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Features: One Coder's Opinion of the Microsoft Opinion |
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It's all over but the shouting. The non-settling states can still appeal, but they're not going to win. The DC Circuit slapped down Judges Sporkin and Jackson when they tried to give Microsoft a hard time; now that it has the ruling it wants, it's going to let that ruling stand. That leaves only the Supreme Court, and it's hard for me to imagine this particular Supreme Court even hearing the Microsoft case.
So Microsoft has its do-nothing settlement, a settlement that's less burdensome than the consent decree it signed in 1994. You know, the consent decree with the Chinese Wall and all that jazz that Microsoft ignored, sparking the current case. And yet, looking through the opinion, the thing that struck me wasn't the weakness of the punishment Judge Kollar-Kotelly signed into effect. Instead, I was struck by how weak the plaintiffs' proposed remedies were.
Time has passed this case by, just as Microsoft wanted. And in a strange sort of way, Microsoft has been right all along. Once breakup was off the table, this anti-trust suit wouldn't have done anything even if Microsoft had lost. (Continues inside . . .)
Look through the Opinion, I dare you. Just the table of contents. That's all you need to know what's going on. These provisions are laughable on their face. IE interoperability? Exclusive Windows licensing agreements? Desktop icons? Desktop icons? Ha ha. It is to laugh. Microsoft has already made most of the UI changes. They're irrelevant now. Microsoft won that war while the courts dithered this many a year. And the licensing agreement restrictions are full of holes, enormous holes. The consent decree was too simple -- "integrated applications" was such a generic phrase that Microsoft could lawyer it to death. But the settlement is too complex -- there are so many individual exceptions that Microsoft is sure to find one or another to cover any particular tactic.
But it's not like the suing states had any better ideas. Have a look down at their proposed remedies and ask yourself: would these make any difference now? I think the answer is and must be "no." What would an open source IE do now? We already have an open source web browser compatible with IE's main features. In fact, we have more than one. Fat lot of good they're doing. It's too late to help Netscape in any meaningful way. The time for that was before this lawsuit was filed.
A mandatory auction of Office? Oh, great. Company X has Cherry Office. Gosh, golly gee, isn't that nice. Microsoft has Office Classic, plus forty billion dollars. Company X is screwed. How much would you pay for the Office source and the right to use it? I'd bid a few hundred bucks, just in case no one bid more, but this is not an area in which meaningful head-to-head competition is possible without a lot more levelling. Any serious Office purchaser would need half of the Office development team and their infrastructure.
I'm serious. Major Microsoft projects -- like major software projects at any other huge software house -- are their own universes. Office has its own proprietary build process. It has its own special dialects of C++ and COM. You join Office, you get a manual half an inch thick talking about coding conventions and checking in code. Office is not a piece of software. It is an industrial process that occasionally lays eggs.
A ban on "knowing interference" with non-Microsoft software? Sure, it's tempting to have the Court keep Microsoft from playing the "Windows isn't done until Lotus won't run" game, but Microsoft is right on this one. Courts cannot make technical judgements. They're not professionally competent. Would you want to be the special master in charge of determining whether AOL 9.1 doesn't run on Windows XP Squared SP1 because of Microsoft's incompetence or because of a hidden design decision? Speaking as a former software developer, I must point out that the line between feature decisions and bug-induced constraints is not a bright one. On my cynical days, I don't think there's such a line at all. Certainly not one that judges are good at detecting.
Mandatory support for earlier versions of Windows so Microsoft won't break old apps as much? Sure, that'd be great. I'd love to see this. But you tell me how it would stop Microsoft from crushing its competitors. How will this stop Microsoft from squeezing AOL in the broadband pipes, or from undermining Sun's server business, or keeping Windows programs from running on open source Windows clones? I'm all ears.
A mandatory distribution of a Sun-compliant Java engine with Windows? Big whoop. Big big whoop. May I introduce you to C# and the Common Language Runtime? Microsoft has end-run around Java. It no longer poses a meaningful threat.
Requiring Microsoft to report its investments in other companies? Keeping Microsoft from lying when it says it supports industry standards? Closer monitoring of Microsoft's intellectual property claims against other companies? All honorable, worthy ideas. All completely beside the point. These bad behaviors are diversionary tactics, insigificant pieces of Microsoft's strategy of domination. Microsoft is sooo not dependent on them in maintaining its market power.
