Speaking at a forum in South Africa regarding a plan for Microsoft to make major technology investments in the country, Bill Gates said there was an “80 percent chance” Windows Vista would by ready for its planned January launch. He also had no qualms about delaying the OS further if necessary.
…Microsoft’s monopoly. There is no need to rush as Vista unfortunately only competes with XP
Keep drinking the koolaid. Monopoly? lol
Whats sad is that you have that very correct. To date, there is no Linux distro that has even tried to stand up to XP. One of Microsoft’s biggest money makers is not Windows, it is Office. Novell has worked very hard at integrating vb scripting directly into OpenOffice.org and is looking to position it’s upcoming Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop as a direct competitor to Vista.
I’ve played with Vista betas and am on the SLED beta program with Novell. So far, I’m much more impressed by SLED than Vista and I won’t even rant about facts like how Vista took 800MB of ram at an idle desktop. Maybe it was some issue with my hardware, but I was astounded to find this out. UAC is a great idea, but a bad implementation. Users will become numb and just click yes to all of the new dialogs it bombards them with.
I’m biased towards Linux but am eager to see Vista released whenever Microsoft decides. If Vista is as *good* as Microsoft touts and it actually has security close to that of Linux, both will have to “out innovate” eachother. This only leads to a more happy consumer on both sides.
As WinXP does and Linux does and OS X does, it keeps memory prepared for faster allocation. Keeping 800 MB prepared does not mean, 800 MB is used.
The same effect is around when i look into the System Monitor Applet in Gnome.
That’s what I thought as well, but whenever I launched an app, the memory usage went up…it didn’t really seem like it was just caching.
Ok, I’m using gnome to type this email while looking at my system monitor (gnome-system-monitor). With Firefox, OpenOffice.org, about 5 instances of gnome terminal (each with several tabs), and Revelation a password safe application, all running *while* beagle is indexing my files, I only see 393.5MB memory used and 108MB of swap used.
Oh yeah, did I mention that this is with Xgl/compiz, etc? An idle desktop should not take up 800MB at the current stage of computing. No cookie for you.
If I remember rightly, it’s a beta isn’t it? They probably have quite a bit debug stuff to strip out for one thing. And I a lot of optimisation too. And memory is pretty cheap.
If you have Office, make sure it’s not preloading it on startup. MS seems to think that’s a good idea.
But yep; if it ain’t ready, don’t ship it ….
That is exactly a poin tI don’t like hearing, ‘memory is cheap’… As if this thing is ever gonna stop?
-We all will have to buy more and more memory because nowadays these companies don’t care about hardware demands, only their own prestige…
…And it seems as if Apple and Microsoft both want us to be using the newest, flashiest hardware around…
…The era of optimization down to the mitty gritty has long gone… Today the argument is that ‘everything is cheap’ where as in the ’90s ‘everything was expensive’….
[QUOTE]
…The era of optimization down to the mitty gritty has long gone… Today the argument is that ‘everything is cheap’ where as in the ’90s ‘everything was expensive’….[/QUOTE]
Everything is cheap today — except the programmer time required to optimize a program.
“Memory is cheap”.
Kind of. But 800 MB is almost of 1/4 of total memory available under x86-32 at ALL!
You can buy 256 GB “for cheap”, yeah. But you cannot use it until machines and OS-es are running in 64-bit mode:)
MSFT doesn’t ship debug code to customers for Beta products. It doesn’t make any sense for them to do so because people would get bitten by asserts and other random debug stuff. It’s not useful for MSFT to ship out anything for a Beta that they wouldn’t ship out for the actual product, aside from last-minute feature changes.
I think what you’re thinking of is the Release Canidates, not betas.
ASSERTS can be disabled when you build something with debug code.
Well, Suse 10 on my Laptop, 490MB out of 512MB used doing *nothing*.
What a taskmanager shows up as total used doesn’t mean anything in any modern OS. Preallocating Memory for fast application allocation is actually a *positive* thing. The only thing bad about it is, that it scares the clueless.
Edited 2006-07-11 18:44
For those of you wanting to test real linux memory usage, if you have a >= 2.6.16 kernel log in as root and type
# sync
so all buffered stuff that was not written yet is written to the hard disk and then
# echo “3” > /proc/sys/vm/drop_cache
this will make the kernel drop it’s caches. (It’s a non destructive operation, you can run it without worry).
