telnet :thumb: ha ha ive been waiting for my change to post something witty or half brained!
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telnet :thumb: ha ha ive been waiting for my change to post something witty or half brained!
Now step out of the server room and into the office space. See all those hundreds of grey boxes sitting on desks with browsers installed on them? Well I'm willing to bet they're all running Windows and at least 90% of them are using IE. Whether we like it or not Microsoft does have an unhealthy amount of clut in the industry and, while they may not dominate the server market, they most certainly monopolise the Desktop market.Quote:
They dont rule the industry. The fact of the matter is they could very easily and quickly loose market share. Remember the majority of huge business like banks etc run unix
I fail to see why a) this is a bad thing and b) why you believe the two are mutually exclusive. While monopolisation is a natural outcome of free reign capitalism I would argue that it is very definitely not good for the consumer and, in turn, for the continuation of a capitalist system.Quote:
that's a socialist view, not a capitalist view
In a capitalist system their is a tendancy of wealth to 'pool'. The reasons for this are many but the most pronounced is the fact that wealth creates influence and influence can be leveraged to produce wealth. Successful companies will therefore tend to gain a dominant position in their market and, if their position becomes strong enough, they can leverage enough influence in related markets to freeze their competition out, creating a monopoly.
Competition is a neccessary part of any capitalist system if we want to see that system continue to serve the public. Remove competition and you remove any impetous for the monopoly holder to offer the consumer quality at a price. If you're dealing with a neccessity rather than a luxury (and I think you could argue that internet access falls under neccessity in our Western society) you open the door wide for the monopoly to exploit the consumer directly. They are able to lower standards and raise prices while maintaining enough influence to prevent new competitors from entering the market to offer a better deal. At that point, Capitalism ceases to fulfil the most important function that any social system must fulfil, namely to offer the society that follows it a decent quality of life.
I don't dislike microsoft, I have untold respect from them. While there may have been a few dodgly practices along the way, I believe they've achieved their market position largely through offering people what they most want, (mostly) reliable software at a pretty fair price which is simple enough for my Mum to use. It's that last bit that's been most important for them and they've delievered on it far better than any other market player (apart from Apple and they beat them on price and inter-operability). Microsoft deserve to have achieved the market position they have. However, having achieved it should they be left free reign to consolidate it to the point where the consumer is left open to exploitation, that's a big no in my eyes.
I really can't claim I know enough about this particular case to judge whether Opera are right or not. But I do know that it's extremely healthy that they are able to bring the case to an independent third party. Without that check in place you might as well give up on your principles of democracy right now because in 50-100 years time your society will be run, not by your elected government, but by the unelected corporation that just bought out your energy supplier, your local supermarket, your waterboard, your telecoms company and every other service you need to survive.
Well said. TBH, I don't care weather you call my opinions socialist, communist or whatever. In the UK, I know it's (was) a government created market the postal service had a monopoly on the postal service. Therefore their was no incentive to provide an efficient and quality service.
I don't despise Microsoft, I've just put Windows on this laptop after battling with OpenSuse. None of the cometitors have even come close to Microsofts usability and feel. My opinion is; if I am going to write a report I want to open an application, write it and print it. I don't want to spend 5 hours fiddling around trying to find features, sort out hardware issues and find a driver for my printer. The Linux side is getting better but until hardware / games manufacturers take more notice there won't be a mass migration.
I do disagree with some of their tacticts and the elemination of competition put them in a position to tell us what to what to do, how to do it and what to do it with. I don't call that freedom of choice.
I, on the other hand DO hate Microsoft. However this hasn't always been the case. If it wasn't for those slimy, spineless ingrates I never would have gotten into programming.
The great irony of it all is that since I'm almost 100% Linux now all of the coding skills I learned under windows are now actually 3 or 4 orders of magnitude easier to utilise under Linux. This is for various reasons but primarily the fact that everything is free and information is so much more readily available and reliable.
