“In short words, the company broke the law–and got away with it. It’s been a while, I know, since the Court of Appeals upheld the original trial’s Findings of Fact, sending only the question of appropriate remedy back to the lower court for reconsideration. But as I noted at the time, one of the crucial questions was whether Microsoft could freely stifle potential competing technologies without abusing its monopoly powers. The company claimed that the very novelty of alternative platforms, such as the Java-enabled browser, kept them from being part of the market in which Microsoft’s monopoly exists.” Read the editorial at eWeek.
Microsoft Gets Away With One
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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So, here’s an interesting think on all of this (quoting the article):
The Microsoft case is over–but at the same time, it may be just beginning, because there may be civil suits yet to come. Injured parties may be emboldened by the ruling’s statement that “The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit … affirmed the District Court’s finding of liability against Microsoft for violation of § 2 of the Sherman Act.” Injured parties can sue for three times the damages that they can satisfy the court that they have suffered–and those suits are civil suits, where the burden of proof is “preponderance of the evidence,” not the stricter “beyond a reasonable doubt” of criminal trials.
The question here is a) how much will this help lawsuits like Be’s (it should help quite a bit I would think), and b) Does Palm “own” this lawsuit, or is there a “Be Lawsuit, Inc” that owns it. Specifically, should Be prevail, and renumeration and compensation were ordered, does that go to Palm or to somebody else?
Just curious.
Yeah, Microsoft got away with one… sort of…
The only just remedy would have been to fine them, an amount line $10 Billion would have been just about right.
But then again what to do with the 10 Billion afterwards?
The idea of forcing them to open up their intellectual property was a bad idea. It would have back fired on the whole industry sooner or later.
I am not sure that the states should appeal at this point.
ciao
yc
” b) Does Palm “own” this lawsuit, or is there a “Be Lawsuit, Inc” that owns it. Specifically, should Be prevail, and renumeration and compensation were ordered, does that go to Palm or to somebody else?”
Be, Inc. exists currently as a shell entity solely for the purpose of pursuing the lawsuit. The rights to the lawsuit were retained when Be sold everything else to Palm. If Be wins, the proceeds will be distributed to shareholders of record on March 15, 2002.
The good news is that a news article came out a while ago stating that companies suing MS (including Be) may use the Findings of Fact as ammo in their cases.
By the way, although you can technically buy and sell shares of Be still (ticker: BEOSZ; name: Be Inc. Due Bills) for about $0.11/share, the transactions are not officially recorded on the transfer books of Be, which closed in March ’02. Therefore, anyone buying shares now may not be able to participate in the proceeds of any settlement unless they’ve entered into some sort of contract with the seller…but IANAL so don’t rely on anything I’ve just said.
Microsoft did get away with questionable behavior but i have to admit that i too was not a fan of the remedies. They all seemed a bit too much. In the end, i guess, we will just have to let the market take care of this. Nothing lasts forever, not even the MS monopoly.
I wonder what happens next. I wonder if MS will become bolder? What about apple. Will this have an influence on teh apple/ms relationship. it was already souring and now MS does not need apple around as evidence that it is not a monopoly.
There is a newer article at cnet that talked about how the judgment will restrict Be’s ability to use the Findings of Fact.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-964366.html?tag=lh
>>The question here is a) how much will this help lawsuits like Be’s (it should help quite a bit I would think), and b) Does Palm “own” this lawsuit, or is there a “Be Lawsuit, Inc” that owns it. Specifically, should Be prevail, and renumeration and compensation were ordered, does that go to Palm or to somebody else?
Kollar Kotelly’s last trial was just to determine the punishment. Be Inc. has plenty of ammunition from the Judge Jackson’s trial and from the appeal’s court findings.
Be Inc. owns the law suit. PalmSource as a new company did not want to be involved in such litigation so early in it’s existence. (except the Xerox case against Palm)
Should Be prevail, compensation will go to the Be share holders.
and to the lawyers as well.
ciao
yc
ciao
yc
adobe….kiss you acrobat business goodbye. office will include the ability to make their own pdf like docs in xml format (with proprietary extensions) and then bundle a viewer with the OS.
buh-bye acrobat….
this settlement is a joke. It doesn’t really fix the root cause of the problem, but it helped it a little….yes, I’m talking about OEM contracts. having the identical terms is a great thing, but MS can do whatever they like with those terms…like make them stricter and screw competing os’s even harder.
its the only thing that will curb MS’ influence now. I tend to think that a former monopolist, IBM, will also play a role. That company seems to want to displace intel and by association MS.
