Posted on 09/17/2007 6:13:24 AM PDT by webschooner
Microsoft can't allow a competitor to take over an entire market. The competition would spread if that happened.
This was a remedy that has far lost its usefulness. Every major OS ships with a media player now. I heard MS tried to sell the WMP-less Windows in Europe, and nobody wanted to buy it.
Remember though that the EU's look into Microsoft started with Microsoft's OEM licenses. OEMs had to count a Windows license even if they didn't ship Windows with a machine, thus making any alternative more expensive than Windows. This was Microsoft's plan to kill the general OEM availability of the competition.
But I do agree with the lock-out issue. MS purposefully tried to kill the market for other servers by making it hard to interoperate with the monopoly Windows desktop. Don't forget that Windows was an inferior server platform at the time (NT 4.0), and Microsoft needed a way to push it. However, the EU was quite childish when Microsoft did produce the interoperability information as ordered, always saying it wasn't enough even when Microsoft went overboard.
Bill Gates will see all the DEMS rushing to his defense in Congress. /sarcasm
There was an issue with some big corporations attempting to corner and price-fix the vitamin market some years back. The European companies that were running the racket got whacked big-time.
The the benefits and protections afforded to corporations by the government merit some regulation. Nobody on FR thinks MS is not entitled to go out there and earn 99% of the OS market but they should not use that to push people out of other markets.
MS for years has resisted the market demand for them to publish a robust API for windows....
High marketshare doesn't equal monopoly. Even then a monopoly isn't illegal, or even necessarily bad. It's anti-competitive abuse of monopoly power that is bad and illegal, and Microsoft has been convicted of it on three continents.
If you don’t like Microsoft, don’t use their products.
How about (hypothetical) I like writing server software that communicates with clients, and I have a very good piece of software that fills a need not yet addressed. But I can't get it to work right on the 95% marketshare desktop because Microsoft saw my software and wants to write its own to do what mine does and is keeping those interfaces I need knowledge of a secret so they can gain an advantage. Six months later Microsoft finally releases its software, maybe even as a free part of Windows, to do what mine does, using those secret interfaces. My application, and my livelihood, is now restricted to the 5% of the market that is non-Windows.
Just came across a new browser under development....:
So very true. All they have to do is put ACLs on port 25 for home customers. On my Linux email spam filter I built at work, we often reject around 25,000 messages per day, and it keeps going up. I'd bet 80% of the rejected messages originate from 'owned' Windows boxes. At any given time I can do a tail -f on the maillog on our spam filter and literally see all of the computers trying to send spam. Most all of the hostnames are obviously those of home broadband cutomers.
NetSurf web browser
Friday, September 7, 2007, 07:47 AM
I'm experimenting with NetSurf, a small GTK2 web browser with CSS support (not Javascript though).
They’re probably afraid that into the resulting vacuum would grow a product that might eventually compete here in the US. And to give that fear more weight, the EWW has demonstrated willingness to use public money to prop up inefficient competitors to US industry leaders till they pose a threat on their own (see Airbus).
You realize, I hope, that FR runs on Linux.
What many people don’t seem to understand is this: while a monopoly is perfectly legal, leveraging that monopoly to take over new markets is not. And that’s what MS is always trying to do.
The problem is that these "features", few users need or want.
For instance, "Protected Content", specifically, which cripple the newest hardware, whether "Protected Content" is ever accessed or not...
And it was deliberately woven into the O.S. in such a way as to be able to claim that "it can't be removed"...
You might be more convincing if you formatted your post so people could read it. Port 25 should be blocked by default. I’m not saying internet users shouldn’t be able to have mail servers, but they should have to sign an agreement with their provider not to abuse mail.
If unsophisticated users were blocked, it would be possible to track down the knowing spammers.
Your solution is Utopian. People are using windows 98 because they can install it free. Or they are using cracked versions of windows that are not being updated. In any case, the solution is to block spam at the source. It’s not even difficult.
It’s really hard to feel sorry for anything negative that comes to MS.
Yea I put in one html tag and forgot... hmm...
Port 25 should be blocked by default. I’m not saying internet users shouldn’t be able to have mail servers, but they should have to sign an agreement with their provider not to abuse mail.
You dont get it do you? Mail does not go out on port25 it *comes in* on port 25. If you block incoming port 25 you essential shut down SMTP on the internet, have fun with that..
but they should have to sign an agreement with their provider not to abuse mail.
Umm people infected with storm dont know they are sending mail
If unsophisticated users were blocked, it would be possible to track down the knowing spammers
Again you dont get it!
1) Spammers dont send mail from their machines they infect others or do it from off shore ISP's
2) When you send a spam it does not go out on port 25! it goes out on a random part somewhere between 32,000 and 64,000 just like when you make an http request, ssh connection, or an ftp session!
Your solution is Utopian.
Never said is would be easy but its far more realistic than yours..
In any case, the solution is to block spam at the source. It’s not even difficult.
Right all we gotta do is get the big isp's to (a) Stop all outgoing traffic including tcp/ip request or (b) Stop all users from being able to receive mail over the backbone mail protocal of the internet (smtp)
All right I am seeing more and more people say this so maybe I am off my rocker....
(1) is not tcp port 25 only for incoming SMTP?
(2) Does not outgoing SMTP mail follow the standard TCP handshake wherein it takes an outgoing port from the unprivileged port range for the initiating end of the smtp transfer?
(3) Wont blocking outgoing 25 only stop mail from being delivered *not* sent and thus it will stop people from getting their SMTP mail (Spam *AND* their desired mail) but not the SPAM bots from sending on that port?
I realized there were a lot of Microslop cheer leaders hereon.
I didn’t realize that they’d morphed into the regions of making Microslop a religion with a whole set of worshipful dogmas to boot.
Sheesh . . . the company is hideously abusive of customers and always has been. It has recently tried putting a better more customer friendly face on things but still manages to be horribly cheeky in it’s authoritarian abuse of customers.
Microslop gets no sympathy from me. About time SOMEONE stood up to the globalist goons.
>>>>>
(1) is not tcp port 25 only for incoming SMTP?
(2) Does not outgoing SMTP mail follow the standard TCP handshake wherein it takes an outgoing port from the unprivileged port range for the initiating end of the smtp transfer?
(3) Wont blocking outgoing 25 only stop mail from being delivered *not* sent and thus it will stop people from getting their SMTP mail (Spam *AND* their desired mail) but not the SPAM bots from sending on that port?
<<<<<
Only mail servers use port 25. Go to any security check site and see if your incoming port 25 is open. You do not need any open incoming ports to use the Internet, unless you are acting as some kind of server.
Ordinary users do not send mail via SMTP. No ordinary user would be inconvenienced by having outgoing port 25 blocked. If you don’t believe me, check your firewall and see if SMTP is open.
As for sending spam via arbitrary ports, who will be listening?
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