Then use top or free or whatever you like to check on the numbers.
I don’t think it should be Vista versus Linux versus OS X. I want to see a better Vista, a better Linux, and a better OS X. I want to see real choice for everyone and to have the best available from all the operating systems.
While that’s a nice utopian thought, real choice will only come around when application vendors develop for all platforms. Everybody wants to keep on this spin that Linux isn’t ready for the desktop when the fact of the matter is that application developers aren’t ready to port or develop their applications for Linux.
Linux is “Grandma” easy to use for most common things — at least inasmuch as Windows is “Grandma” easy to use. (And yes, there are different places where one is more complex then the other.)
In terms of Vista being delayed, it simply shows the true fault of Windows. Windows could stand to learn a big lesson from Apple and start a new operating system from scratch instead of patching the current one that’s a hack job at best.
At that point, you would then open up the potential for real choice for everyone as application developers (that develop for MS) would be forced to make a decision of platform.
By the way, VB scripting is in OO.o 2.0 Ubuntu version too, so it is no way only Novell/SLES extra. Nice work though, kudos to them about that.
You are correct, but Novell paid the developer to work on vb scripting in OO.o full time, not Canonical
Don’t rush it out the door…
Don’t ignore glaring issues…
Do ship a quality product…
LOL, after 6 years, and another delay just weeks ago, he’s still just 80% sure… wow…
Maybe MS is finally going to wait to release it until it is ready. I really hope that it is usable before the second service pack comes out unlike XP. Maybe they have realized that they have real competition from Mac and some of the Linux distro’s like Ubuntu or SLED and are going to release something that will not send people running for the hills. How many times has Linus say “it will be released when it is ready. No, I don’t know when that will be.” The delay may be a good thing. Don’t harp on them for doing something right for a change.
And do you think 393MB of physical memory is nothing? Ha, you should optimize further your system to get some memory back. That ammount is a lot for what you are running.
You should look at buffers/cache used and free numbers, because the kernel takes all system memory as buffered and thus the real numbers are what you can see in -/+ buffers/cache, if you issue the command free in a console.
I have 512MB. I’m running KDE, KMail, Konqueror, some applets, OpenOffice and yakuake and have 230MB free, with only 11MB of swap used.
Pardon me if I am being ignorant, but doesn’t it seem like Microsoft is awfully _unproductive_? 8 billion dollars will pay 80,000 people, $100,000 each. So, technically, they could have had 20,000 people, developing Windows & Office for 4 years (and damn, being paid 10 times more than most people from my country). Is it possible, this many people are developing it?
And, realistically, with that ammount of money, Windows should be ahead of Linux and OSX by leaps and bounds.
To me, it seems Miscrosoft monopoly has made them into a completely disorganized, chilling-out company, that turns billions for not doing anything.
Another thing I simply love are Microsoft’s “technology investments”… Giving out free (or price-cut) pieces of software to people, doesn’t help the local economy (beyond what they would get with OSS), it doesn’t employ any more people in the country, it simply sends all that money to Redmond…
The average overhead for a professional employee in the US is a factor of 2, because the company pays for health insurance, benefits, etc. If we assume Microsoft spends about a $1bn a year on developing Windows and Office, which is on the low side, and the average salary is $50,000 (programmers make more, testers make less), we get about 10,000 people. This is approximately the current order of magnitude for the size of the Windows and Office teams.
Yes, its ridiculous, and yes its inefficient, but Windows is probably one of the most gargantuan codebases in existance, and the only reason Microsoft can get anywhere with it is sheer manpower. To put things into perspective, Apple has just a few hundred developers working on OS X and the iApps.
I do not think the statistics are indicative of sustainable development on Microsoft’s part. OS X Tiger and Vista will represent similar amounts of progress, relative to their predecessor releases, over similar amounts of time. Yet, Apple will have made that progress with an order of magnitude less manpower and cost. If Microsoft’s corporate mentality doesn’t change, I have my doubts about whether we’ll ever see Vista + 1.
“OS X Tiger and Vista will represent similar amounts of progress, relative to their predecessor releases, over similar amounts of time. Yet, Apple will have made that progress with an order of magnitude less manpower and cost.”
You left out one very important factor though: MS sells many more copies of their OS, so they can afford this type of mentality, and it’s definitely sustainable so long as sales are strong (which of course remains to be seen, with Vista at least. Office will sell like hotcakes).
