Google, Yahoo!, Apple Targeted In DoJ Antitrust Probe 166
suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from the Washington Post:
"The Justice Department has launched an investigation into whether some of the nation's largest technology companies violated antitrust laws by negotiating the recruiting and hiring of one another's employees, according to two sources with knowledge of the review. The review, which is said to be in its preliminary stages, is focused on Google; its competitor Yahoo; Apple; and the biotech firm Genentech, among others, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing. The sources said the review includes other tech companies and is 'industry-wide.' By agreeing not to hire away top talent, the companies could be stifling competition and trying to maintain their market power unfairly, antitrust experts said. ... Obama's antitrust chief at the Justice Department, Christine Varney, has said she plans to look at the network effects of high-tech companies and how their grasp on markets has cut out competitors and hurt consumers."
Good (Score:2, Insightful)
By agreeing not to hire away top talent, the companies could be stifling competition and trying to maintain their market power unfairly, antitrust experts said...In 2005, Microsoft sued Google for hiring away Kai-Fu Lee...
Good. Hopefully these actions will lead to the outlawing of vaguely wide-ranging NDAs which state that employees may not work for "competitors" for X years after leaving their companies. I wish that TFA provided the list of all the companies because they didn't mention whether or not Microsoft was in the list despite their example above.
Antitrust experts say that could include wireless carriers and software operators that may be blocking certain applications from running on their networks and devices.
Let's hope so.
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
Hopefully these actions will lead to the outlawing of vaguely wide-ranging NDAs which state that employees may not work for "competitors" for X years after leaving their companies.
Why would it? That has absolutely nothing to do with what this probe is about. Secondly, such non-compete contracts are already illegal in California which already covers Google, Apple, Yahoo! and Genetech already.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
And generally non-competes are ignored in other states as well I applaud California for legislatively declaring them illegal. Companies already operate at an advantage compared to individuals. They should not be able to take away my livelihood when we decide to part ways. If I am employed "at will" by them, then the business arrangement should be symmetrical. If they are willing to offer me a generous severance package, then I imagine they can have a say on where I end up. But even that should be limited.
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"Companies already operate at an advantage compared to individuals"
Welcome to the United States and its approach to labor relations. See also "right to work" (ie, anti-union) laws.
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If he's really worth it, the former employee should be paid to not work for the competition.
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BS! (Score:2)
I disagree! If he is so valuable to his employer that having him work for a competitor would be disastrous for the company, then he should be compensated. The best way would to give him a large enough salary so he would not be tempted to leave the company. As a second method, the company should pay his current salary if they prevent him from working for a competitor. At the very least, they should be obligated to pay the difference if his new salary is less PLUS a fixed amount more.
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The point is, if your skills are sufficiently specialized, the ONLY possible work you could find is at your competition, so you are kept from finding work in your field. That is why non competes are illegal
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That's precisely why my father-in-law's employer paid him well for a few years after his retirement. It was a good deal for him, and it kept him away from competitors.
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MLNN, if you think about it, a non-compete is a good idea, IF you happen to be in a sensitive position.
You think it's a good idea that people can't work after they leave a job just because they've gained a lot of knowledge? Seriously?
If you worked for Google for a number of years and had an intimate knowledge of how their searching algorithm worked, would the brass really want you going to Yahoo with that knowledge being current? It would reduce Google's effectiveness as a company, and what's more, that's their proprietary data, which you might then pass on to another company.
Trade secrets have been protected for years. If the employee divulged them not only would they be in deep shit but if Yahoo! used them then they would also be in deep shit as well.
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Hi. Here is the problem from a societal point of view. If you restrict workers' abilities to transfer jobs, you hurt the economy as a whole. If someone is able to contribute more (and be compensated more as a consequence) to another organization, making the move helps everyone as a whole.
