In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Roy Schestowitz
<newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote
on Wed, 20 Feb 2008 01:36:49 +0000
<1218847.XyK1MI4PNi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> Opera CTO: How to fix Microsoft's browser issues
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Embrace the standards, nicely, or get out of browsers
> |
> | If there was a functioning market for web browsers and
> | operating systems, the past few weeks would have seen
> | two announcements from Microsoft. After a firestorm of
> | criticism from the web design community about Internet Explorer
> | 8's misguided mode switching proposal, Redmond would have
Mode switching? Yipes. Hack cough hack hack.
> | publicly backed down. Second, Microsoft would have bowed to
> | 90,000 users demanding that Windows XP continue to be sold.
Only 90K? I'd find that unlikely. Then again, I've not researched
the issue.
> |
> | There were no such announcements. Why? Because Microsoft, with
> | its dominating position in the web browser and operating system
> | markets, acts like a monopoly.
It *is* a monopoly, effectively speaking. One might quibble in
some areas (e.g. phones) but for all intents and purposes Microsoft
has monopolized the desktop OS market.
> |
> | A monopoly doesn't have to consider its customers' wants or needs.
Well, from what little I know of classical economic theory,
the ideal "run point" of an economy is when marginal
revenue = marginal cost = actual cost [*]. This used to
be the case for e.g. agriculture; genetically modified
foods and large agrobusiness complexes have thrown some
monkey wrenches in here.
In a monopoly, assuming they can even figure out which
end is up on their sales end, marginal revenue = marginal
cost still; it's the actual cost (which for Microsoft is
presumably darned low) that's not in the equation. Since
profits is units sold * (revenue - cost) - overhead, things
can get obscene.
> | In a
> | functioning market, vendors must consider such things in
> | order to compete successfully. But the market isn't functioning.
I'm not sure it's entirely dead. Mozilla in particular is
knocking on the door, and Opera is still out there (Opera
is an excellent browser in its own right, and is one of
the few that perfectly reproduce the "acid2 browser test").
For their parts Konqueror and Safari are making life interesting
as well; the former is integral to KDE and the latter is in OSX,
although available for Windows.
> |
> | Microsoft's failure to respond to its customers' outcry shows
> | that it is time to call on established antitrust laws that
> | allow governments to impose sanctions on a vendor that has
> | a dominant position in a market.
Only if abuse can be shown, presumably. I'd have to look.
> | The purpose of these sanctions is to ensure competition and
> | innovation and thereby create a market in which consumers are heard.
> |
> | Recently, the European Commission opened several investigations into
> | Microsoft's dominant position. As a regulatory body, they could
> | decide to impose sanctions and while Microsoft might ignore their
> | frustrated customers, they would have a harder time ignoring the
> | European Commission.
Dunno about that; Europe is a fair distance away. However, I'd
have to look at MS's regional sales figures. ;-)
> `----
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/19/hakon_ms_reform_plan/
>
> Be prepared: ActiveX attacks will persist
Sadly, ActiveX should have been shot on formation. Unfortunately,
Java's Applets rather depends on it, in MicrosoftWorld(tm) (the
actual plugin being an ActiveX control).
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | A recent string of high-profile ActiveX vulnerabilities caused the U.S.
> | Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) to advise users to disable the
> | ubiquitous Microsoft browser plug-in technology altogether.
> `----
>
> http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/02/19/08NF-activex-horror_1.html
>
> Quote for the day:
>
> "Windows 98 without Internet Explorer 4 is a working operation system and
> Internet Explorer 4.0 is not an vital part of Windows 98."
>
> --Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
>
>
> Microsoft is losing its lockins. Uh oh! With the possibility
> of $20,000,000,000 in debt, EU fines would cost Microsoft a
> lot also. Yikes.
Dumb question: where is this figure coming from?
>
>
> Related:
>
> Microsoft ruling may not bolster Europe's new case, warns lawyer
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | The new investigation into Microsoft will look into whether
> | it is legal for a company with its market dominance to include
> | web browser Internet Explorer with its Windows operating system.
> | It will also look at whether the operating system allows for
> | enough interoperability with other companies' software.
OK, dumb questions: what markets are being dominated, and
how much is "enough"?
Granted, apparently what happened, if my memory serves,
is the following.
[1] Microsoft produced Word, with Windows attached.
[2] Over time, Win3.1 became very popular, several revs later.
[3] Microsoft leveraged that to roll out Win95,
which had people lined up at 2 in the morning. Such
popularity hasn't been seen for a product before or since.
(I suspect they were hoping Vista had a similar enthusiasm.
Unfortunately for Microsoft the market is far more jaded
now, and wary of Microsoft in general apparently because
of their very public screwups.)
[4] Meanwhile, Netscape had a pretty good browser, that ran
on Unix, and I believe it ran on Win3.1 as well (with such
things as Trumpet Winsock to implement lower level stuff).
It was shareware at the time.
[5] Microsoft embarked on an ambitious and ultimately
successful effort to develop a new "free" browser,
acquiring Spyglass for the initial task. IE2 was
absolutely horrible. IE3 was merely terrible. By the
time IE4 rolled around -- '96 time frame, IIRC -- it was
only bad, and better than Netscape, which was bogged down
in a few areas (I forget exactly where, but it probably
had to do with among other things its insistence in using
publically available protocols for accessing Windows,
whereas IE could cheat). The beauty of IE (if one can call
it such) is that it was not shareware, unlike Netscape;
it was offered "for free" (the cost being borne by other
segments of Microsoft; I don't know exactly how it was
budgeted admittedly).
Clearly Microsoft had already dominated the desktop market
by the time Win95 rolled out, and Microsoft leveraged that
to dominate the browser market. One has to admire their
aggressiveness -- and their chutzpah.
[snip for brevity]
> Lights out for Silverlight
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | The next point is the availability of the tools. Even though you can
> | view Silverlight on OS X, you will have no chance of being able to
> | author Silverlight content without a Windows licence.
(!!)
> | This is a
> | conscious decision. On the one hand, Microsoft wants to get
> | designers using their Expression toolset yet designers will have
> | to come across to the Windows platform in order to do it. It may
> | not be such a large hurdle but it is a hurdle nevertheless. Ever
> | tried to force an OS X user onto Windows? They cry, they scream
> | and they want their (at times) consistent GUI back.
> `----
>
> http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Lights-out-for-Silverlight/0,130061733,339278334,00.htm
> http://tinyurl.com/27jpuv
[*] marginal revenue: the amount of sales from selling
1 additional unit of product.
marginal cost: the additional cost of producing that unit.
actual cost: the average unit cost of all product.
It gets a little squirrely here in real markets,
of course, as I would e.g. have to buy fruit juice
retail but large blending firms might be able to buy
it wholesale, or even just harvest it from their own
farms if they are fortunate enough to have arable land
near their plant.
--
#191, ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Useless C++ Programming Idea #7878218:
class C { private: virtual void stupid() = 0; };
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