YC
“The only just remedy would have been to fine them, an amount line $10 Billion would have been just about right.”
IIRC, the maximum financial penalty that can be imposed is thrice the losses computed to be suffered by the plaintiff-in this case, Netscape. In order for a $10 billion dollar fine to be laid, it would have to be proved, in court (and wouldn’t that be fun), that Netscape suffered $3.33 billion worth of losses as a result of Microsoft mischievance.
—
Michael
In the end, i guess, we will just have to let the market take care of this. Nothing lasts forever, not even the MS monopoly.
But that’s the problem! MS isn’t content to rule the market now, they want to make sure they continue to rule it for the forseeable future. Nearly every article I’ve read about how open source will overwhelm MS and Windows seems not to grasp this point: MS will not resign themselves to the whims of the market by playing fair. Rather than allow equilibrium between Windows and alternative os’s, they’ll try to alter the market so the alternatives can’t survive. Just once, I’d like to see that in the news: a front page headline, of the sort that Win95 got when it was released, about what they’re up to. The public was outraged at being ripped off by Enron, why can’t they care about this?
Apologies for the temper tantrum, but I needed to say that…
The other problem with letting the market handle it, is there is no market because MS killed it. This is the reason for the anti trust laws in the first place.
Bribe some employee to let you bring you inside, (or just get a job in there). Once in put the bomb in some strategic place. Phonecall some minutes afterwards saying thre’s a bomb, everyone should evacuate. Make sure the bomb detonates after 30 minutes and takes with it a big part of the building.
No one will be damaged, and the stock options for microsoft
will go down a lot. In the meanwhile, companies like Apple,
Sun,etc can buy diferent parts of microsoft IP and products
and it will basically split up the company!
Easy isnt it? Well maybe not
If you dont like the violent way, just wait some years,
microsoft will find itself unable to compete with the free software world.
The company claimed that the very novelty of alternative platforms, such as the Java-enabled browser, kept them from being part of the market in which Microsoft’s monopoly exists.
Intenet Explorer was Java-enabled and still is until 2004. In fact, it had Java before Netscape! Under the settlement with Sun on this case (the one where Microsoft destroyed Java), Microsoft can’t make a new version of Java, even if it followed Sun’s rules. It has to bundle Sun’s or a third party’s implementation. (And to be frank, Sun’s JVM sucks).
Besides, I avoid at all cost opening Java applets on websites – gawd, they are slow. Sometimes I use them, like in Yahoo! Games (which BTW, I didn’t play for a year and a half). Even with my DSL connect, Java is slow. The same goes for ActiveX, I avoid them at all cost (and happily, I can, using a browser that doesn’t support them :-). When I was on dialup, I too was avoiding Flash everytime (now I don’t).
A paradox, to say the least: Checkmate before the first move is played.
I wish it was that way. But if you actually think about it, it is the competitors that got them in the wrong place because of little to none forsight.
But as I said last year, “Find me an API that has no connection with any of these functions, especially given the current trend toward pervasive technical measures for digital rights management. Go ahead, I’ll wait.”
My favourite, mshtml.dll. 🙂 “anti-piracy systems, anti-virus technologies, license enforcement mechanisms, authentication/authorization security, or third party intellectual property protection mechanisms” are normally places in seperate libraries for those who don’t want to use these features.
Besides, to make a third party applications, to, say, compete with Office, I find the current Win32 API documented for developers on MSDN is good enough. Plus, it is not like any of their competitors are using Win32 fully whenever possible. (Far from it, to be precise).
And we all know from our experience in Iraq how well that works.
Iraq is very different. Unless Microsoft move its headquarters to Iran, the US government can do so whatever it pleases with it. Iraq however can chase whoever they want out of their soil and can comply or not with whatever UN resolution they like or don’t like.
Its prevalence reduces the cost of bringing new software to market. There are many software companies that defy the proposition that entrepreneurial success only lasts until Microsoft decides to acquire whatever succeeds.