Your naive view of things basically pretends that companies and individuals negotiate as equals. They don't. Companies are much more able to place restrictions on the employee than the other way around. In the U.S., you gen
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I certainly wouldn't say NDA's have "absolutely nothing to do with" this probe. It's a peripheral issue, in that the corporations dictate terms of conduct, and threaten to punish you if you don't agree to the terms. Being slightly dishonest, I'd agree to the terms up front, then break them if/when I was fired, or whatever. If taken to court, I'd claim that I was coerced into the agreement, therefore it was invalid.
Corporations have no right to interfere with a working person's ability to earn a living, w
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I certainly wouldn't say NDA's have "absolutely nothing to do with" this probe.
We were talking about non-compete clauses not NDAs. Those are two separate things.
antitrust, et al. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do we trust google, again?
Re:antitrust, et al. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because they are not Microsoft. And because they are competing successfully against Microsoft. Nothing more.
Power corrupts. Doesn't matter if the person with power has shit that doesn't stink. By nature, the stronger person will eventually abuse his power. It may not even seem that way to the person with the power, but it will happen. Same is even more true with organizations. They are more complex, less personal. As Google collects more data, as its reach becomes bigger and as time goes on, the abuse will surface. Not that Google is any better or worse than anyone else, it is their success that will do it. And when Google's "Do No Evil" becomes "Well, maybe a little evil", they will make Microsoft look like an amateur.
(And thank you Slashdot for making me wait five minutes between posts. Excellent Karma, get mod points yet have to wait. And when I use the email link to report the problem, my email gets ignored. Brilliant)
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Good point. Would you apply this to the political parties as well?
I mean the democratic party is getting way too powerful - are Obama's Doj people going to look into that as well?
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It makes me wait 60 seconds, not 5 minutes.
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That was the argument to like Microsoft and hate IBM.
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Power corrupts. Doesn't matter if the person with power has shit that doesn't stink. By nature, the stronger person will eventually abuse his power. It may not even seem that way to the person with the power, but it will happen. Same is even more true with organizations. They are more complex, less personal. As Google collects more data, as its reach becomes bigger and as time goes on, the abuse will surface. Not that Google is any better or worse than anyone else, it is their success that will do it. And when Google's "Do No Evil" becomes "Well, maybe a little evil", they will make Microsoft look like an amateur.
That's ridiculous. Power doesn't even corrupt at all; it merely attracts the corruptible.
Re:antitrust, et al. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Violation of contracts is more a matter of lack of political power than political power. A large corporation can ignore your contracts at will, unless there is a credible threat of punishment.
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Power corrupts.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
And it absolutely rocks to have absolute power.
(to paraphrase Despair.com which has a cool poster on the topic)
I agree, but they're somewhat better, for now (Score:3, Interesting)
Google has two main differences, I think, for now:
1. They're still largely controlled by some fairly idealistic folks, who are now so filthy rich that they aren't that worried about making even more money, so much as using their multi-billion-dollar playground to incubate things they think of as cool. As long as their playground continues making significant profit margins, the third-party investors will probably let them do this.
2. In many of their market segments, their self-interest isn't as badly aligned
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Eh. I remember liking Microsoft at some point. They were once "good" too.
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Re:antitrust, et al. (Score:5, Insightful)
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If I'm employed by Google and seeking a job at Apple, that agreement is interfering with my negotiations.
If this is true, they are conducting discussions about employment with each other without the affected parties being represented.
If it were two companies conspiring against a third company instead of a just a group of anonymous potential employees, the lawsuits would be measured in the billions.
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If I'm employed by Google and seeking a job at Apple, that agreement is interfering with my negotiations.
No it's not. That's not what this agreement is about. Nothing in this agreement is about stopping an employee from applying for a job at one of the other companies. The agreement is about the companies not trying to actively recruit away employees of the companies they are colluding with.
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The very common scenario would be: someone is quite happy working at Google developing AJAX and is not actively looking to switch jobs but does have their resume on job boards. Yahoo wants to find an AJAX expert and is willing to pay 50% more for the expe
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This agreement negatively affects employees because they are not made aware of opportunities for 20% pay raises or other benefits from a large group of major companies.