The single thing that I find most irksome above all other things about windows is that you spend £1500 on a new machine and you get it out of the box and actually the only useful thing you can do is surf the internet, you can't do ANYTHING else at all without buying software or writing it yourself. Oh except you can't write it yourself because you haven't got any development tools.
I clearly remember my first experience with a computer ( I think I was 6 at the time I can't even remember what OS it was running, probably an acorn of some variety). It didn't know how to use it (it was sitting at a command line prompt) so basically made the assumption that a computer would be good at maths so I typed in a sum. The computer didn't know what to do with it so it gave up, hardly surprising. I remember being massively disappointed with it.
Now every time I have to sit at a windows box I get that same sense of disenchantment.
Linux, however, is what I dreamed a computer would be when I was 6. In those days I used to worship astronauts and test-pilots and people that could do all that awesome stuff. That's what Linux is, astronauts, man.
I wanted to be a neurosurgeon when I grew up... :D MS is that impossible neurosurgeon.
I also disagree with certain tactics of Microsoft, though as you have the clear choice of installing another browser, I fail to see how they are eliminating competitors.Quote:
Originally Posted by visualAd
Quote:
Originally Posted by CodedFire
I doubt your Mum would be able to telnet around the internet, hey? :)Quote:
Originally Posted by FunkyDexter
All I'm saying is this: How does a user install Opera, without being able to download it, because he has no browser? I don't care about telnet. I don't even know how to use telnet, and I'm an "above average" user... :eek:
I'm all for Linux, but as VisualAd said: until hardware / games manufacturers take more notice there won't be a mass migration. If they can give us something decent to use for games (EG: OpenGL) then I'll move gladly, though that must mean that the games also run on it instead of DirectX... :)
Maybe I should start writing my own Operating System. :D
Pls giv c0d, sir. OK thks bai!1!!!!1
It is very easy to create program that communicates over the Internet via a variety of services. Including HTTP ;)
But does it exist, and do users know about it?
I hate microsoft for two reasons:
1) CALs
2) annual contracts.
nuff said.
I have never seen a "Which web browser would you like to install?" during windows setup. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by BillGeek
Your statement is an intrinsically contradictory argument. You want free choice in the market, but would allow an non-elected arm of the government total authority in what 'free choice' means - therefore it is not free at all.Quote:
Originally Posted by FunkyDexter
One must realize, a monopoly will cease to be a monopoly if they provide an inferior product and/or at an unfavorable price. They can raise their price, but they will sell less product. This gives potential competitors the attractive ROI to jump in and steal market share. The monopolist can attempt to reduce prices in retaliation, but since they already lost the goodwill of the customer, that market share now belongs to the competitor - if the competitor can produce a quality replacement.
Microsoft has the most market share (90%) in the desktop computing OS market, but that's the only a small niche of the entire software industry - and 90% is not technically a monopoly which means 'one seller' (100%).
Opera doesn't make operating systems, so they are not even a direct competitor of Microsoft. While Microsoft was giving IE away for free (like Firefox is free), Opera historically charged money for their browser, and only recently made their desktop browser free of charge.
So, is it Microsoft's fault that while MS and Netscape and Mozilla were giving away browsers for free, that Opera decided to charge money for theirs?
I'd point the blame at Opera SA management for not responding to the market. What does the EU market have to gain by penalizing the better management and market responders , and awarding the stupid?
:rofl: Yes, be that true. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by visualAd
I see a lot of posts in this thread supporting some sort of a romantic idealism of laissez faire, but I don't understand why this is still being thought/talked about. If there were laissez faire, we wouldn't have minimum wage and subsidies and, oh yeah, anti-trust cases like this one! Laissez faire is like a Darwinian version of economical survival of the fittest, it just won't work when applied to a large population. No, population is the wrong word, I should say "a large voter base".
There will always be whiners and losers that someone will cater to to gain a vote or two. So in today's economy, Opera is justified in filing this case, (it's legal, allowed, and others are doing it) but it does not change the fact that they are being complete "gaping voids" of the carcases of maggot-ridden, diarrhea-coated mules.
lol.