Step back. Clear your head of the rhetoric of this case for a bit. Forget Apple, forget Netscape, forget those poor hardware vendors who couldn't put an AOL icon on the desktop or sell Windows without IE. Forget the angels-and-pins arguments about the meaning of "integrated," forget the roadshow of incompetent witnesses at the first trial. And ask yourself where the real threats are. Where is the future uncertain or unclear? What fledgling markets will Microsoft turn to next? Where is there still a chance that a wiser court might do some good?
Well, I'm sorry, but it ain't middleware. Everyone thought that middleware was the future. Write once, run anywhere, and there goes the Windows platform. IE was the shark, the velociraptor. Java was the the small furry mammal picking up the scraps and sharpening its claws. Such a compelling story, so full of drama and pathos. And so wholly irrelevant. Microsoft has spent who knows how much money on the CLR in case middleware turns out to be the future -- but do you remember how much money Microsoft spent on Cairo or on NetDocs? Microsoft doesn't guess right; it just gets there the fustest with the mostest. And it's been just as wrong on middleware as everyone else.
The future is in that horrible euphemism, "trusted computing." (And in handheld devices and Internet-baed modular services, I suppose, but neither of these futures was on the Court's radar, either.) Palladium and TCPA and DRM are where the computer world is headed. And if these schemes prove workable at all -- a big, big if -- it will be Microsoft that controls them. Repeat that last sentence to yourself a dozen times.
Everyone's been looking in the wrong direction. The browser is a universal UI for information delivery and management. And that's about all it's turned out to be. Just a window. Not Windows. Just a window. IE has no leverage. Essentially every proprietary technology Microsoft has tried to push through IE has failed miserably. Even its special non-standard XML extensions to IE have been bypassed, with time, in favor of standards-compliant pages. Nor, looking in the other direction, is IE noticeably propping up Windows right now. Everyone and their mother has a decent browser now, underlying OS be damned. The Open Source world is taking on Microsoft not at the browser level, but at the application level. Of course.
No, the real story is beneath: the substratum of OS and hardware support required to run applications that don't trust you, the user. These are the proprietary codecs needed to make Windows Media Player spin. These are the encryption schemes needed to ship digital content back and forth. These are the hardwired IDs and untamperable BIOS chips needed to customize files so they work on one computer and no other. These are the file subroutines and OS libraries needed to store every document on disk in such a way that even a user who wants to copy them to a floppy cannot get a clean copy. These are the hidden homunculi who shuffle bits around in the secret recesses of your desktop black box.
Microsoft wants its label on the seal of that box and on the splash screen. It wants to sell expensive certification courses for Trusted Comping Engineers, to take a hefty chunk of the purchase price for everything digital and trusted, to be the billion-pound gorilla who can tell consumers and media cartels what the rules are going to be. And, thanks to the settlement, no one is going to stand in its way.
Provision J is the killer. It's such a prize that I'm going to quote it in full. Read it carefully. Imprint its words upon your mind, for they shall loom large in our future.
J. No provision of this Final Judgment shall:
1. Require Microsoft to document, disclose or license to third parties: (a) portions of
APIs or Documentation or portions or layers of Communications Protocols the
disclosure of which would compromise the security of a particular installation or
group of installations of anti-piracy, anti-virus, software licensing, digital rights
management, encryption or authentication systems, including without limitation,
keys, authorization tokens or enforcement criteria; or (b) any API, interface or
other information related to any Microsoft product if lawfully directed not to do
so by a governmental agency of competent jurisdiction.
2. Prevent Microsoft from conditioning any license of any API, Documentation or
Communications Protocol related to anti-piracy systems, anti-virus technologies,
license enforcement mechanisms, authentication/authorization security, or third
party intellectual property protection mechanisms of any Microsoft product to any
person or entity on the requirement that the licensee: (a) has no history of
software counterfeiting or piracy or willful violation of intellectual property
rights, (b) has a reasonable business need for the API, Documentation or
Communications Protocol for a planned or shipping product, (c) meets
reasonable, objective standards established by Microsoft for certifying the
authenticity and viability of its business, (d) agrees to submit, at its own expense,
any computer program using such APIs, Documentation or Communication
Protocols to third-party verification, approved by Microsoft, to test for and ensure
verification and compliance with Microsoft specifications for use of the API or
interface, which specifications shall be related to proper operation and integrity of
the systems and mechanisms identified in this paragraph.