In what way does this agreement stop an employee from looking at the job opportunities of another company?
This artificially keeps wages and benefits low for people in the colluding companies.
No it doesn't.
The very common scenario would be: someone is quite happy working at Google developing AJAX and is not actively looking to switch jobs but does have their resume on job boards. Yahoo wants to find an AJAX expert and is willing to pay 50% more for the expertise to catch up with Google quickly.
This doesn't make sense. If you weren't looking for a new job why would you post a resume to a job board?
Yahoo is unable to contact this expert.
Through the agreement they themselves set up. If they had really wanted to contact the person then they shouldn't have made this deal.
This pretty clearly hurts the employee.
Not necessarily. I'd consider working at Yahoo! to probably be a much worse job than working at Google so I'd
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I wouldn't vote for a Republican in a million years.
Not even if the views of the Republican party changed such that they reflected your own views with near-perfect accuracy?
Never say never. Remember, overall Republican (and Democrat) views have changed numerous times over the last several decades.
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Not even if the views of the Republican party changed such that they reflected your own views with near-perfect accuracy?
Nope.
Never say never. Remember, overall Republican (and Democrat) views have changed numerous times over the last several decades.
I wouldn't vote for either of those parties or the Libertarians, so it doesn't really matter to me.
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So you wouldn't vote for someone that represents your views almost perfectly, simply because they associate themselves with a party?
Wow. That's sad.
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So you wouldn't vote for someone that represents your views almost perfectly, simply because they associate themselves with a party?
Yep, because those political parties are just lackeys of special interests that I have none of my interests at heart.
Wow. That's sad.
Oh well. I'll try not to lose sleep over it too much.
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Yep, because those political parties are just lackeys of special interests that I have none of my interests at heart.
You appear to have a very different understanding of the phrase "represents your views" than I do. You see, when I say John represents some particular set of views, I mean he actively works to put those views into action. You appear to mean that John might hold those views himself but ignores them in favor of some special interest or other. If you are correct, John can hardly be said to represent those views, can he?
My use of the phrase mirrors closely the meaning of the words, while your apparent unders
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Yes, the employee could troll the job boards, but why do you want to force the employee to do the work when head hunters are paid to find them? I bet you're a Republican.
As a Republican who wants companies to find me (rather than finding them myself), I'm very confused by your characterization of Republicans as people who want the employees to do all the work. I've never heard a representative of the Republican Party make that claim, and I've never known a Republican who believes it.
I'm sure there's some logical fallacy that applies here, but I'm too lazy to look it up. Maybe I can get it to look me up...
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What you mean "we", white man?
(yeah yeah I'm as white as the next guy :P)
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Would you have voted for BHO if you knew he was going to make a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court who is pro-RIAA
Wow, way to blow completely out of proportion that article that was posted yesterday that was about a singular ruling that she made like a decade ago.
and that under BHO's administration we'd see Google, Apple come under major Antitrust scrutiny (but not Microsoft)? What are your thoughts?
Who says they aren't going after Microsoft in this probe? The four listed companies weren't an exhaustive list of everyone being probed.
Re:Apparently the Obama administration doesn't (Score:5, Informative)
Oh I don't know [arstechnica.com] He has been doing favors for all his supporters, Like those car Dealerships whom supported him somehow manage to stay open.
Nice red herring, but it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that teh whole uproar over Sotomayor was based on a single ruling out of all of her years in the federal judiciary. One ruling hardly justifies being called "pro-RIAA".
But if you want to keep Diluting yourself into "hope and change" then don't mind me, go right ahead.
Except I never voted for Obama and have disagreed with almost everything he's done. Doesn't mean I won't still correct people who are spreading nonsense.
Re:Apparently the Obama administration doesn't (Score:4, Informative)
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Nice red herring, but it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that teh whole uproar over Sotomayor was based on a single ruling out of all of her years in the federal judiciary. One ruling hardly justifies being called "pro-RIAA".
