I've been meaning to create a thread about this for a while.

Recently, Google and numerous antivirus companies have filed lawsuits against Microsoft for including features that are included in third party products. The rationale is that, by including new features in Vista, the markets for their particular products will no longer exist and it is an unfair and monopolistic tactic. The neckbeards on Slashdot largely concur because they are all very stupid people.

Here's the deal:

In the antivirus vendors' case, they lobbied in Europe because the "closed API" made it difficult or impossible for an AV product to work. See, Norton is basically a virus, right? In order to do its typical halfassed job at scanning for viruses it modifies the kernel. Super. The problem is, Vista added features to prevent all kinds of malware (including norton) from doing that: Kernel Patch Protection randomizes the ABI and all kernel code must be signed.

So the antivirus companies lobbied in Europe to get Microsoft to change it, because the EU is run by really dumb people who don't quite understand technology. So Microsoft settled, and removed those key security features from the x86 (but not x86-64) versions of Vista. It's not like Vista prevents antivirus software from running - just poorly written AV software like Norton and PCillin and other consumer-level worthless garbage, and Norton is a bad, cheap, incompetent company that would rather litigate than fix their broken code.


Google's case is even more retarded than that. They're suing Microsoft for including search in the OS. What the hell? Hey, if Google's desktop search actually offered anything over Microsoft's built-in search (it doesn't) maybe people would use it anyway? This is like those sobbing infants at Netscape and Real who used to whine and cry and sniffle about IE and Windows Media Player being bundled with Windows. Well golly gee, I don't know about anybody else but I'd never buy an OS that came with no media player or web browser (that at the very least you need in order to download Firefox). And RealPlayer? Spyware and telephone-quality sound. Amazing.


The reason I'm posting this thread is mainly because of one astoundingly stupid comment on Slashdot. It talked about how Microsoft has "always" crushed the little guy, and then brought up how Microsoft destroyed this third party drive compression software by adding DriveSpace to MS-DOS.

How ****ing stupid do people have to be? Are we really criticizing a company for making their software better?

Hey, I have a great idea! Let's expand this idea to cover all markets!

Car manufacturers shouldn't be allowed to install antitheft devices because the police will have less business! The new antiscratch coating on HD-DVDs should be illegal because it's stealing business from disc resurfacing companies! Economics should be banned because it's stealing precious collection money from the churches!

Let's all agree to protect stupid, niche markets formed around the flaws in other products by never ever improving anything ever again!

It's one of the common misconceptions of capitalism, and why people think it's so terrible. They don't see the level beyond. Everyone sees Level 1, which is "oh no, big business is shutting down the little guys mom and pop stores". However, a FAR less amount of people see Level 2, which is that in doing so they are making things easier, cheaper, and producing a much better product.

windows vista has google desktop pre-installed. I think that's why they're angry...?

I agree 100%. This has always ticked me off. Those arrogant morons at the EU are eight kinds of retarded. The fact that they listen to these crappy companies whine and calling competition anti-competitive is beyond me. The worst part is, it's always the crappy worthless companies that do it. The reason they're so upset is that they know that even a company like Microsoft will put their craptastic half baked efforts to shame. Seriously, Real Player? Norton?

The thing about Norton ticks me off though. They just got legislators to force MS to make their product insecure so that one of the crappiest AV companies on earth can come in and do it's usual infective job at patching them up.

Why can't MS just make a separate crappy version of windows for the EU and give the regular version to everyone who's politicians have at least half their wits.

Huh? No it doesn't.

I saw the Google article on Slashdot, and you're right, the Slashdotters were all foaming at the mouth over it. I had to stop reading after the level of stupidity just got too high.

Haha, that made me laugh. It's just the thought of a "disc resurfacing company." Sadly they probably exist.

Great post, Jon. I couldn't agree with you more.

This is just like the stupid Wal-Mart protesters. Yes, Wal-Mart has made some poor business decisions, and there are people who have a legitimate beef with Wal-Mart, but most of it is just FUD. I always hear people complain about the pay rates being too low, and that makes them a bad company. Wal-Mart pays employees at least $10 per hour on average, which is a lot more than most mom and pop places are able to pay their employees.

These people, against either Microsoft or Wal-Mart or anyone else, don't understand capitalism, just like mscbuck pointed out. Seriously, you want to stop Wal-Mart from growing, which stops bringing in jobs, makes your area more poor, and eliminates an excellent supplier for the middle class?

The funny part is they say it's protecting capitalism because there's competition. They must mean the kind of capitalism where no-one wins and we're all stuck with mediocre products. I call that socialism. :downs:

They do.