Got that? Microsoft has a blanket exemption for disclosure for security-related APIs and protocols. Which, surprise surprise, happens to include anything trusted computing could ever encompass. Digital Rights Player certainly can be locked up tight under "third party intellectual property protection mechanisms." Palladium itself falls under "encryption," "authorization," "anti-virus," "authentication" . . . oh, why bother enumerating the ways at all? Microsoft will disclose exactly what it wants to disclose -- and on exactly the terms it wants. Oh, sure, the broad parameters will be open. But there will come a day when the encryption scheme, or perhaps the digital audio transmission protocol, or maybe the handshake between a compliant handheld and a compliant desktop machine, or some other critical bit of our computing infrastructure will be secret again. Microsoft will know, and its contractually-bound friends will know, and the rest of us will be on the wrong side of the DMCA fence yet again as Microsoft and its hunting buddies carry out their mad obsession with tracking down and eliminating that offensive animal known as "consumer choice" once and for all.
DRM is not an entrepreneur's world. Entrepreneurs take risks; they bring new things into being. DRM is all about eliminating all risks, about keeping anything unplanned from ever existing. And entrepreneurs will not fare well in this future, not with Microsoft and its forty-billion pile setting the ground rules. The next Netscape is probably dying already. Somewhere out there is a little startup in the stereotypical garage, sitting on a brilliant scheme to secure networks against viruses, spam, and distributed denial-of-services attacks -- in a way that preserves anonymity and freedom on the local scales where individuals experience their liberties and rights. And that startup -- even now -- is having trouble getting funding, having trouble explaining to people why they should pay attention and take a chance.
After all, Microsoft is out there, Microsoft with a settlement in its pocket and a chip on its shoulder and a dream or a nightmare of what the future might be. Microsoft is coming to eat the children and frighten the pets and leave a smoking wasteland where the computer and network security worlds used to be.
Sure, Microsoft didn't think it'd be like this. There are even parts of Microsoft that are still singing the old song -- you know, the one about middleware and the cross-platform (meaning XP and CE, of course) browser. They'll probably be singing it for years to come. No one ever said that Microsoft was unified and coherent. But these parts are just like the parts of Microsoft that thought this Internet thing was overhyped, that never really got what the big deal was. Office still doesn't, not really. But has that stopped Office? Will that stop the CLR? No. They'll chug along happily, making some money here and there and spending more, while Palladium hauls in the big bucks.
And there's nothing the Court could have done about it, because no one is even thinking in those terms. Judge Kollar-Kotelly, the states, even Microsoft's own attorneys are still arguing like it's 1999, or 1997, or 1994. Today's Opinion is 300+ pages of close argument about competitive issues that are either obsolete or irrelevant. Microsoft won't do the specific things it got slapped for again; it doesn't need to. And to the extent that the states asked for other remedies, their requests were denied -- and quite properly, too. Some of the remedies are in 1999 terms, at least -- but they don't pertain to anything Microsoft was shown to have done wrong at trial. The target moves too fast -- and Microsoft pointed this fact out quite adroitly, if not in exactly those terms.
Judge Jackson was on to something with his instincts about a breakup. He blew his hand, of course, with his blabbing to the press and his obsession with Microsoft's moral qualities. But the same technical ignorance and visible boredom that blinded him so frequently during the trial, I think, allowed him not to be trapped by the details. He had only a weak idea about how software works, about how the software industry evolves, about what was really at stake in the case. And as for the future and the likely effects of specific remedies, he had utterly no clue. And so a breakup was the only way to be sure. And in ordering one, Judge Jackson was being inadvertently brilliant. Because, of cousre, no one knew what would happen to the computer industry, least of all Microsoft. Of everything discussed then or now, only remedies on the scale of a breakup would have been general enough to handle what actually is about to happen.
