Yesterday, Microsoft dropped a bomb by announcing that all versions of Windows 7 released in Europe would ship without Internet Explorer pre-installed. This was in answer to the EU antitrust investigation currently under way regarding possible illegal bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows. The first reactions to this news are coming in, with Opera and the EU both lamenting the move.
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Member since:2005-07-07
I actually meant that whoever is offering the platform (a sub-platform of some other one, that you ship on your OEM hardware - whether it's based on Ubuntu, Xandros or Windows) should absolutely be making this decision for their customers. Users are unprepared to decide which browser to run (if they even know what that means), when they first turn on their machines - they have enough headaches with new hardware, they don't need another one.
This is and should always have been an OEM decision - they've been skating for a long time now by just always pointing at MS and saying it's their fault the computer runs like crap. That has harmed our web based ecosystem, but more than that, I think it was a mistake from a customer support perspective (ask Dell about their customer support reputation). The more of these kinds of decisions that OEMs are able to take on, and stand behind and support, the better off they will be.
That is exactly what MS did to compete unfairly - they offered discounts on Windows licensing to OEMs if they shipped with IE instead of Netscape (that is the point of their abuse). That's what makes this such a great idea. The thing to watch out for is what kinds of deals they make to keep Dell and others installing IE - that's where Mozilla, Opera and Google need to understand that they have to compete - MS knows what's up, and they will absolutely compete here.
To be clear, the choice of which browser to use will never be an end user choice - most of them are entirely unprepared to actually make that decision, and techies like us should stop pretending they are. The battle with browsers is at the OEM level. The same is true for operating systems. End users don't buy operating systems, and unless they are very savvy, they don't install alternative browsers (even if they might get the increasingly rare techie neighbor kid to "clean up" their computer). It just doesn't work that way.
Member since:2009-05-20
Now I think you nailed it.
Comparable to things like automobile industry, the problem in many cases is the OEM sector that distorts the market, be it Intel chips or Internet Explorer. What I think EU should have done is to examine more closely these ties between producers and OEMs instead of coming with an idiotic solution to "unbundle" parts of the product offered by the producer. I do not know what a better solution could have looked like, but the current one is less than optimal, not even touching the surface of the root of the issue.
I actually believe that the situation could become worse now that for instance Intel as a hardware producer has entered the software market (Moblin, etc.). Generally all these deals to ship an operating system X with netbook Y, for an instance, have left a bad taste in my mouth as a consumer. Nothing could be more closed from business perspective; no where do we see open competitive bidding so prevalent in (certain) other industries.
I have to disagree with you in that OEMs should be in a dominant position to make decisions in the IT industry to begin with. That kind of gatekeeper position is most certainly related to anti-competitive measures generally.
What do you think?
Could a comparison to the phone markets and telecom industry provide any kind of parallel for discussion?
Edited 2009-06-12 16:17 UTC
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it."I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)"."The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight.""And so it is with Dell's Alienware X51 R2, a small form factor gaming PC in console digs. It's shaped similar to Microsoft's Xbox 360 Slim, and though it's slightly larger than either a 360 or PlayStation 3, the X51 R2 would be right at home in a living room setting nestled next to a large screen TV. Indeed, it's adept at running Steam's Big Picture mode, and if your primary objective is to play games in the living room, go ahead and consider the X51 R2 a hybrid game console." This is obviously not the only machine like this - still, these are very valid console alternatives even for those that don't like being hunched over with a cramped WASD-claw. Also, PC gamers among us: could you get away with the $699 model for gaming?
From Bloomberg: "Microsoft, the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes." The lid has officially been blown off.
Member since:
2009-05-20
You mean like Firefox is shoved down to the throats of Ubuntu users or Lynx to the throats of OpenBSD users?
Generally I think the assumed or real monopoly position in the past, present or future is an endless coffin for similar accusations. What next?
As a consumer I want Emacs to be an option for notepad, HFS an option for NTFS, and a lot of other things...