Well, you can throw 1 million developers into a project and for sure they will be less productive than the same project with only 10 developers.
We’re a monopoly, why should I have qualms if the sheep are happy since it’s highly unlikely their money is going anywhere else.
Because they don’t have a monopoly, they have a quasi-monopoly and that is a *huge* difference. Very few people are *realy* dependant on MS. There are plenty of alternatives, it is just that people prefer to whine than to act.
But actually i don’t see what is all the fuss again about now. People here scream around angry that they will never switch to Vista beacause it doesn’t fit on Floppy disk and uses more than 640kb while Linux is miracly with the help of magic elves doubling your ram and runs on a TI-83.
Why are those same people complainig about a *possible* (and by 20% rather unlikely) delay of a product they swear they hate so much that they will never use it. How are those people affected anyway?
And why is the world going to stop spinning even if it was delayed? Im quite happy with my Win XP/Suse 10.1 desktop and my Suse 10.0 Notebook. I would be surprised if my XP CD goes up in flames in january.
@Alleister
There are plenty of alternatives, it is just that people prefer to whine than to act.
Please don’t discuss reality with the OSS fundies/haters. It will clash with their bigoted views.
The individual’s fuss-size would be directly proportional to the size of one’s investment and dependence on Windows.
I would happily delay Vista too but I’d extend Win98 support until that inital release too.
Maybe Vista has reached its complexity limit?
Following my home-made theory (maybe I’ll publish it someday), any software project will eventually die (or stop) due to the increasing internal complexity. Time T to implement, debug and test any new feature in complex project can approximately evaluated as T~1/(1-C*N^2), where N is features/components amount and C is constant for given project (C is mostly related to code modularity – in ideal case, when there are no dependencies between components, C is zero).
Apparently at some point (C*N^2>=1) no new features can be implemented – or they will be very buggy and do trigger hidden bugs in related components too (in that case T~N – assuming that no other components and interfaces will be touched, their related bugs won’t be fixed and so on – almost impossible to make anything new and usable this way).
Because MS cannot allow project (Windows OS) collapse and MS won’t increase its OS buggyness either, they just need more and more and more time to implement any new features.
This is not strictly unique to MS and Vista (and Office) – many big projects show [increasing] slowdowns in their schedules. It’s not developers or management fault – it’s rather fundamental problem.
That theory seems to be supported by the blog postings of MS employees, in any case. Maybe MS should have done like Apple and sacrificed direct compatibility (offering a virtualization mode to run legacy apps)…
Virtualization doesn’t help much.
Take for example new graphic subsystem. Of course it has dependencies everywhere – windows has GUI, after all
– thereby everything related to GUI (and gaming – directx) needs very through testing, every related component needs implement some new interfaces and so on. Virtualization wouldn’t avoid any changes (and bugs and testing) in related components, unless something like VirtualPC had used – but VirtualPC cannot use host OS files and configuration directly! To allow that entire new interface layer would be needed for VirtualPC, not much less complex than maintaining new graphics system compatibility.
Or WinFS – that could affect everything, related to windows file system (including MS networking, Active Directory, Explorer/Shell), both at variuos API and NTFS level. Again virtualization wouldn’t help much, because virtual/emulated API had to connect to new code at some level anyway. Well, WinFS is cancelled, apparently not without a reason.
Apple didn’t change API, they only changed te way code is executed. Of course there arise problems with emulation, but IMHO such problems are quite different – fixing emulation bug for one function usually doesn’t break another function.
I think you misunderstood my comment…what I meant is that MS should have just said “no” to backward compatibility, and offered virtualization as a temporary solution to old apps not running on the new OS.
I am sure they have considered sacrificing backwards compatibility on more than one occasion, afterall that would be the “easy” way out. But factor in customers, meaning A) businesses and B) shops that write custom solutions for Microsoft, and there’s no way any of them would just role over and say “sure, go ahead and break our business.” In the past when MS has introduced breaking changes they’ve been good about giving a huge heads up, but to ditch all backwards compat is simply impossible given the size of their customer base.
I don’t think this theory is far from correct.
If you look at Linux, you’ll see that there have been lots of clean slate implementations that gain developer support over time. For example, the modern toolkits like Gtk+ and Qt were effectively clean slate redesigns of existing toolkit engines. Udev was a clean slate redesign of DevFS.
