EU's Mind 'made up' on Microsoft 801
Alain Williams writes "The BBC reports that Microsoft could soon be facing multi-billion euro fines and other sanctions for breaking European competition law.
The European Commission has finished drafting its decision in the case it brought against the software giant." Let's just hope that the EU can fine them cash and not accept Microsoft coupons like the US does. Clearly the best solution to an operating system monopoly is to give free copies of windows to school and eliminate the competition as early in the education process as possible.
Let's hope for Media Player removal (Score:4, Interesting)
And making them pay fines will...? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not to mention that Bill Gates could sell some of his stock if he wanted to, and put that money back in the company.
EURO vs USD (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't get it (Score:2, Interesting)
They're giving it away for free. Free is good, right? Or all of the sudden when it's Microsoft, free is bribery, isn't it?
This does mean that the school is urged to use Windows, because it would not be polite to not use it. For a school, however, Windows does come with many benefits, primarily ease-of-use. It is a much easier operating system to learn, for sure. I can't imagine middle schoolers using linux.... faaar too stupid.
Re:MS DRM The Most Free (I know, I was shocked too (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not too dissimilar to how applications that embed IE are using mshtml.dll. iexplore.exe (and explorer.exe) itself is nothing more than a thin wrapper application that loads mshtml.dll.
Re:and yet... (Score:2, Interesting)
If other people want to sell alternative applications, then they need to make them better, or cheaper, or both. No-one is guaranteed that their business strategy will work.
If users don't look around for other software, then the producers of that other software are doing a bad marketing job.
Why should Microsoft advertise for their competitors?
Do you think that if I buy a car, it should come with no seats? That I should be forced to buy my own seats from elsewhere?
Re:Knight'd! (Score:2, Interesting)
But I do agree, while I don't think the EU constitution is anything to worry about, if the EU did try to take away britains sovereignty I would be one of the first to go protest.
Re:and yet... (Score:3, Interesting)
feels like a major power struggle brewing (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Media Players? (Score:3, Interesting)
Regardless of whether Media Player is bundled with the OS, or considered a separate app, the vast majority of users will still have it installed as the only OS they will ever have is the one installed by the hardware vendor. I would guess that most desktop consumers simply want to pull the machine out of the box and see it work. Hooking in a monitor, keyboard, and mouse is pushing the envelope. If you also sent a set of CDs with the default apps necessary to view email, listen to a CD, etc..., there will probably be a lot of returns, and a shift to bundled vendors.
Re:The EU plays favorites too. (Score:1, Interesting)
The EU is a much more unfront place to do business - unlike the US with it Trade sanctions (steel), trade supsidies and poor consumer protection (I like my beef hormone-free)
To drag this back ontopic...
MS is finding it harder to influence the decisions than they did in the US - new President - case was essencially dropped - After a GUILTY verdict! Unbelievable...
t.
Uninstaller (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Windows Open Source? (Score:4, Interesting)
If someone wants to fix it, it would be simple, but MS wouldn't like it at all.
1. Allow MS to bundle and integrate anything they want into the operating system.
2. Require each and every exported function from any DLL, EXE, COM object or anything similar that can be called from outside of that compiled module to be publicly documented as part of the specification.
3. Create one or more third party (non-ms controlled) entities who control the Windows compatible logo certification program, basing their certification on the published API specs from MS.
4. Require MS to be, say, 98% or better compatible on any Windows O/S or product before it ships and allow any other company to certify with no MS input. If an MS product doesn't certify - it doesn't ship. This includes service packs.
5. Require MS to support their O/S even if third party components are installed in place of MS components provided the third party components are certified.
6. Treat failures to interoperate with certified third party products as MS compatibility certification failure - i.e. fix quickly, or stop ship until fixed.
Re:Windows Open Source? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Let's hope for Media Player removal (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Don't underestimate the kiddies (Score:2, Interesting)
I added a frozen bubble kde desktop icon manually to the eldest daughter's pc (using an editor) from my own machine, 'cos I was too lazy to walk 30 metres. When she tried to run it, I'd forgotten to change permissions, so it didn't start. I walked the 30m anyway, opened a terminal window, typed frozen-bubble and hit enter. Game on.