The Court of Appeals noted the ignorance and the confusion, and sent the case back down to a judge who could handle the details. Which she did, reasonably adroitly, completely missing the forest for the trees. It's Al Capone and tax evasion all over again, except the metaphor breaks down, because you can even make out a reasonable case that the specific charges against Microsoft were either false or trivial. No, perhaps all that can be said is that Microsoft was arrogant, and acted on that arrogance, and that people respond viscerally to arrogance, Judge Jackson most of all.
But in giving in to his anger, in joining the Dark Side, wasn't Judge Jackson perhaps right? After all, Microsoft's problem was its arrogance and has always been. Microsoft is just the computer company with a will to domination and a remarkable track record of sucess in achieving the domination it desires. And so it will remain, Compliance Officer or not.
The monopolist is dead. Long live the monopolist.
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"User's Login" | Login/Create an Account | 30 comments |
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Re: One Coder's Opinion of the Microsoft Opinion (Score: 0) by Anonymous (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) on Saturday, November 02 @ 01:50:00 EST | It seems that now the citizens have to make noise for getting their right to freedom enforced. Team up, tell every (legality) ignorant computer user why he/she should not be using Microsoft Products. More importantly, STOP using Microsoft Products even if that means you have to let go of some conveniences. |
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Re: One Coder's Opinion of the Microsoft Opinion (Score: 0) by Anonymous (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) on Saturday, November 02 @ 02:27:20 EST | Wellp, this confirms my belief that the only way to force MS to compete fairly is to shove competition down it's throat.
People need to do something that really pisses MS off, like switching to other products en masse, and then perhaps MS will realize that the consumer is priority #1, not making a quick buck.
Consumers will not like Palladium, MS knows this. But once Palladium has been forced on everyone neatly with Longhorn, MS will be free to do WHATEVER they want to do with thier buddies in Hollywood and the music industry, at the expense of the consumer and the internet. |
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Re: One Coder's Opinion of the Microsoft Opinion (Score: 0) by Anonymous (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) on Saturday, November 02 @ 11:19:14 EST | Perspective sidebar:
Ever since we changed from being 'customers' to 'consumers' the focus is not about what the users need or want but what the companies can shove down our throats. When we choose to use Software Libre we take back the focus and become 'customers' again. |
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DRM is the future, MS mandated Windows the present (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) on Saturday, November 02 @ 11:46:01 EST | Yes, DRM would guarantee Microsoft's control in the future, but it will take many years before the hardware base is replace with DRM crippled hardware. In the mean time, Microsoft will attempt to control the protocols used in business to business ordering, invoicing, etc. ( SOAP.) They will be able to do this because under the consent decree Microsoft may legally force manufacturers to ship Microsoft Windows on all their computers.
III.G. G. Microsoft shall not enter into any agreement with:
1. any IAP, ICP, ISV, IHV or OEM that grants Consideration on the condition that
such entity distributes, promotes, uses, or supports, exclusively or in a fixed
percentage, any Microsoft Platform Software, except that Microsoft may enter
into agreements in which such an entity agrees to distribute, promote, use or
support Microsoft Platform Software in a fixed percentage whenever Microsoft in
good faith obtains a representation that it is commercially practicable for the
entity to provide equal or greater distribution, promotion, use or support for
software that competes with Microsoft Platform Software, ...
Given that Linux costs $0, it's clearly practicable for all computer manufacturers to ship 100% of their computers with Linux. So, Microsoft may require all manufacturers to ship 100% of their computers with Microsoft Windows.
See also II.F.2, which in no way prohibits such a contract.
III.F.2
Microsoft shall not enter into any agreement relating to a Windows Operating
System Product that conditions the grant of any Consideration on an ISV's
refraining from developing, using, distributing, or promoting any software th
competes with Microsoft Platform Software or any software that runs on any
software that competes with Microsoft Platform Software, except that Micros
may enter into agreements that place limitations on an ISV's development, u
distribution or promotion of any such software if those limitations are reason
necessary to and of reasonable scope and duration in relation to a bona fide
contractual obligation of the ISV to use, distribute or promote any Microsoft
software or to develop software for, or in conjunction with, Microsoft.