Not only that, but it wasn't even a case of the RIAA/MPAA suing an individual for file sharing. The defendants were a series of bars that were publicly showing pay-per-view boxing, and it was a pretty open-and-shut case of infringement for monetary gain. Moreover, she only awarded the plaintiff four times the damages they incurred (definitely a constitutional amount), far less than the 1,000x damages that the RIAA typically seeks. Basically, that article was pure Slashdot-tailored FUD, and it's a shame peop
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Nice red herring, but it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that teh whole uproar over Sotomayor was based on a single ruling out of all of her years in the federal judiciary. One ruling hardly justifies being called "pro-RIAA".
Well... to be fair, when you are a Supreme Court justice, sometimes one case makes all the difference in the world. Just ask the pro-life people or the Gore campaign.
One case does not prove a trend, but it does set markers about where the judge is prepared to go under certain circumstances. If you have done it once, you can can certainly do it again. Whether you like it or not, her decision is a concrete fact that she, at the very least, needs to explain. Or rather, needs to explain if she cares at all
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That said, as I've said before, her RIAA chops are probably not what is really propelling her to this position and is not likely to have much bearing on any part of this nomination.
Except that the case that is supposedly the one who got her labeled as "pro-RIAA" had nothing to do with the RIAA to begin with which makes the original claim even more ridiculous.
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You are looking at the wrong statistics. The most profitable dealers have remained open. It's not about performance, it's about profitability on both ends. Those two are not necessarily tied together. You can be a poor performer and there are tons of ways to make excess additional amounts per sale to the manufacturer, and this is in fact quite common at dealerships that have lower volume of sales.
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My father works for one of the Dodge dealerships that are not being closed. While they are not the biggest sellers in the area they have excellent financial because:
A) The owner is "a cheap bastard who know where every penny goes and never spends one where he can avoid it" (Note: This was not a compliment when my father said it, but he considers it one now :-) )
B) They never did the majority of their business selling cars. They make most of their money on parts and service. In the down economy this is ac
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I think you mean delude [merriam-webster.com]. Or perhaps you're just delusional.
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Yes, yes I would. For one thing, in the world of things that truly matter, the RIAA is way down on the list. And as someone else pointed out, one pro-RIAA ruling during a judicial lifetime doesn't mean that much. As for the monopoly thing, if Go
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Wait, someone voted for a Browser Helper Object? [wikipedia.org] I've never heard of one being elected, personally.
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My vote will most likely not change based on any one thing that gets done, unlike your dumb ass who is trying to put a decision on a fairly trivial issue such as copyright law on the same level as genocide and world domination.
Only an idiot would change his vote based on something as trivial as this. If all you look at is how someone is going to react to this sort of shit then you're a moron. There is more than one issue and more than one level of issue and you take the whole picture into account, not one
No-hire pact? (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me like there's another angle on this, from the perspective of the affected employees, not the customers/competitors.
By forming a pact that keeps an employee at company A from getting a job at any other company in the cartel, doesn't that run afoul of federal fair labor laws?
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By forming a pact that keeps an employee at company A from getting a job at any other company in the cartel, doesn't that run afoul of federal fair labor laws?
Where in here did it say they were preventing someone from getting a job at one of the other companies? This is about the companies themselves not actively trying to recruit away current employees of the other companies.
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And Borland's history with uSoft is a perfect example of why such pacts are put into place.
Re:No-hire pact? (Score:5, Insightful)
The result of this is that you often can't work in the industry for years after leaving your job. To insist that employees have experience when they are hired and then prevent them from using it when they leave seems wrong.
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Non-compete restrictions in employment contracts are common in software development work and are another flavor of this issue. What these companies have done is more insidious because they aren't asking employees to agree to being locked out of major portions of the job market for their skills.
Except non-competes are illegal in California which all 4 of the listed companies are based in. Nice try though.