What’s wrong with that? For example, I doubt Visio could be as successful as now if Microsoft haven’t bought it, no less its authors being more richer now. The right to sell one’s own company to another company is in question here?
for example, in pressuring Intel to abandon platform-neutral Java multimedia efforts by offering to put software speed bumps in the path of Intel competitor AMD.
I need proof that Microsoft actually has anything to do with the pressuring. Intel is a much more powerful player than Microsoft. If Intel defies Microsoft, they can cause some serious damage.
and those suits are civil suits, where the burden of proof is “preponderance of the evidence,” not the stricter “beyond a reasonable doubt” of criminal trials.
And that is suppose to be bad. Not good.
It was true when this suit began, but it’s clearly even more true now–after years of labor in the courts have produced such a feeble demonstration of the power of the law.
The issue in the case is about a already non-essentional issue, web browsers. A stricker settlement would only cause more damage as unless Netscape and Opera start taking night classes for their MBAs, nothing would change in the market.
The settlement can’t include punishments for acts not considered illegal in the Fact of Findings.
First of all, the subject line is offensive. Disagreeing with something does not make the object of your dissatisfaction “stupid” unless you’re a toddler.
rajan: Besides, to make a third party applications, to, say, compete with Office, I find the current Win32 API documented for developers on MSDN is good enough. Plus, it is not like any of their competitors are using Win32 fully whenever possible. (Far from it, to be precise).
I take it you base this on the fact that 1) you’ve written a complete and compatible replacement for MS Office and 2) you’ve visually inspected the Office source code to make sure it isn’t calling on any API’s that are in fact not documented. Otherwise your statement doesn’t hold up.
I wish it was that way. But if you actually think about it, it is the competitors that got them in the wrong place because of little to none forsight.
You say this over and over on every post about Microsoft. So what? What you’re saying is that it’s the competitors’ fault that the situation exists, so the situation is okay. So if a fool gives a gun to someone and that someone uses it to shoot a bunch of people, it’s the original fool who gave him the gun that is to blame, not the person actually pulling the trigger. Interesting. Seems to me there should be more than enough blame to go around, but the brunt of it should fall on the entity abusing the power (the gun) instead of the entity who “created” the situation (the fool who gave him the gun). Saying that MS is innocent because its competitors have tapioca for brains is just silly. The power and how it was acquired is secondary to what was done with it once it was acquired.
Iraq is very different. Unless Microsoft move its headquarters to Iran, the US government can do so whatever it pleases with it. Iraq however can chase whoever they want out of their soil and can comply or not with whatever UN resolution they like or don’t like.
As you often do, you chose to quote wholly out of context. The author was making a general comparison, not a literal one.
What’s wrong with that? For example, I doubt Visio could be as successful as now if Microsoft haven’t bought it, no less its authors being more richer now. The right to sell one’s own company to another company is in question here?
You’re not an American, so maybe you don’t understand what our anti-trust laws are supposed to do. It doesn’t matter one bit whether Visio or anything else would be more or less successful. It doesn’t matter one bit whether the developers would be more or less wealthy. The only thing that is supposed to matter is whether or not public interest is being served. Note the emphasis on “supposed”.
You seem to be saying that the ends justify the means. That making Project X and its developers successful (a good thing, taken out of context of larger issues) is more vital than making sure there is healthy competition and a modicum of choice in the marketplace. How many projects have died in their infancy or never been born at all because of anti-competitive MS practices? If the answer is more than zero then consumers have been done a disservice.
The issue in the case is about a already non-essentional issue, web browsers. A stricker settlement would only cause more damage as unless Netscape and Opera start taking night classes for their MBAs, nothing would change in the market.
The settlement can’t include punishments for acts not considered illegal in the Fact of Findings.
Ah. Here we see an interesting situation.
Microsoft is sued. Microsoft uses its billions to fight the case for years on end until the core issues of the case become “non-essential”. In the meantime, MS has moved on to entirely other possibly predatory/illegal (note the possibly) practices not specifically covered in the original, horribly dated court case. The IT industry moves fast, the wheels of justice grind slowly. Because of this, MS can’t be punished because the new things don’t “count”. Interesting.
This sounds like a flaw in the American justice system which Microsoft has exploited beautifully. Kudos to their legal team. Not that anyone else wouldn’t have done the same, I’m sure, but that’s beside the point.