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Re: One Coder's Opinion of the Microsoft Opinion (Score: 0) by Anonymous (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) on Saturday, November 02 @ 11:54:22 EST | I wonder how the US will be able to compete with the rest of the world if the US is the only country left using MS software? It is clear that the vast majority are actively looking to move to other platforms whether for cost, political, security or just plain anti-american reasons. To put this in perspective, even with 100% of the US population using Windows, that would be just 1/4 of the population of China, and 1/23rd of the population of the planet. Now you can say that 90+% of computers today run MS software but what happens to the ability of the US to compete with a world that decides to look elsewhere, especially as it is now clear that the US will do nothing to stop the behaviour of this company?
I think MS just lost whatever they might think today. This will come back and bite them in the form of more anti-trust suits, especially in non-US markets. The EU is actively looking at them and has been waiting for the US trial to end. The EU is very capable of slapping huge fines on them, or worse still simply shifting all systems over to Linux and ignoring MS. This isn't over by a long shot.
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The end of computing (Score: 0) by Anonymous (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) on Saturday, November 02 @ 12:02:41 EST | ... and the computer will become this dull machine where no innovation is borne.
And then the hobbyists and free thinkers and artists and creative minds will look for new hobbies and platforms and arenas, just like they did before in recent history.
And then a new technology will arrive that will take the world by storm because it's so insanely great and new and fresh and free and different from the old digital computer, that everybody will want it. That's the next wave.
And probably it won't come from the USA. Unfortunately, this society will pay a high price for feeding such greedy behavior: loss of leadership. |
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Re: One Coder's Opinion of the Microsoft Opinion (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) on Saturday, November 02 @ 14:40:44 EST |
No actually there are some things that the settlement does that ARE important:
(1) OEMs being able to launch applications
(2) OEMs beings able to install multiple OSes
(3) Icons and start menu ARE important. No matter how you poo poo the matter. Just one example, if MS had a free hand they would still have mandatory MSN icons and sign ups plaster everywhere they wanted. If an OEM said one word to AOL, they would get their license yanked. |
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Re: One Coder's Opinion of the Microsoft Opinion (Score: 2, Insighful) by krinsky on Sunday, November 03 @ 03:51:16 EST (User Info | Send a Message) http:// | Why are you so convinced that trusted computing is Microsoft's future? There seem to be two assumptions here, both uncertain: that DRM as it's yet been conceived is anyone's future, and that Microsoft is the one who'll pull it off.
The biggest problem with the latter assumption is that Microsoft doesn't own any appreciable digital content. Yes, they've got MSNBC and Slate, but no one cares about DRM for news anyway, since by the time it's copied much it's old. What else? I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but Microsoft isn't a major player in the entertainment industry, as much as they'd like to be.
Meanwhile, the people who do own the content aren't much interested in digital rights management because they don't believe there are any rights to manage. As far as the studios and music labels are concerned, I have the right to buy a DVD or CD and play it--preferably on only one player--at home. That's it. In such a world, there's little incentive for them to support "trusted computers" at all, as there are no permissible applications.
For now, too, there are few practical applications. MP3s didn't take off until the technology allowed music to be exchanged online at CD-level quality. Where MP3s are concerned, the cat's out of the bag, and customers will ferociously balk at any system that impinges on the MP3-exchanging abilities they have now. On the video front, the technology to exchange video at DVD- or even VHS-level quality online just isn't there; no one has the bandwidth, and with the end of the Internet boom, it's not immediately forthcoming.
Moreover, and in the absence of an enticing application, customers are balking at DRM. Look at what happened to DIVX, look at the public response to Passport, and look what happens each time a company comes out with too evil a privacy policy. Customers may be sheep, but they don't like to be mistrusted; the only reason there isn't more outrage about DVD region encoding is that 99% of what anyone wants is available in Region 1, and the few people in the US (and the many people abroad) who care buy multiregion players.
In short, "trusted computing" is, for now, a buzzword with little buzz. Even with Microsoft's full monopoly power behind it, it requires participation from dozens of major players who have diverging interests, as well as some form of customer demand. I have little doubt that we'll see a Microsoft-led trusted computing strategy and set of bundled DRM apps in XP 2004 or whatever the next big OS release is, but the icons for those apps will probably sit un-clicked-on on most people's desktops, whether or not OEMs are allowed to remove them.