Actually Wal-Mart is terrible for the economy. The only people who make money from Wal-Mart are the Chinese and the Waltons.

If you have a product, Wal-Mart is so ubiquitous that you are essentially forced to do business with them in order to sell it. Wal-Mart tells you what they want to pay for your product, and they squeeze. It results in a downward spiral of quality and production outsourcing.

And no, it's not beneficial for the company either because the original manufacturer doesn't see a dime of the profit. Losing tens of thousands of $20/hr factory jobs isn't worth gaining thousands of $10/hr retail jobs, especially since the last time I checked Wal-Mart doesn't sell items at 50% less.

This is not FUD. This is the truth.

Well that I was not aware of, only the idiots on network news that complain about mom and pop stores closing.

I'm also confused about what is so bad with outsourcing production. I know it takes away jobs but it also makes stuff cheaper so...

How much stuff will you buy when your job is outsourced?

Or when you're making half or a third as much working retail?

I hate Wal-Mart because it's too inexpensive and too convenient.

Because well paying manufacturing jobs are getting outsourced and we are left with a plethora of low paying retail jobs in the wake. If the prices for goods dropped proportionally with the savings from outsourcing production, this would be a non-issue. However, the prices usually don't drop significantly and it results in the average consumer having less buying power to accompany their smaller paychecks.

Ah, well that makes sense.

But I still insist that the average person who hates Wal-Mart doesn't know why.

ANYWAYS back to the subject of how stupid Slashdotters are and all that.

The thing is, you have to realize that for every bit of hurt they do to other companies, they do good for everyone who purchases things there. If they can bleed cheep Chinese products down so be it, good for them. Wal Mart has it's place to be sure, in the low end crap necessities corner of the market, where you're only going to find stuff made in China no matter where you buy it.

The products that Wal Mart sells are not even the kind of products we would be manufacturing anyway. China can do it so much cheaper, that if Wal Mart weren't there to sell it someone else would. We need to restructure our work force so that we're paying people 20$/hr to manufacture things that are actually worth paying 20$/hr to manufacture, not something that we can pay China to do for .10$/ hr.

Not to mention that it usually does *not* make things cheaper. It usually just gives the CEO's more money to cram into their pockets. (Look at Nike for an example)

CEO: Hmm.. It costs me $1.12 to produce one product that I sell for $80. I know, I'll move the factories to India, so it'll only cost me $0.38 to produce that product and I'll make an extra $0.74! Brilliant!

[note: that wasn't a specific example, so don't go buggering me about "well actually it costs Nike 1 dollar and thirteen cents noob."]

Since you brought up Wal-Mart as an example, let's talk about Wal-Mart-owned factories. Workers there work seven days per week and between ten and fourteen hours per day. They are paid about three dollars per week in some Chinese provinces. Most live in squalid on-site housing. Rent is deducted from their paychecks whether they choose to use on-site housing or not. Temperatures inside those factories are inhumane. Workers are instructed to lie about working conditions to Wal-Mart's Bentonville inspectors.

If such an inspector gives a damn about those workers — and they have in the past — they get ****-canned for causing too much trouble. Even if you're the chief inspector.

My point is: Wal-Mart is an evil company. Many are, but few are as insidiously greedy at the expense of human decency as Wal-Mart.

Not to mention becoming 100% dependent on other countries for manufacturing. Wal-Mart puts the squeeze on the entire supply chain, from retail, through shipping, through manufacturer, through raw materials suppliers. It's not just the shoe sewing jobs moving to China. We're losing those jobs too, as well as the industrial capacity our countries used to have. In addition to the economic reasons, this is really bad for national defense.

I don't know about Wal-Mart specifically, but I know a lot of "sweatshops" are actually good for the people that work there, because as ****ty as it may be, the local jobs they would get otherwise are ****tier.

If they could make an anti-virus that wasn't complete and utter trash it wouldn't be a problem, but they can't. So eliminating competition and markets by filling them with substandard products, the people that suffer are the users.

But that's the problem.

Wal-Mart's business model is taking the tapestry of the world's quality of life and turning it into a uniform shade of grey. Give it time. When Wal-Mart finishes squeezing all of their suppliers into China, they're going to start putting the squeeze on their employees' paychecks. We'll all be making that much sooner or later.

(Actually we won't, the first world economy would collapse if that actually happened and the governments would probably be forced to split up Wal-Mart or kill it in order to keep people from starving)

It is not that we don't want to help people in other countries, it is just not worth crippling our industrial capacity to do so.