I am most vehemently not bashing Microsoft. I happen to admire Microsoft. It is brilliant when it comes to assembling and marketing ideas. My admiration, however, is not blind.
So … what’s new ? They get away with everything. The DOJ case was an absolute joke.
the subject line is offensive
You can call certain things that you don’t like as stupid, it doesn’t mean that you are a toddler. It is a very natural thing, and it is not as offensive as you claim. It just reflects the feeling about the idea.
I take it you base this on the fact that 1) you’ve written a complete and compatible replacement for MS Office and 2) you’ve visually inspected the Office source code to make sure it isn’t calling on any API’s that are in fact not documented. Otherwise your statement doesn’t hold up.
Rajan’s statement is an opinion. It does hold up because it is based on experience. But to say that it doesn’t hold up mean that 1)you’ve tried to write a complete and compatible replacement for MS Office and 2) you’ve visually inspected the Office source code to make sure it is calling on at least one API that is in fact not documented. Now as you see there is a paradox here. Your own statement doesn’t hold up according to your own criteria.
So if a fool gives a gun to someone and that someone uses it to shoot a bunch of people, it’s the original fool who gave him the gun that is to blame, not the person actually pulling the trigger. Interesting.[i]
Your analogy should take quite imagination, because this is the most “interesting” (since you consider stupid as offensive) analogy I have ever heard about this issue. The analogy is not only wrong, but totally irrelavent to the case. First of all, if the fool here represent competitors than that somebody should have killed the fool, rather than bunch of other people. If the bunch of people who are killed represent competitiors, then who is this fool? Anyway in any case, it is not proven that there is a murder. The court did not state that Microsoft’s actions resulted in a competitior’s failure, assuming that failure means murder in your example. So there is noway to make such analogy. A better analogy would be, a bunch of fools killed or wounded themselves in traffic and then an innocent driver is getting blamed, because he/she got a traffic ticket and he/she happens to be extremely rich.
[i]You’re not an American, so maybe you don’t understand what our anti-trust laws are supposed to do.
As if being American automatically makes you understand your laws, and not being American makes it harder to understand this anti-trust law which is similar to other anti-trust laws all around the world. Well I don’t know what to say other than the fact that, there are people who are not American and have a better understanding of American law compared to your understanding.
I am most vehemently not bashing Microsoft. I happen to admire Microsoft. It is brilliant when it comes to assembling and marketing ideas. My admiration, however, is not blind.
Ok it seems that there is a new trend. Because of the profileration of Microsoft bashers (and very obvious ones) now people feel that they somehow have to say something positive about Microsoft somewhere in their statements, so that they will not be stamped as Microsoft bashers. Ok, I don’t use the term Microsoft basher often and it doesn’t matter to me if you bash Microsoft much, other than the fact that you act logically throughout your statements. That’s an interesting trend though, it just shows that nowadays if you want to be taken seriously about your comments against Microsoft, you need to prove that you are somewhat logical, and saying something positive about Microsoft may provide that proof, well almost.
The only thing that is supposed to matter is whether or not public interest is being served. Note the emphasis on “supposed”.
You are right on this issue. Microsoft is supposed to be sued for public interest, which is not the case as you know. Microsoft is sued for competitiors’ interest. Public was about to loose Internet Explorer, the best browser out there, they were about to loose a unified Windows and if states were to win, they would have nothing to gain. So in short, this anti-trust trial was not for public, but for competitors. Judge addressed this problem in her comments and that’s the reason why states couldn’t get anything. Instead of serving public interest, they served Sun’s, Apple’s, Redhat’s interests.
I have to agree with the poster. As far as criminal Law this case is a joke. Imagine for a minute I was a Bank robber out on bail. Nevermind bank robbers don’t get out after convicted like MS. While out I was openly planning another heist, confering with other felons, and the DA didn’t do something about it–was legally bared from it? The public would be outraged, and rightfully so. They broke the law–that hasn’t been up for debate for ovre a year now. The DOJ hasn’t even sued them for the huge amout of legal fees they ran up dragging this out for 5+ years–what’s up?
There are only four outcomes that can fix the MS problem:
1. Strip all the ill-gotten funds from the company by forcing all the cash reserves plus 20 percent to be dividend out to share holders. That money belongs to them, not Bill, and it is being used for illegal purposes.
