02:15 PM            

People trying to access Microsoft's MSN.com with a non-Microsoft browser are finding themselves locked out.
Although the software leviathan's Internet Explorer easily reaches MSN, other browsers--such as Opera, Mozilla and some versions of Netscape--run into trouble.

Using the most recent browser from Mozilla.org to reach MSN brings a message from Microsoft saying it has "detected that the browser that you are using will not render MSN.com correctly." Mozilla.org does open-source browser development for AOL Time Warner's Netscape Communications unit.

"Additionally, you'll see the most advanced functionality of MSN.com only with the latest version of Microsoft Internet Explorer or MSN Explorer," the message continues.

posted 10-25- 02:56 PM               

quote:

---

Why
aren't you hollering about the rule of law
being violated as you did when you thought
Clinton was violating the law.

---

When did I ever talk about Clinton breaking the law? Maybe I did, I don't remember...

Anyway, MS was found to be a monopoly to some degree... but the problem with these crazy monoply laws is that here are a million levels of monopoly... and coming up with the punishment is much harder than it is for a judge to declare that some business is a monopoly.

You might as well make it against the law to be bad. Would all bad people be brought to justice? No way... any judge could just say anyone is "bad" - but what does it mean? What do you do about it? Monopoly laws are that vauge.

Lothar demonstrates my point exacty! When I said that enforcing monopoly laws is a matter of practicality and NOT jutice. In some cases it seems like the company is being monopolistic, and in some cases it isn't.

My examples make MS look clean, while Lothar's make them look like a monopoly.

But I am NOT bull shitting... I really believe very striongly that my example fits this case. My life is in business and internet technology... so this case is always part of my days... and this is my view. Thank you for the compliment on my, shall we say, "convincing" skills... but I am being honest... I believe the argument I am making. I do agree that there is plenty of room for debate on this though, I don't think it should be obvious to everyone.

So answer a question for me: how does one decide what components of software are or are not par of an operating system?

posted 10-25- 03:06 PM            

Once the market is saturated with the MS brand of software, they make it propriatery. People would have guffawed 5 years ago if you told them that MS would make thier websites viewable only to IE users. Now we see that its coming true.

posted 10-25- 03:15 PM            

Soooooooooo....tell me wise one...Why then, is Micro$oft's Operating System becoming MORE expensive? Can you not download Winamp, ICQ, Yahoo Messenger all for FREE. How is renting your software cheaper than getting FREE products?

"MS did nothing illegal, that is the point. "

LOL...Guess all these federal judges and appeals courts are all high on crack cocaine. You MS boys crack me up...tis OK, the hackers are gonna wreak havoc on your passport shit...if anyone is dumb enough to use it. OR if any small developers can afford to RENT their IDE's from Bill Gates for $10,000 bucks an application!!

"My examples make MS look clean, while Lothar's make them look like a monopoly."

No, your examples make you look like a complete ass...which is common knowledge anyway. You need to sharpen your analogy skills just a tad.

Anyway,

posted 10-25- 03:17 PM               

What if I want to JUST buy an xbox and no games, I'm cheap and I like to rent games, actually I don't find very many games that I would actually buy cause a rental is usually enough for me.

I know , I know, don't buy it.

Whatever.

They also won't sell to Canadian distibutors so my favorite vidgame store (which although its a US AND Can franchise, but buys from a Canadian distributor) can't carry it, at least not until next year somtime.

About windows, From what I have read of XP, its bundled programs actually steal back control of files you have assigned to other programs.

WinXP is a 1.5 gig install. Thats a freaking boatload of crap.

Yes you get TONS of bundled software, but its not just bundled, its built in. You can't uninstall any of it, your stuck with all that bloat. Sucks if you have a small hard drive and want that extra space and don't use any of those features.

"Inside Windows XP is an integrated Internet Connection Firewall. It is designed to block incoming, but not outgoing traffic. It may be enough for those with basic needs, but it will do nothing to handle "Spy Ware" applications, or even the "Phone-Home" programs embedded into the XP operating system. I found a way to enable/disable it (see screen below-left), but I could find no way to uninstall it via standard methods. I've been burned by "Spy Ware" before, so for me, this level of protection is just not going to cut it."

The reviewer decides to install zone alarm.

". I installed this latest version onto Windows XP Professional and found that a bunch of built-in applications were trying to get at the Internet, including explorer.exe, iexplore.exe and a host of other embedded Windows programs. This is one indispensable program, and I was immediately glad I put it on there. However, Windows XP did not seem too thrilled.

