Intel/Dell Market Fixing by AnthonyT

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Intel/Dell Market Fixing

POSTED BY: ANTHONYT
UPDATED: Monday, July 26, 2010 07:12
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Friday, July 23, 2010 2:57 PM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/23/technology/dell_intel/index.htm?source
=cnn_bin&hpt=Sbin

Hello,

Dell lies to its investors, and Intel pays computer manufacturers not to use competing products. Perhaps someday businesses will try the remarkable scheme of building a superior product and providing it at a price people find worthwhile. Then they won't have to bribe folks to sell their stuff.

Apparently, this action is considered illegal. I'm not sure it should be, but it's definitely dirty, and it absolutely hurts the consumer (via reduced competition.) I think I'll make my next Windows machine an AMD platform.

--Anthony

Due to the use of Naomi 3.3.2 Beta web filtering, the following people may need to private-message me if they wish to contact me: Auraptor, Kaneman, Piratenews. I apologize for the inconvenience.

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Saturday, July 24, 2010 3:24 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Ha! - Guess you didn't know Windows and Intel have colluded in similar fashion to block out other platforms and chipsets, then.

Seriously, I dug through the source code of one game which was running badly on my DOS Box with an AMD5x86 chip - which didn't make no sense cause I was at more than double the system reqs and Win95 *ATE* resources as badly as any Win platform does, so it shoulda run damn skippy...

And then I find that it inserts a deliberate delay if it does not detect Win95 - and another one if it does not detect an Intel processor.
(And then proceed to forge a method to feed it false data when the game boots up, problem solved)

There's been a LOT of that shit, collusion between Microsoft, Intel, and a couple of video card manufacturers as well, particularly with the fiasco of Vista and nobody willing to pay the tremendous bribes or make their shit work with Vistas insane DRM.

And even with their own products... I made the mistake of buying my laptop on the day Vista was rolled out due to a miscalculation, and they were PUTTING PERFECTLY GOOD LAPTOPS IN THE CRUSHER rather than sell them, because they were XP and Microsoft wanted ONLY Vista on those shelves and fuck what the customer wanted...

And the big retailers are scared enough of Microsoft and their ability to buy and sell the law that they wouldn't buck them for nothing, I begged, pleaded, offered TRIPLE THE RETAIL PRICE, and they still would not, under any circumstances what so ever, sell me one of those Windows XP laptops, it was their "wonder product" Vista or nothing.

And now said laptop rests discarded at the bottom of my closet, useless for any of my purposes, the final straw coming when it suddenly decided my store bought DVD was pirated or some shit and killed access to the CD/DVD-Rom... FOREVER, period, poof, apparently there ISN'T even a way to undo that, ever.
(Did I mention how much I hated Vista ?)

And all that doesn't even scratch on RAM price fixing, which was another common problem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_price_fixing

S'why I laugh in the faces of anyone who tries to sell me that free market bullshit, why I won't even use the words (you'll note I specifically use the term "private enterprise" to mean something of the sort) because there is not, and has never BEEN one on american soil - we operate on the 'golden rule', he who has the gold, makes the rules - just as AOL was allowed to pee all over laws and set the standard for accounting practices later used by Tyco, Enron and so many others...

Anyhows, if you really wish to not support such practices, you're *going* to have to dump Windows and go to a Linux platform - but if you do that I suggest holding onto both machines for a while till you can get familiar enough to be comfortable with the big L - of course, then you will also have to deal with the annoyance of Microsoft being able to pay Software folks to make their shit as incompatible as possible with anything BUT Windows... which they've been doing all along.
http://www.kmfms.com/whatsbad.html

Funny thing about it, the few rare times a tech company has thrown the bone of backwards compatibility to us consumers, they've made out like bandits - one reason the PS2 absolutely, utterly STOMPED other platforms is that it'll run PS1 games, and one of the features that makes the Wii so damn popular is that it will play Gamecube games.

But rarely in this mess does the customer get what THEY want - 90% of the time they wind up with what the tech companies desire to foist upon them and then collude to make the only logistically rational choice.

Ain't just joe sixpack either, within the auto industry there's only a couple programs used for stuff like inventory control, they SUCK, are inefficient, buggy and problematic, requiring FAR more time and effort than necessary and every bloody body hates em, passionately, I hear the rant about one in particular three times a week, but they're stuck with it cause everyone else uses it, and everyone else uses it cause should you even TRY to make anything ANY kind of similar in the slightest way, the legal dept of those companies will be all over you - seriously, their legal dept is BIGGER than their programming dept.

So it's all a horrible mess, and open source is pretty much the only answer, which likely means sooner or later (sooner if ACTA is snuck through) it will be outlawed.

Don't you just love the american "free" market ?
*hiss*

For the record, I've been using AMD products since I upgraded from a 486DX2/66 and currently run on an Athlon - fuck Intel.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Saturday, July 24, 2010 1:01 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Ah, annnnd I got to hear the rant again, today...
The program in question is SAP - EVERYONE hates it.
http://www.businessinsider.com/another-high-profile-sap-failure-state-
of-california-2009-2
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/industry/2007-03-22-oracle-s
ues-sap_N.htm
The latter, along with the SAP legal army, bankrupted Oracle (at least the branch near here), and a couple other Tier III suppliers around here.

Hell, merely mentioning the program will subject you to ranting and howling from anyone who's ever used it, it's really that bad - and they spend all the money cockblocking and sabotaging competition instead of improving their product, not that anyone is sure such is even possible.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Monday, July 26, 2010 7:12 AM

DREAMTROVE

The first version of windows actually contained a line of code that said "If DR Dos is present, then crash"

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