2. Place a 5 year ban on aquiring any company, exclusive patent rights, etc. Even if they had money they couldn’t spend it.
3. The Chairmen should all be barred from participating in any company in any capacity including board, until they count all the money they have made. In 1$ bills, by hand, 7.5 hours a day with mandatory breaks and one-hour lunches.
I know that in lot of countries there are rules about purchases for governmental/public sector.
Big purchases cannot be made without tender/competition.
But in case of well-known software purchases there is no competition now in reality.
In theory, those rules are sufficient to stop some suspicious M$ practices, but who cares…
Lycoris User: adobe….kiss you acrobat business goodbye. office will include the ability to make their own pdf like docs in xml format (with proprietary extensions) and then bundle a viewer with the OS.
Wooooooo, big deal. Acrobat is used in much more cases than just saving Office files as PDF files (if they do have all Acrobat features, prepare for Adobe v. Microsoft for patent compensations). Plus, a PDF viewer….. how would that harm Adobe’s Acrobat business. And why is this a bad thing in the first place? So it is okay for WordPerfect, StarOffice, various open source office suites, etc. to have this feature and for Microsoft no?
ryan: its the only thing that will curb MS’ influence now. I tend to think that a former monopolist, IBM, will also play a role. That company seems to want to displace intel and by association MS.
Unless IBM can convince the white box makers which makes the bulk of the market, support by IBM in the desktop field would be almost harmless. Besides, I think it is better for IBM to support Linux on their current hardware by writing drivers than to go full blown against Windows.
BTW, it is unlikely Intel would go down. Because Intel doesn’t place its future on Microsoft. It places it on the sales of PCs. If Linux sells them, so be it.
blakestone: The public was outraged at being ripped off by Enron, why can’t they care about this?
What should the public be outrage of? Something that is just a mere speculation (like “microsoft is gonna use Palladium and kill Linux”). Besides, the public outrage against Enron was caused because many lost jobs, retirement money, investments, lifesavings etc.
osama: Make sure the bomb detonates after 30 minutes and takes with it a big part of the building.
A nuclear bomb would take the city of Redmond (poor Lycoris User) and surrounding areas. Plus, if a bomb takes much of Microsoft campus, it take them mere months for them to recover fully. (and they can successfully survive a stock market crash…. hey, that would give me a opportunity to buy some MS stocks).
osama: In the meanwhile, companies like Apple,
Sun,etc can buy diferent parts of microsoft IP and products
and it will basically split up the company!
If they can afford it.
Rob: First of all, the subject line is offensive. Disagreeing with something does not make the object of your dissatisfaction “stupid” unless you’re a toddler.
I would think I’m offensive/inmatture if I directly insults the author. But I didn’t. I find the contents stupid. So in other words, “stupid article” is entirely legitimate.
Rob: I take it you base this on the fact that 1) you’ve written a complete and compatible replacement for MS Office
No. I plan to do so in the future (when I have the money to build a company). Compatible it may not be, but the success of my products wouldn’t be based on the compatiblity.
Rob: 2) you’ve visually inspected the Office source code to make sure it isn’t calling on any API’s that are in fact not documented. Otherwise your statement doesn’t hold up.
I don’t think I have the right to inspect the sourcecode. However, I’m no saying that Office doesn’t use any secret APIs, I’m saying there is NO PROOF to say they do. You heard me right, NO PROOF. Wanna hear that again? NO PROOF.
So if a bunch of Maoist hyppies say that China is the uultimate human rights protector, you think I would believe iit, even though I can’t prove it wrong?
Rob: So if a fool gives a gun to someone and that someone uses it to shoot a bunch of people, it’s the original fool who gave him the gun that is to blame, not the person actually pulling the trigger.
A very very bad analogy. In the capitalistic world, companies with no foresight or business skill would die off. Making it illegal for one company to kill another wouldn’t serve the consumer any use.
Rob: Saying that MS is innocent because its competitors have tapioca for brains is just silly. The power and how it was acquired is secondary to what was done with it once it was acquired.
Yeah, I’m saying Microsoft is innocent because its competitors have tapioca for their brains. Your analogy totally sucks. Why? I don’t know who fits who. Is the “someone” Microsoft or it is the competitor. Is the victims meant to show a crime, or is it the victims of Microsoft. The “fool” is Microsoft or the consumer or the competitor?