Provision J is a remarkable hole (though, in fairness to Microsoft, probably a necessary one for a really secure DRM strategy). I'm just not sure that it's going to be such a central one in the next few chapters of the history of Microsoft nor of computing.
What do you think people will be doing with "trusted computing" technology in five years? What would they be doing if Microsoft were split into a dozen impoverished pieces tomorrow? |
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Re: One Coder's Opinion of the Microsoft Opinion (Score: 0) by Anonymous (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) on Sunday, November 03 @ 07:39:01 EST | The biggest problem atm is not Microsoft, but rather the misinterperetation of the settlement. 90% of anyone and everyone who reads and/or summarises it somehow manages to come up with countless mad conspiracy theories and obscure 'facts'.
All that matters right now, and for the next following years: are OEMS. The only real threat to any competition was microsoft's tactics to force OEMs out of doing business with them. There are several projects that have made great success with opening the windows api and its protocols. Its disclosure will only aid them, but it hardly even matters anymore. Besides, if OEMs aren't forced into anything, there is no reason that competition won't establish themselves, except for those who are inferior to microsoft (god forbid).
DRM is in many ways required to secure the risks of using the internet for business and establish a consumer confidence that was so lacking during the dot com bust (and caused it). Besides, who wouldnt want the ability to do an online transaction and feel 100% safe???? Sure microsoft can exploit it in their behalf, but if it so obviously starts a new monopoly, then there will obviously be a new court case, now won't there?! |
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Re: Back-door trade-off (Score: 0) by Anonymous (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) on Sunday, November 03 @ 09:17:12 EST | I am certain that there has been a trade off- a back-door for a fascist [republican] government into future MS systems, especially those used by other countries. Many governments around the world are aware of this and are moving to Open Sourse solutions, especially to Linux as platform and infrastructure. This is not paranoia. I predict that in a few years, there will be the "American Web" AND the WWW. Non-Americans aren't going to go for MS and US Gov lies. This decision was to be expected. The "exchange" has been made. The goddess Pallas will protect Troy with MS as keeper of the statue. And of course, the rest of the world won't care because they will go about their biZZ as usual, with less ans less US interference and less and less Microsoft-specific, dictated, and imposed software and hardware. I must say, at times like this, I am very happy not to be an American. If I were, I'd be obliged to silently watch as the uneducated majority, waving their little paper American flags at parades, renounce even more of MY liberties for fear of the ubiquitous "terrorist threat" and for fear of their own fascist government. |
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Re: One Coder's Opinion of the Microsoft Opinion (Score: 0) by Anonymous (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) on Sunday, November 03 @ 12:51:15 EST | I read some large part of the Memorandum Opinion, which judge Kollar-Kotelly wrote. I cannot say that I am surprised by her findings, which however does not mean that I anticipated in advance what she would decide. In fact I believe she should be given credit for doing as much as she did, especially when one consider how weak the plaintiffs arguments were. I myeslf was never really moved by the notion of a breakup of microsoft.
Microsoft, alone, was never the problem to begin with. Incompatibility issues and the difficulties which such posed predate the existence of microsoft. In fact microsoft was *an* answer to the incompatability issues which beset the fledgling home computer industry back in the late 70's and early 80's. Back then incompatibility issues went far beyond whether a particular application would run on a particular operating system-there were virtually no standards at any level-whether as regards to hardware or software.
The success of middleware has obviated much of these incompatibility issues today-microsoft office compatibility is only an issue in the established and entrenched computer-based service industry- to the home user this issue is moot at present-by virtue of the availability of cross-platform alternatives, which cross both hardware and software divides. Any person who has a PC can run alternate operating systems and use equivalent qualtiy products -no home-computer user needs MS anymore, theoretically- for several years now, practically-contemporarily.
But we now only have PC's. PC's did not come from microsoft- they came from IBM. The architectural structure of PC's has remained essentially unchanged since 1981. And for the record- Apple computers were not PC's, even though they offer similiar functionality-nowadays Apple itself is using PC component systems in their computers, obfuscating the significant difference which once existed between apple computers and PC's. . PC's are computers based on Intel and Intel-based clone(AMD/VIA etc.) microprocessors. Microsofts *monopoly* has been enabled by the ubiquitous availability of cheap PC hardware.