Hell, there’s probably not much code at all shared between Linux 1.x and current 2.6.x systems.
Though I think for this theory to be correct you need to factor in that some projects have no problems about dropping compatibility between releases (Linux kernel module ABI) but some maintain it for many years (Windows). The latter become hard to maintain more quickly.
You could probably extend this in some way to computer systems… a system with hundreds of features added, new software installed, reconfiguration ends up becoming harder to manage usually no matter how good the admin.
My Gentoo linux free memory readout:
700m hechacker1 # free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1247 844 403 0 50 304
-/+ buffers/cache: 489 757
Swap: 964 0 964
I actually perfer to USE my RAM unlike a lot of people, it’s a laptop, so why run the hard drive/swap all day if most operations can be completely in RAM, even my Gentoo compiles are in RAM.
Anyways, as u can see, this is my current usage and I don’t even have applications open besides firefox at the moment. It’s the effect of lots of caching because of my tweaked Gentoo kernel + a tmpfs ramdisk.
I wouldn’t be so quick to assume Vista is going to use 800M of ram; we will not know until Microsoft removes all the debugging info from the OS, which will probably happen only shortly before the OS is going to be released. File-sizes as well as RAM consumption should go down. The same problem is seen in SkyOS which also has debugging info compiled in at the moment, and the author admits that RAM requirements should go down after it is taken out.
I am going to wait for Vista, a couple months of waiting isn’t going to hurt at this point. Vista has one compelling feature that no other OS has yet, DirectX 10 and all the games that go with the windows platform (don’t bother getting into the OpenGL debate). The day linux has seemless compatibility with my favorite games is when I permanately switch, but I never expect that to happen.
“We’re a monopoly”
Actually, they’re not. In order to be a monopoly you’d have to be designated by the government (or similar) to be the sole provider of a product and it would be *illegal* to compete with you.
What MS has is an unhealthy market dominance, or quasi-monopoly if you will, and while that is a very bad thing it isn’t a monopoly.
Edited 2006-07-12 05:39
Actually, they’re not. In order to be a monopoly you’d have to be designated by the government (or similar) to be the sole provider of a product and it would be *illegal* to compete with you.
What MS has is an unhealthy market dominance, or quasi-monopoly if you will, and while that is a very bad thing it isn’t a monopoly.
Have you ever taken a course in economics ? You’re talking about a Legal or “de jure” monopoly, a government sanctioned monopoly (like some countries have on eg. water)
A “perfect monopoly” (exactly one producer) is an ideal almost unattainable situation, like a perfectly free market is too. That’s why there exist indicators to measure how monopolistic a market is. One such indicator is the “concentration ratio” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_ratio ).
the concentration ratio of an industry is used as an indicator of the relative size of firms in relation to the industry as a whole. This may also assist in determining the market form of the industry. One commonly used concentration ratio is the four-firm concentration ratio, which consists of the market share, as a percentage, of the four largest firms in the industry.
…
Monopoly, with a near-100% four-firm measurement. (Example- Microsoft in PC operating systems)
By most accounts MS is a monopoly. They hold >90% of the market, erect barriers to entry (see Be Inc vs Microsoft case) and are able to set the price. In fact they have been ruled to be a monopoly in a court of law.
[quote]
I’ve played with Vista betas and am on the SLED beta program with Novell. So far, I’m much more impressed by SLED than Vista and I won’t even rant about facts like how Vista took 800MB of ram at an idle desktop. Maybe it was some issue with my hardware, but I was astounded to find this out. UAC is a great idea, but a bad implementation. Users will become numb and just click yes to all of the new dialogs it bombards them with
[/quote]
Wow, you have all that knowlege and yet you can’t even figure out what the word BETA actually means.
The code isn’t even being compiled as a Release build. I hope I don’t have to explain what “Release” build means.
Well, he is comparing a beta to a beta…
As gleng said, SLED is *also* beta. Not just that, but Novell hasn’t been working on it for 3 years, Microsoft has been working on Vista for that long.
“…Novell hasn’t been working on it for 3 years, Microsoft has been working on Vista for that long.”
I think Microsoft has been working on Vista for longer than 3 years. Prior to it being called Vista they were calling it “Longhorn” as a code name. That’s even more embarrassing for Microsoft.
Well here is how I see things. The Linux OS isn’t really that fully featured at its base.