Wow, Rob, this has got to be your worst post ever.
Rob: As you often do, you chose to quote wholly out of context. The author was making a general comparison, not a literal one.
It wasn’t fit for a general comparison. In fact, it can’t even be compared.
Rob: The only thing that is supposed to matter is whether or not public interest is being served.
Okay, you are telling me the public are better off with Visio under a seperate company and not part of Microsoft Office? Wow, that is hard to shallow.
Rob: You seem to be saying that the ends justify the means.
No, I’m saying the means justify the end. I don’t like it one bit as much as you for Microsoft to be in the dominant position. But I won’t turn myself into a hypocrite in pushing for the government to take away Microsoft’s success.
Rob: How many projects have died in their infancy or never been born at all because of anti-competitive MS practices?
You tell me.
Rob: If the answer is more than zero then consumers have been done a disservice.
So a project dies in its infancy, how is that bad for the consumer? The very reason why it died was it wasn’t competitive enough. It is a disservice to the consumer to prevent Microsoft to increase their competitive egde on stuff that has yet to matterialize.
Rob: My admiration, however, is not blind.
My isn’t too. There are plenty of acts they did that I wouldn’t do because it pisses off my customers. But those acts, I believe, shouldn’t be illegal. Stealing code, which Microsoft is famous for – I’m against it.
Sun’s JVM sucks? I don’t think so. It used to be though, but it is quite fast and efficient now. Actually, it is much faster than MS’s buggy, ancient vm. Try the latest JVM from Sun rather than spreading FUD.
Yes, I think it sucks, because from experience it is slower than Microsoft’s own JVM. I’m only comparing on desktop apps (on Java applets, the difference is too little to even notice).
As for “buggy”, I never experience a bug in Microsoft’s JVM. Security issues it might have, but fixing them or doing anything Java-related is not really their top priority.
I’m not sure what’s the latest. Is 1.4.1 good enough?
(BTW, the fastest Java implementation I have encountered is Blackdown JVM for Linux)
Java sites are slow? What are you talking about? I know lots of lots of beautiful applet based web applications.
Most of the Java apps I have encountered do no service for me. They may be cool, but useless. Unless you haven’t notice, I go around reading up here and there, posting my comments here and some other sites. Java do nothing but slows them down.
Flash used to be like that too, but with my fast connection, it is downloaded almost immediately (for Flash ads, I mean). Yet I still avoid sites that uses Flash for the layout of their sites.
Even some which require hardcore maths, for instance applet based DSP lab simulation program for universities:
Wow…. how does this hell does this help me enrich my Internet experience? Or most of Windows customers?
Also, with the latest release of Java, Java Web Start technology is preferred over applets if you find them slow.
Nice addition, but still doesn’t fix the problem. The problem it fixes, IIRC, is how fast it loads after
download, not the download time itself.
It is a superb addition to Java family, with which you can install and run Java application with a single click from a web page.
Wow, this is so COOOL! Not. All the Java apps I use (not applets) aren’t web based. All the stuff that is web based… I couldn’t find a reason to install them on my machine.
Just another FUD spreader MS drone.
Yes, so just because I fell Sun’s JVM is slow, and my other opinions, I’m a MS drone….. hrmmm. Gosh, i guess I should stop the Red Hat 8.0 installation happening on my other machine right away! Bill Gates won’t be happy about it….
Dude, are you pyscic? Apparently, this PDF killer is real! http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/11/04/2140226&mode=nested&tid…
its going to be an interesting battle since _alot_ of people in the (im not sure of the correct word for it) typesetting and /book/ printing sector are using pdf/ps as their default format for their automated pdf/ps systems.
and since pdf and postscript are native formats for printing on most industrial level and home printers. (inkjet/laser etc) it isnt going to be easy at all.
so if ms wants a piece of tat they will have todo what the linux people are trying to do now, get a bit of a humonguos market…
its going to level out similar to a merger or something like that…
sergio: You can call certain things that you don’t like as stupid, it doesn’t mean that you are a toddler. It is a very natural thing, and it is not as offensive as you claim. It just reflects the feeling about the idea.
rajan: I would think I’m offensive/inmatture if I directly insults the author. But I didn’t. I find the contents stupid. So in other words, “stupid article” is entirely legitimate.