This hardware basis, as established by IBM, required Intel microprocessors. IBM left the PC world after having given birth to it. Microsoft worte the first mainstream widely-successfull OS for the PC platform. Intel manufactured the microprocessors and primary components for this platform. The hadrware basis of platform became standardized defacto through the functionality which was expected from PC's, along the lines of the expectations and design plans which initilally motivated IBM to produce the first PC.
IBM left sufficient room in their implementation for copy-cats to innovate -and in time IBM was trumped by those who followed in their steps, Compaq being the first of the big ones. Yet it was the industry wide adherence to the platform design proffered by IBM and supplied by Intel, and then later its copy-cats, which foredained MS to its monopoly position. The isuse was, has been, is and shall remain to be - the oligopoly of MS, INTEL(&clones), and the platform implementators(NVIDIA/CREATIVE LABS/ATI/Western DIGITAL etc.).
To the extent that these varying different companies collude to eliminate the establishment of any fundamentally different home-computing platform architectures-microsoft is doomed to remain the apparent *monopoly*. Home computers were an experiment in human-computer interaction. The experiment was terminated once a general concesus seemed to have been reached that the PC is the answer to the computing desires of the masses.
What most people desire, tends to be defined by what they know of in advance- that which is already there, and which may be chosen from. The termination of this experiment coincided with the birth of 'users'-and for those who can't remember back that far- there were no 'users' in the late 70's and early 80's. Linux(GNU) has tapped into the pool of people who are properly called 'us
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Re: One Coder's Opinion of the Microsoft Opinion (Score: 1) by krinsky on Sunday, November 03 @ 20:34:39 EST (User Info | Send a Message) http:// | Why are you so convinced that trusted computing is Microsoft's future? There seem to be two assumptions here, both uncertain: that DRM as it's yet been conceived is anyone's future, and that Microsoft is the one who'll pull it off.
The biggest problem with the latter assumption is that Microsoft doesn't own any appreciable digital content. Yes, they've got MSNBC and Slate, but no one cares about DRM for news anyway, since by the time it's copied much it's old. What else? I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but Microsoft isn't a major player in the entertainment industry, as much as they'd like to be.
Meanwhile, the people who do own the content aren't much interested in digital rights management because they don't believe there are any rights to manage. As far as the studios and music labels are concerned, I have the right to buy a DVD or CD and play it--preferably on only one player--at home. That's it. In such a world, there's little incentive for them to support "trusted computers" at all, as there are no permissible applications.
For now, too, there are few practical applications. MP3s didn't take off until the technology allowed music to be exchanged online at CD-level quality. Where MP3s are concerned, the cat's out of the bag, and customers will ferociously balk at any system that impinges on the MP3-exchanging abilities they have now. On the video front, the technology to exchange video at DVD- or even VHS-level quality online just isn't there; no one has the bandwidth, and with the end of the Internet boom, it's not immediately forthcoming.
Moreover, and in the absence of an enticing application, customers are balking at DRM. Look at what happened to DIVX, look at the public response to Passport, and look what happens each time a company comes out with too evil a privacy policy. Customers may be sheep, but they don't like to be mistrusted; the only reason there isn't more outrage about DVD region encoding is that 99% of what anyone wants is available in Region 1, and the few people in the US (and the many people abroad) who care buy multiregion players.
In short, "trusted computing" is, for now, a buzzword with little buzz. Even with Microsoft's full monopoly power behind it, it requires participation from dozens of major players who have diverging interests, as well as some form of customer demand. I have little doubt that we'll see a Microsoft-led trusted computing strategy and set of bundled DRM apps in XP 2004 or whatever the next big OS release is, but the icons for those apps will probably sit un-clicked-on on most people's desktops, whether or not OEMs are allowed to remove them.
Provision J is a remarkable hole (though, in fairness to Microsoft, probably a necessary one for a really secure DRM strategy). I'm just not sure that it's going to be such a central one in the next few chapters of the history of Microsoft nor of computing.
What do you think people will be doing with "trusted computing" technology in five years? What would they be doing if Microsoft were split into a dozen impoverished pieces tomorrow? |
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