The result of this is that you often can't work in the industry for years after leaving your job. To insist that employees have experience when they are hired and then prevent them from using it when they leave seems wrong.
That's great and all but non-compete clauses aren't what this probe is about.
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Why, because these companies are the only places the employee can work? You realize that every employee at these companies has a comparable job in a field completely unrelated to silicon valley. Contrary to popular belief, Google, MS, and Apple are not the only companies who need network admins, systems engineers, developers and everything else. Technology employees are used in EVERY business, so unless you're saying that every company in America agreed to not hire someone elses employee while they were
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You're half-right, the same way "skateboarding is not a crime" is half-right.
You don't have an absolute right to work wherever you like, but you do have the right to be free from certain kinds of interference by third parties, regardless of which job you're seeking.
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Beware the red herring (Score:4, Insightful)
"Obama's antitrust chief at the Justice Department, Christine Varney, has said she plans to look at the network effects of high-tech companies and how their grasp on markets has cut out competitors and hurt consumers."
They are investigating collusion in the labor market - in this case, the companies themselves are the consumer, and job seekers provide the service. But this has nothing to do with cutting out competitors and hurting consumers. What they are doing is collusion in a market which, though probably illegal, keeps costs down, not up.
"look at the network effects of high-tech companies and ... grasp on markets ..." is shorthand for increased government regulation, whether warranted or not. What will happen when they decide to investigate the companies that supply toilets, and find out that "only" 10 companies "dominate" the market? They may not be colluding, but OBVIOUSLY such a small number of companies id bad for the market, and hence requires regulation of their pricing to protect the consumer.
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What they are doing is collusion in a market which, though probably illegal, keeps costs down, not up.
Are you sure about this? If you think about it, its probably not true except at the most superficial level.
Consider that while it is true that they don't get into bidding wars to get the best employees, and therefore can pay them less, the ability to have employees move between companies allows both the employees and the companies the ability to exchange talent and get new ideas.
Right now, I know people who work in jobs where they have no chance at making the senior levels simply because those levels are f
It's monopsony by collusion (Score:5, Informative)
It's an illegal restraint of trade under US antitrust law. It's not "monopoly", which is sell-side, it's "monopsony", which is buy-side.
Farmers classically face monopsony situations. This was much worse when most farm products moved only by rail. When there was only one buyer with a rail loading facility in an area, farmers were really screwed. That's why there are so many farmer's cooperatives in the US, and USDA efforts to control monopsonies. For what it was like before that, see "A Deal In Wheat" [gutenberg.org], from 1903.
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OMG! Monoponies!
Christine Varney needs a history lesson (Score:2)
In the technology business, the guy with the money buys up the talent to kill his competition. It was that way before IBM displaced Rand McNally. Microsoft turned it into a sledgehammer. Google headed down that path. Yahoo! said "what up with do no evil beothes?". So, folks made a pact of sorts not to do it.
AMEN! (Score:2)
Outlaw non-competes & these deals! It'll ultimately raise all tech workers salaries.
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously neither Google nor Yahoo! are anything close to a monopoly.
Nothing in this article was talking about any of the four listed companies being a monopoly. This was about collusive behavior to not recruit away talent from each other.
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Funny)
I used to drive a Hyundai Sonata. Whenever I took it out, I would get stares because the heap would lay down a huge black cloud of exhaust when I pressed the gas. I would occasionally think about getting it fixed, but never really got around to it [myrtlewoodgallery.com]. Then one day I was t-boned at an intersection. The car was totaled.
In the business world, things are much the same way. Collision is just as bad as a monopoly.
They have money (Score:3, Insightful)
The US Government is short of that.
Even though I own multiple Apple products I would rather see DOJ bust Apple's balls than MS. At MS doesn't dictate whose machine I can run their OS on (even though I have no Windows computers art home). As for Google, they have money, they are current at issue with various "AA" groups that have relations with people in the new guy's administration.
