re: M$'s attempts to dominate the Web via incompatibility torques off old M$ users and others
Friday, July 17, 2009 at 10:03 pm
Windows 98 Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by gewg_
(4444 messages posted)
gewg wrote:
||Your argument pre-supposes that *everyone* buys Windoze.
||
Arminius wrote:
|Hey! Who's arguing? I simply asked a question. I thought the topic was IE6.
|
Well, I kinda veered off to include the tying aspects.
|Relax and have a drink[...]
|
Yeah. 8-)
I still don't think, however, that you fully appreciate the *leveraging* aspect
--using dominance in one market to affect another market.
It's classic anti-trust stuff.
|I doubt there would be very many people out there
|who bought the latest version of Windows
|for the expressed purpose of being able to use the latest version of IE.
|
True.
Actually, there are some MSI tricks to get some "forbidden" stuff running on W2k.
In a similar vein, the KernelEx extension exists for crippled aspects of some apps
and the 9x kernel compatibility.
Few ordinary users know about these, however.
|A decline in IE usage doesn't necessarily correlate with a decline in Windows usage.
|
Not a direct correlation, but both numbers are declining--IE's rate is precipitous.
I don't want to see any (more) dirty tricks used to change that trend/choice.
The real problem all along has been M$'s dealings with hardware vendors
which forbad those businesses from installing ANY non-M$ software
without seeing an accompanying massively punitive change in per-unit pricing.
Tiered pricing is not illegal, but the way a corp with >88% of a market does it
can quickly run afoul of the anti-trust laws--and that's where we are.
It was a self-fulling prophecy that by using this kind of thuggery,
M$ would continue to dominate multiple markets.
||[...]"tying"[...]
||The You-must-buy-Windows-to-get-our-PC thing is the most blatent example.
||The European Union / European Commission is currently holding the line on M$.
||
|Microsoft isn't the only guilty party here.
|
Again, with >88% of the market, M$ can beat down the smaller system vendors
and the DoJ's pitiful enforcement here doesn't help the situation.
|The PC manufacturers (assemblers really) deserve a good share of the blame.
|I don't believe they are innocent victims of MS's bullying.
|
If the big vendors had pulled together and started a class action suit against M$
way back when, I believe things would have gone quite differently.
So, yeah, there's culpability there as well.
|By limiting their products to a single OS they can keep their costs down
|(maximize their profits), a symbiotic relationship as I see it.
|
The "symbiosis" can quickly get skewed
when one of the entities has >88% of its market share.
I see it more as riding a tiger--or as conjoined twins
where the health of one is dependent on the health of the other.
I also like to bring up the example of the Irish Potato Famine
to show that monoculture is a bad notion.
The existence of Windoze botnets illustrates this.
|I never thought including a browser or media player with the OS was a problem.
|
The EXCLUSIVITY provision / limited choice placed on assemblers is the issue.
...and lock-in via the use of non-standard/proprietary stuff in apps
was one of the original underpinnings of this thread.
IE has used those to hold back the Web for its entire lifetime
(think: least common denominator).
|In fact I would be disappointed if it didn't include one.
|
You should investigate the wget utility (or cURL).
It would be no sweat for a vendor to script a menu
so a user could get ANY browser from a list.
You should also check out the Add/Remove utility in a Ubuntu-based distro
to appreciate the difference between the M$ ecosystem and that of Free Software.
The multitude of 1-click choices is what Micros~1 users SHOULD have had.
(To show the power, the corresponding command line is
apt-get install | update {app}
That can identify/select, download, install, and update any Free Software app.
The EU is mulling over these ideas and others WRT Vista-7.
|New users eventually figure out there are better third party options
|than the one that shipped with the OS.
|
Lots of people still use the brand of soap their Moms used.
Getting that initial "sale" is powerful stuff.
While folks may add apps, many folks never *change out* a working app.
|So why all the lawsuits?
|PC suppliers have the ability to preload any browser they want at the factory[...]
|
It wasn't that way until *after* USA vs Microsoft (Clinton's DoJ)
--and the GWB administration immediately relaxed enforcement of that verdict.
The EU appears to have more cajones in this area than the USA gov't.
I'm glad to hear you've never been "leaned on" by a thug as to have insight in that.
I'm afraid what goes on behind closed doors between M$ and vendors
includes a lot more intimidation that you imagine.
|The things that bother me most about MS:
|1). The ever increasing hardware requirements to run their OS
|(and the increased amount of energy required to run it).
|
Actually, the poor configurability of M$'s GUI-driven environment is the real issue.
Linux, OTOH, can run as just a command line, or with just a window manager,
or with an entire desktop environment.
Linux distros/spins are like a Stone Soup menu, all starting with the Linux kernel.
The contrast with M$ is enormous.
|2). Product activation.
|5). DRM. Digital Rights Management.
|
Amen and Amen.
I hope you're including Windows Genuine DISAdvantage in there.
A vendor holding over your head the threat of remotely crippling your OS is evil.
...and let's not forget "critical updates" THAT AREN'T.
|3). The ever increasing lack of backwards compatiblity.
|
Actually, Apple's periodic complete ecosystem turnover has done them good.
Having emulators for old apps seems to work fine for them.
M$, OTOH, can't seem to get emulators to work well.
(It's worth noting here that WINE under Linux/BSD/...
has superior Windows binary compatibility
--especially when compared to Vista/Vista-7--aka Vista SP3.)
|4). Planned obs[o]lescence.
|
That's at the *core* of M$'s business model.
Take that away and the empire crumbles.
This is also tied to Embrace, extend, extinguish.
|6). Cost, yeah it ain't cheap.
|
Outside of VERY vertical markets,
selling ones and zeroes is an obsolete business model.
As more and more Free Software application programs are written,
the need to have Windoze and Windoze-compatible apps dwindles.
See also "WINE" (above).
The future of the software business is providing SUPPORT.
RedHat, Canonical, and Novell are in the vangard of the new wave.
Think: (gratis) Fedora/CentOS, (gratis) Ubuntu, and (gratis) openSuSE
i.e. you can get all the executables at zero cost (and the source code is available);
you only pay if you want SUPPORT.
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