Wal-Mart carries some specially-manufactured versions of name-brand merchandise which costs less — and therefore is lower-quality — than the original. Suppliers give in to Wal-Mart's demands for such products because most would go bankrupt without Wal-Mart.

You get what you pay for, people. There is a popular misconception that Wal-Mart carries the same merchandise for less money than other stores. Some merchandise is cheaper, but other merchandise is either marked up more than other stores or it's actually a cheaper version of the same merchandise; except manufactured specifically for Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart's good for DVDs because they use DVDs as a loss-leader. They sell new releases for less money than it costs them to buy from the distributor, but they make that money back because most people buy a side of bacon, a gallon of pickles, 20 copies of Mad Magazine and 4 loaves of wonderbread to go with it.

So buy DVDs from Wal-Mart, just make sure you don't buy anything else while you're there.

Yeah, good point. But of course the DVDs are at the back of the store so you have to traipse through other merchandise to get to them.

Take a look at http://www.spacehijackers.co.uk/html/ideas/archipsy/tricks.html for a list of diabolical ways some retail stores influence their customers to buy more.

God forbid they try and get people to...*gasp* BUY MORE THAN THEY WANTED! We might as well get rid of commercials then, because for most people, they are being FORCED to view them.

You don't want to get me started on commercials.

Heh, the clothing industry is really bad about that. Still, the people who spend all that money on expensive brand name clothes deserve every last bit of it.

One of the ways I but nice, cheap clothing is by going to outlets. Unfortunately you have to search through aisles and aisles of junk.

What you have to realize captain sheltered is that by hurting other companies, they are hurting the ECONOMY, which hurts everyone.


Not only that, but Walmart hires alot of illegals. Illegals don't pay taxes.

And yet nobody is trying to force Apple to remove Spotlight because it hurts Google!

(That was pretty much my first reaction to reading that on /. the other morning)

I <3 my mac but such double standards make me cringe.

I can't believe people still think it's cool to hate Windows.

It's like the people that still hate Hot Topic.

Like yeah guys, it doesn't make you cool anymore. It just makes you look like a douche.

How does Walmart "hurt" other companies? I just want to know the rationale behind it. Not that I'm trying to say you are wrong, I just want to know your reasoning.

here's an article that might help explain how wal-mart is hurting other companies:

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html

I'm kind of failing to see why the "hurt" other companies. Using leverage for pricing and such is "business". Consumers made Walmart that popular and huge, it's not Walmart's fault. Am I supposed to feel sorry for Vlasic, or something?

You are going to have a hard time convincing me that I shouldn't want to pay lower prices for a good at Walmart.

Did you even read that article? You still can't understand why wal mart is bad for just about everyone?

I did read the article.He sure as hell addresses why Walmart apparently is bad for competing businesses, but I personally don't feel bad for Walmart out competing other people at all.

He fails to address the real point. Why is Walmart bad for me? I'm feeling no ill effects from Walmart. In fact, I love it because of cheap goods. Why is this bad for me? Is it bad because I'm supporting a company that outsources (which I think is good, personally) or one that shuts down other businesses (oh nos what about the little guys!).

Maybe it's all the, you know, economics that I've learned and totally debunks all of this Walmart is evil crap.

When the article discusses roughly 10,000 people in america that are out of a job because of its tactics, that's when it starts affecting you.

People can't afford every day low prices if they don't even have a ****ing job. And just because you don't see it directly affecting you doesn't mean it's not important. Just turn your head and it'll all be okay because we all know you'll never be out of a job, and that's the most important part, right?

Because Mac has always been closed, as opposed to Vista closing it to shut out google.

uh, no. the article was about how walmart is bad for suppliers. try again.


EDIT:
I'm guessing you haven't learned nearly as much about economics as you thought you did, since this exact situation happened in the 1920s and 1930s and the US government eventually had to institute antiracketeering and antitrust laws in order to stop companies from doing this exact thing. It's terrible for the economy, and anybody who thinks about the situation in greater depth than the self-centered/Pavlovian-like drooling response to low prices realizes that it's really really bad for some people in the short run and bad for absolutely everybody in the long term.

Walmart, by the way, punishes companies that badmouth them by taking that company's products off of their shelves. A&P was a bigger monopoly than Walmart is, actually. A&P sure did a lot to prevent the great depression rite

When people get unemployed, it isn't permanent, unless they want it to be. Most of them get a low-skilled job somewhere else, and there's plenty of them.

To Jon: My mistake, you are correct about the suppliers