Besides this about restricting employee for leaving for better offers by agreeing not to see out talent from agreed upon comp
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Even though I own multiple Apple products I would rather see DOJ bust Apple's balls than MS.
Right, so the monopoly abuse in the desktop market that they got convicted of just stopped as soon as the Bush Administration DoJ let them off scot free, right?
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Uh... Microsoft still does not DICTATE what CPU's you can run windows on. It is perfectly allowable to run x86 Windows on another architecture using emulation (although why the hell you would want to do so is beyond me). That is much different than Apple which will contractually prevent you from running OS X on any piece of hardware it did not sell you.
Despite the whiny sense of entitlement that pervades Slashdot, you don't have a right to get everything you want from Microsoft for free. They are not doi
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It is perfectly allowable to run x86 Windows on another architecture using emulation (although why the hell you would want to do so is beyond me).
O RLY?
From Vista Basic and Premium EULAs
"USE WITH VIRTUALIZATION TECHNOLOGIES. You may not use the software installed on the
licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system."
If you want to go on some sort of anti-slashdot astroturf rant, be my guest, but you might want to tone down the declarations of outright falsehoods. Hurts your credibility.
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You are likely taking that clause out of context, since if you read it that way it would mean all vmware installations with windows would violate the license... and we would have heard about that by now I assure you.
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Microsoft has no restrictions in their EULA on what hardware you can run it on, whereas Apple does.
The EULA quote in question is referring to their lower end versions of Vista which forbid using your Windows license within both a virtual environment and a hardware environment. If you chose to buy another Vista license then I believe you could run Vista in a virtual environment without violating the EULA. I'm also under the impression
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I don't see anything about using the license within BOTH a virtual environment AND a hardware environment, unless your logic based on the definition of "licensed device" as a physical hardware system.
But then the claim that you can't use both is incorrect, at least according to the wording of the EULA, because in the same part of the EULA where it defines "licensed device", it says "Before you use the software under license, you must assign that license to one device(physical hardware system)".
A virtual mac
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I agree that, given my interpretation, even this restriction is silly. As long as you're running the virtual image of Vista on a machi
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I'm pretty sure the word "device" refers to a physical object, at least in this context, and therefore use of the word "device" in this context would refer to a physical device on which the software is installed.
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Windows NT was once released for MIPS, Alpha, and PowerPC and was going to be ported to SPARC by a third party. Only the Alpha port sold well enough to justify development, and then Alpha was discontinued before Windows 2000 was released.
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Seriously neither Google nor Yahoo! are anything close to a monopoly.
I understand your confusion. Most of the discussion of antitrust law on Slashdot is a discussion of Microsoft. Antitrust law is about undermining markets by leveraging market share. These laws apply to monopolies and cartels (also known as trusts). The RIAA is a good example. It is a bunch of companies illegally colluding to undermine the music publishing industry, although no individual member company has a monopoly. In this case the contention is that several tech companies are colluding and forming a tru
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but I'm really sick to death of how video games for PCs are usually only available for Windows.
Can you really blame them for only wanting to develop for a platform that will actually be profitable? Yes, it does suck that there is a dearth of Linux games, but that's just the way it is. If Linux got a bigger marketshare then you might see more attention, but game companies aren't going to develop for every fringe desktop OS when it isn't going to make them anything but a negligible amount of money.
Obviously I have no proof of infringing behavior, but I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that MS is engaging in some anti-competitive practices in this area to shut out competing platforms from the PC gaming market.
Or *gasp* maybe it has to do with the fact that it's completely not worth their time and money to make g
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You're pretty much completely missing my point.
No, I got your point completely. It was just wrong.
Let me re-iterate: based on my experience with their past behavior (browsers), it is not outside the realm of possibility that MS is doing something to entice game developers and/or video card makers to solely develop for directX.
Why would they need to do anything at all? Any game company that wants to make money is already going to know to develop for the platform that holds 90% of the desktop market. Your second point doesn't make any sense since all video cards support OpenGL and have for a decade and more.