What is added is a bunch of free open source applications that you can download on the Internet anyway that are put into the distro and packaged with the OS itself.
That is why I never really got excited about it.
Its like wow! It has all of these cool apps that you can download and use them if you want. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to download them, but with a distro you are stuck with them.
Linux is awesome, it comes with many free open source programs that are already on windows and they are free and open source on Windows as well. The thing about Windows is that I can choose what I want to take up space.
Is that really how you should judge an Operating System? Thanks but no thanks.
“The thing about Windows is that I can choose what I want to take up space. ”
So, will you explain me how can I get rid of Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player, since I don’t want them to take up some space?
“So, will you explain me how can I get rid of Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player, since I don’t want them to take up some space?”
How to Uninstall Internet Explorer 6
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=293907
Removing IE is not recommended by “me”. This will create havoc with 3rd party applications which use it.
Removing Media Player is ill advised. It might as well be welded to the OS.
“Removing IE is not recommended by “me”. This will create havoc with 3rd party applications which use it.
Removing Media Player is ill advised. It might as well be welded to the OS.”
So much about my choices on Windows, right?
“So much about my choices on Windows, right?”
Not exactly. If you are a Windows user with a serious background in computers, you can strip it down a very long ways. It’s just not something I would recommend for Jack and Jill Sixpack.
nLite and other utilities will allow you to create as big of mess as one can imagine. Hack it up anyway you wanna hack it up. http://www.nliteos.com/nlite.html
As I attempted to say in my previous post;
Windows doesn’t mind so much if you remove various components of the system. Third-party applications are the problem. They expect to see these components installed, and they fail when they don’t see them.
Do I blame Microsoft for this…. Not in the slightest.
They have no control over what some third-party wanna be programmer dude is going to cook up.
I would rather Mac and Windows get better.
I will get modded down for this.
I don’t care, it is the right thing to do.
Linux as a Desktop OS isn’t going anywhere.
People trying to make Linux into a desktop OS
should just give up and program on a platform that they can make a living on.
There is a ton of people trying to do something with Linux and it never goes anywhere, they are wasting so much time not really making anything better.
Who is going to use Linux after the Next Mac OS / Windows Vista / Windows Vista Server.
I just think they are wastng time. They could be bringing better applications to Windows instead of trying to do something with a dead horse.
Linux is and will always be a niche Operating System. It is usefull in a few areas such as the mobile market and high end super computers and maybe cheap servers if you don’t have a job.
For consumers, hard-core game players, and real corporate customers Linux isn’t going to work.
Windows isn’t perfect, but we don’t live in a perfect world. Microsoft is working on a successor to windows and it is currently called Singularity.
The Linux OS is about as old as Windows NT OS. They were both started around the same time.
I am not trying to troll, but just trying to tell the truth and set the record strait. If you don’t like Microsoft, there is always Apple.
I just wouldn’t waste your valuable time on a platform that hardly nobody is going to use. It is simply not worth the pain and effort.
I know you’re entitled to your opinion, but I think you’re way off the mark. Where I live, I know 3 times more Linux users than mac users, I can count all the mac users I know on one hand that’s had 4 fingers removed!
Personally, I don’t think a mac will ever be a good replacement for windows, they’re too much like an appliance not a computer. Linux on the other hand is a free operating system able to run on whatever you choose with no strings attached. Why anyone would choose a restrictive appliance over freedom to do whatever they like is beyond me
“Personally, I don’t think a mac will ever be a good replacement for windows, they’re too much like an appliance not a computer.”
I replaced my Windows XP Pro box with a PowerBook running OS X Tiger without any problems. It has actually required me to get less software for my mac than it did for Windows to have the same functionality. It is actually pretty easy to make the switch. As a note of what I am doing with it…the typical office oriented tasks of writing documents and creating spreadsheets and preparing presentations, but I am also a vision scientist studying the cells that process motion (mostly expansive/optic flow) in depth (area MT/MST for those of you who know neurophys). As a result, I’ve had to write stimulus generation programs and data acquisition programs. This has proven easier on my mac than on Windows. Further – once I am done with an experiment, I’ve got to do something with my data once I am done. I have a plethora of great data analysis tools for my mac. I’ve found my productivity has gone up on OS X over Windows.