It IS a personal insult to the author of the article, in my opinion. I’d certainly be insulted if something I wrote was publicly labelled as “stupid”. It’s an offensive way (at least in my eyes) to express dissatisfaction. Disagree without belittling.
OSNews Terms:
1. No bad mouthing or cursing.
9. Even if your whole comment might be nicely crafted and written, but you got one line of text that does not comply with the above, it will result to the moderation or deletion of the whole comment. You have been warned, again.
It’s technically a violation of the terms. “Stupid” isn’t productive or “nicely crafted”, it’s “bad mouthing”. I chose not to mod it down and to reply instead. I often disagree with rajan, but that doesn’t make him “wrong”. It’s much more fun to debate someone than to silence him. 🙂
Sergio, you post the same stuff in pretty much every article you reply to. Blind support of any entity is pointless and makes everyone listening to you basically ignore everything you say because there isn’t even the appearance of impartiality or objectivity.
Trolling on behalf of Microsoft is no better or worse than trolling on behalf of Linux or anything else, despite what you may think. Posting the same unwavering opinions over and over no matter what certainly strikes me as trolling. I am not going to reply to the rest of your article. I’ve read it all before on pretty much every thread you post in and I’ll no doubt read it all again. And again. And again.
rajan: What should the public be outrage of? Something that is just a mere speculation (like “microsoft is gonna use Palladium and kill Linux”).
Speculation is a bad thing? Because we can’t see the future with absolute clarity and accuracy we should not be concerned? We should not wonder “what if …?” If that had been the thinking throughout the history of humanity one wonders whether we’d have mastered fire by this point. “Fire might be useful. But that’s mere speculation. Nevermind.” Who knows what the final outcome of Palladium will be? Should we be outraged? I don’t think so. But, as with everything else with such broad implications, we should certainly be concerned. You know what they say: hope for the best, plan for the worst.
I don’t think I have the right to inspect the sourcecode. However, I’m no saying that Office doesn’t use any secret APIs, I’m saying there is NO PROOF to say they do.
If there was a point there other than, “I’ll say what I want and since you can’t disprove it it must be true” then I don’t know what it was. As a rather extreme example, I hereby claim that 92.38301% of the APIs used in MS Office are poorly documented or intentionally obfuscated.
I don’t think I have the right to inspect the sourcecode.
In which case you have NO PROOF I’m wrong. Would you like to hear that again? NO PROOF.
Silly, huh? I kind of doubt my number is right (actually, I’m positive it isn’t), but following your logic I could stand by it, and quite correctly, too. After all, you can’t prove me wrong …
So a project dies in its infancy, how is that bad for the consumer? The very reason why it died was it wasn’t competitive enough.
Or maybe it was locked out or intentionally crushed by a monopoly.
It wasn’t fit for a general comparison. In fact, it can’t even be compared.
Why state what is obviously an opinion as incontrovertible fact? It made sense to me. I’m sure it made sense to others. It apparently didn’t to you. Doesn’t mean its invalid. If everything I didn’t agree with was invalid or (to use your words) “not fit”, I’d mod down or delete over half the stuff I read here and Eugenia would hunt me down and kill me (just joking, I hope). How much fun would that make the site? Not very. Opinions are not facts. Defending them as if they are is no fun. If opinions never changed it’d be a pretty boring world.
As for “buggy”, I never experience a bug in Microsoft’s JVM. Security issues it might have, but fixing them or doing anything Java-related is not really their top priority.
If Microsoft is going to release a JVM they should maintain it properly. Period. It’s part of the responsbility of releasing a piece of software. (Of course, a faulty JVM might make “java” look bad to the average Windows user — but surely MS doesn’t want that no matter how dead they want java).
Actually, I find the MS JVM substantially faster and more stable than the official one from Sun. I’ve never understood why people say it’s buggy or slow. Maybe I’m just lucky. On both my current machines the MS JVM is MUCH faster than Sun’s.
I’m not trying to flame you, rajan. I kind of enjoy having you tell me exactly how wrong I am. Makes me think about things from a different perspective. If my previous post was, as you said, my worst ever, I apologize. Wasn’t my intent to offend you, just to respectfully (if strongly) disagree.