It could very well be that directX is a better platform to design games for, and that's why most gaming companies use it, but my thought was that *gasp* maybe MS is reenforcing it's monopoly on desktops through anti-competitive behavior.
DirectX is easier to develop for which is why even id Software, a long time developer on OpenGL, started doing DirectX development. Or are you going to claim that Carmack w
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What you are saying is that gaming companies are just developing for the platform that holds 88% o the market.
Exactly. They are developing for a platform that will actually be profitable not a fringe OS that will provide them with no real appreciable gain in profits.
What I am suggesting is that there is a strong possibility that MS is doing more than just making a good platform to design games, they could be colluding with video card developers or game producers to keep it that way so that no other platform could get games,
And yet you have no evidence of this. And it's even more amusing in light of the fact of the current state of the proprietary nVIDIA and ATI drivers for Linux.
which in turn reinforces their monopoly on the OS.
It may to some degree, but gaming is hardly even a major reason they hold their huge market share.
How do you know that MS doesn't offer an unfair advantage to developing on the directX?
Because they have no need to do so?
Are you a developer?
Yes, I am and I know plenty of people who do game development
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You're pretty much completely missing my point. Let me re-iterate: based on my experience with their past behavior (browsers), it is not outside the realm of possibility that MS is doing something to entice game developers and/or video card makers to solely develop for directX.
You mean like advancing Direct 3d to contain new features with every major release, while Khronos dropped nearly every new feature from the long-awaited OpenGL 3.0 spec?
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Because that's not *anti-trust* behaviour. That's monopoly, and different. And since there's availability of other OS's, and it's possible to get a computer without Windows, then it's not a monopoly. Apple won't let non-Apple computers have OSX, and an OEM computer isn't going to take the time to make a custom Linux install to work with their hardware when they can foist support off to Microsoft by saying "that's an OS issue." Not to mention the majority of the programs that get "paid placement" or whatever
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Because that's not *anti-trust* behaviour. That's monopoly, and different.
Good luck trying to get that through the head of most Slashdotters. They are so misinformed about such topics that it's almost as laughable as when they repeat the erroneous, and contrary to established case law, claims that EULAs are nonenforceable in the US.
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... and an OEM computer isn't going to take the time to make a custom Linux install to work with their hardware when they can foist support off to Microsoft...
Uhm last time I checked there were numerous products precisely the way you describe them available. Do you know what a netbook is? If so I guess what you meant to say was "most OEM's". There's a big difference.
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How is what these companies doing any different than the non compete / anti-head hunting clauses the major oil companies have been using for over four decades to limit employee loss to competitors?
Because they aren't even remotely analogous? This agreement is saying that they will still recruit away talent from other competitors, just not the select few that they are colluding with.
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Where in the Constitution? The "interstate commerce" clause comes to mind. After all, the labor market is a market like any else, and several companies that extend over multiple states are colluding to hurt this market.
Competition is good for the country as a whole, but it isn't nearly as good for individual companies. Consequently, the individual companies will seek to restrict it, and distort the free market. Keeping a free market in interstate commerce, whether a commodity market or a labor market
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But you miss the point. The "market" refers to the wider market. We are not saying that employees can't quit on his own and interview at a competitor. Rather this is about a voluntary, informal truce targeting workers at a specific company and persuading them to leave.
Its the difference between getting a divorce and finding love with someone else vs. having a home-wrecker come in and then getting divorced because of adultery.
We just have companies agreeing not to commit adultery with each other. Like that
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I miss what point? I'm not married to any company, although considering what a couple have tried to do to me it would have been a bit more appropriate. Then again, I can't come up with a car analogy either.
If another company offers me a better deal than I've got here, I'm better off with the option (not to mention it's good egoboo). Further, it probably means they've found a way for me to be more productive there (which is why they'd pay me more), and that is a benefit to society as a whole.
Nor do I