“Why anyone would choose a restrictive appliance over freedom to do whatever they like is beyond me”
I have no idea. Why on Earth would anyone stick with Windows? It is far too restrictive for my tastes. OS X has proven to be much more liberating a system.
// Linux as a Desktop OS isn’t going anywhere.
Yes it is. Ask Redhat, Novell, Canonical, etc.
// People trying to make Linux into a desktop OS
// should just give up and program on a platform that // they can make a living on.
People do make a living from working with Linux. Like me for example!
// There is a ton of people trying to do something with
// Linux and it never goes anywhere,
Yes it does. I’ve been using linux for six years and the difference between now and then is astounding.
// they are wasting so much time not really making
// anything better.
But they are making things better.
// Who is going to use Linux after the Next Mac OS /
// Windows Vista / Windows Vista Server.
Well, there’s the many people who use it now for a start.
// I just think they are wastng time. They could be
// bringing better applications to Windows instead of
// trying to do something with a dead horse.
So Linux isn’t getting any better, but the people who are trying to make it better should give up?
// Linux is and will always be a niche Operating
// System. It is usefull in a few areas such as the
// mobile market and high end super computers
And pretty much any general purpose you can think of.
// and maybe cheap servers if you don’t have a job.
Haha, that’s good.
// For consumers, hard-core game players, and real
// corporate customers Linux isn’t going to work.
OK, I’ll give you the gamer argument, non-console gamers don’t really have any choice oher than Windows at the moment. But that’s more of a marketing than a technical matter.
Corporate usage is an ideal area for Linux on the desktop in my opinion/experience. General consumers are a trickier area, but I see no difficulty if the OS is preinstalled and configured (with big buttons marked “INTERNET” for example. Joe Sixpack isn’t going to know what the hell “Mozilla Firefox”, “The GIMP”, or “K3B” are.). An easy to use distro like Ubuntu would be perfect.
// Windows isn’t perfect, but we don’t live in a
// perfect world.
Maybe we can live in a perfect world if we get rid of all the imperfect things?
// Microsoft is working on a successor to windows and
// it is currently called Singularity.
Good for them. I’m sure it will be released bundled with Duke Nukem Forever and Elite IV. (Dual boot with the x86 version of AmigaOS4.)
// The Linux OS is about as old as Windows NT OS.
// They were both started around the same time.
Windows Server 2003 is NT 5.2. What’s your point?
// I am not trying to troll,
I’m not convinced.
// but just trying to tell the truth and set the record
// strait. If you don’t like Microsoft, there is
// always Apple.
Bah. OS X is nice, I’ll give it that, but I prefer Linux. I use Ubuntu on a Mac Mini at home, so I’ve used both. (I would normally use Debian, but the PPC version of Ubuntu works far better on the Mac Mini in my experience.)
OS X is good, but it isn’t the holy grail everyone makes it out to be. (OK, I’m going to die for that one.)
// I just wouldn’t waste your valuable time on a
// platform that hardly nobody is going to use.
Cool. Nobody’s asking you to waste my valuable time.
// It is simply not worth the pain and effort.
I’d rather not have the pain and effort involved with making Windows do the things I want to be able to do with my computer.
Linux as a Desktop OS isn’t going anywhere.
People trying to make Linux into a desktop OS
should just give up and program on a platform that they can make a living on.
Some make a living with windows programming and code in their spare time for linux.:-)
Add / Remove Programs -> Add remove windows components…
Atleast I think you can do it in there… Not 100% sure tho dont have a windows PC here, but I think thats how I did it on my folks PC.
All it does – removes icons from desktop and shorcuts from other places.
“Have you ever taken a course in economics ?”
Yes.
“You’re talking about a Legal or “de jure” monopoly, a government sanctioned monopoly (like some countries have on eg. water)”
Exactly.
“A “perfect monopoly” (exactly one producer) is an ideal almost unattainable situation, like a perfectly free market is too.”
One doesn’t have to be a producer, just a provider and there are plenty of true monopolies around. The Swedish Systembolaget, the Finnish Alko and the norwegian Vinmonopolet are some examples.
“Monopoly, with a near-100% four-firm measurement. (Example- Microsoft in PC operating systems)”
But this isn’t actually true now, is it? They don’t have a near-100% market share of operating systems that run on PC’s. They only have that high a market share in the specific desktop usage pattern.
“In fact they have been ruled to be a monopoly in a court of law.”
Really? Where?