Every few times I rebooted, I found that Windows XP had disabled Zone Alarm's auto-load feature and that it was not coming up when the system did. I started the firewall manually and reaffirmed that I wanted it to start every time the system did. Funny thing was that Zone Alarm would not work when I manually started it after it had been disabled. I had to restart the system, then watch Zone Alarm restart and it would work its magic. A reboot or two later, Windows Firewall had reasserted itself and Zone Alarm was again disabled.

I'm hoping that this is simply a program incompatibility that Zone Labs will fix in an updated release, but nevertheless it made me a bit nervous. After seeing the types of programs that kept trying to get on the internet, I wanted Zone Alarm to keep working so I could deny them all access. I ended up disconnecting the internet plug from the back of the computer and poking around to see what else was going on behind the scenes. "

and its not done yet!

"As I used XP Pro, I decided to try to customize the OS to my own preferences. It was during this process that I began to discover some really annoying oddities. The first was the Zone Alarm situation I mentioned before. The next was in regards to program registration. I had installed a third party DivX player and specified it to be associated with AVI files, but after a time, Media Player would reassert itself and take over the playback duties. I noticed the same thing with the latest version of Music Match Jukebox. I would specify it as the default program for MP3 and WMA files, as well as audio CD's, but after a while, there was Media Player taking control again.
I remembered that when I disconnected the internet cable from the back of the machine, a little icon with an X through it showed up in the system tray. I was curious about this, so I went into the taskbar properties and found a dialog screen where you could specify which icons you want to have hidden and which ones you want to have show in your system tray. I was thinking what a great little feature this was, because it gives you total control. So, I moved forward and set some icons to show all the time and some to never show at all. But sure enough, after a little while, some of the icons that I had specifically set to never show were again showing up in the system tray. As if that was not enough, some icons that I had asked to show all the time but not accessed in a while suddenly disappeared. Argh! This was getting annoying!"

If you want to read more check out the article.

http://firingsquad.gamers.com/features/winxprealdeal/default.asp

Once again, I know, I don't have to buy it.

Hmm... Its microsoft?

yeah that sounds like a good solution.

I don't plan on it, UNTIL the games and programs I want to use insist on using it.

I didn't start using win3.1 until I absolutly had to also.

Fact is I will HAVE to buy it to use mainstream games and programs.

Don't buy it is like saying, buy a car but never take it on the roads if you don't like them.

Windows is practically a utility.

posted 10-25- 03:47 PM               

And I HATE MS flight sim crap. Now THAT should be illegal!

All I am worried about is losing the free market... and having to put up with pathetic bastards enforcing their definition of what an operating system MUST be. If you stiffle innovation, you WILL get fucked. You are playing with fire... look what the FDA has done to the medical industry. We are light years behind where we should be because of fucks who think that they can define what is and is not proper health care.

One you define something you lock it in and stop profgress in it's tracks. At least to a slow crawl.

posted 10-25- 05:47 PM               

Dan, what isn't getting more expensive? MS's last major release was Win95. What doesn't cost more than it did six years ago? Besides, the $100 upgrade for XP is about what Me and 98 upgrades were isn't it?

Hey, if companies are willing to provide products for free, or which perform better than MS bundled products, that's great! That's what competion is. If it makes MS offer better and/or cheaper products then it's good for the consumer.

By the way, try to order a car without a radio, or the tires you really want, or the color you really want.

Also, "wise one" is much preferred over racist asshole. Thank you.

posted 10-25- 07:11 PM               

PLUS you can go get a different brand of car that will work on all road systems in North America, hell the whole world.

Try getting a computer OS that lets you use all the latest apps and games besides windows.

The car analogy doesn't really work very well.

posted 10-25- 09:47 PM               

My computer is not just one thing, it is:

1. My computer
2. My phone
3. My video game machine
4. My video editing system
5. My audio masterting system
6. My desktop publishing system
7. My photo printing system
8. My CD player and stereo
9. My word processor
10. My life and my living

I could buy a very expensive and less usefull stand alone product for each of these items... but now I have all in one box, and it works great! How can anyone possibly argue that a computer is not versital???

posted 10-25- 11:09 PM               

Mercury/Ford never had a problem with it, but you can bet that Mercedes did.

posted 10-26- 10:15 AM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jerry:
If it makes MS offer better and/or cheaper products then it's good for the consumer.

---

Unless of course these products cant survive do to the monopolistic practices of $Soft.

Or, to go back to the car analogy, what if I made a carb that got better gas mileage? Would I survive to market?
(But we won't go there... )