So, ten minutes later I go back to see how she's getting on. (Another 60m round trip, any more of this and I'll be fit again) Frozen bubble was running on hers, but it's now running on her sister's PC as well, on the next desk.
"How'd you do that?" I asked.
"I opened that yellow window and entered frozen-bubble," she says, with an air of 'You think I'm dumb or something?'
She's nine years old, the younger sister is six. Don't tell me kids can't learn to use computers. The six-year old regularly installs new CD-based games from her sister's collection. Now you know why they both got 80gb hard drives last week
On a related note, what's a good kid-friendly network game? And I don't mean doom
Cheers
Simon
Re:Knight'd! (Score:2, Interesting)
Very hard to measure. Because Windows was such a dominant part of the marketplace, the hardware platforms stabilized and became a "common" platform, something that Linux takes great advantage of in the x86 world, as much or more so than Windows itself (since Linux didn't have to pay at all to reap the benefits of an x86 common platform).
Because of platform standardization, we have graphics cards that are incredibly fast that do not cost a fortune, which they would have if there were no standard API (full OpenGL cards still cost a fortune - slimmed down OpenGL had to come about to compete with DirectX - at one time, most games were written in GLiDE or [Open]GL but have almost all switched).
Because of platform standardization, we have lots of hardware vendors make competing hardware instead of just a few companies making non-standard products (as it was back in the late 80s and early 90s). Again, something that Linux takes full advantage of with no/little cost. Because of platform standardization, it was easy to churn out commodity computers at low prices so that practically everyone in the USA and Europe now has an x86 PC in their home and they almost all use software that "talks" to everyone else's machine - again, very much unlike the computers up to the early 90s.
Maybe folks don't remember the 80s and early 90s. I remember them fondly as a computer geek. Computers were a wonder and there were as many platforms as there were leaves on a tree, each with its own special features and nuances that made each platform have a coolness factor and made you want to learn all the details.
However, software companies had to have large/huge investments in personnel and logistics to support the many platforms that were in existance and eventually, some of those less adopted platforms began to fall by the wayside because of the effort that it took to support it was not worth the amount of money that the company would make. There was little/no compatibility and every company that wanted to sell to a large market (and make some money in the process) was re-inventing the wheel in incompatible ways several times over to support all these platforms.
When IBM pushed their platform, companies enjoyed having to write and support only one product. Costs lowered, sales expanded as more people adopted that platform, and it was a self-feeding system. The more software you had, the more people adopted the platform, the more software could be written and distributed to a larger market. As Intel's mantra goes: hardware is nothing without software (ok, they kinda departed this on Itanium, but that's why the latest P4 can still run most, if not all, 8086/8088 code).
Because of the consolidation on basically a single commodity platform, even Linux (sure, Linux runs on a variety of platforms, but count the number of installations that are on x86 PCs as compared to any other non-embedded platform) has enjoyed the same benefit that all the other software companies have enjoyed - a very large number of common platforms on which to run.
Add this to the fact that some folks simply hate Microsoft and will run anything else other than Windows to do work or play and you have the fact that Linux exists and owes its popularity almost entirely to the Microsoft/Intel alliance.
I'm sorry WM9 is NOT low quality. (Score:4, Interesting)
You just have to know what your doing as the default encoding is 64kbps or 96kbps for music - you can always push it to 192k and get cd quality +.
WM9 is the only codec to reliably handle HDTV (1080P yes Progressive scan 1080 signal (thats 1920x1080 resolution). That is freely distributeable and easily licensed for commercial applications.
If you want proprietary get a Mac and Quicktime.
Re:The EU plays favorites too. (Score:3, Interesting)
Except the EU has been cutting farming subsidies, while the US has been raising them. And even more poignantly [bbc.co.uk]:
FARM SUBSIDY PER COW
EU: $803
USA: $1,057
JAPAN: $2,555
The EU's no angel, but then none of the post-industrial nations are.
Re:Let's hope for Media Player removal (Score:5, Interesting)
also, a clause that says if you are caught rebraking something you are getting in trouble for, your fine will double immediately, and will continue doubling for every incident you are found guilty of.
Re:Let's hope for Media Player removal (Score:5, Interesting)
They weren't anti-MS at all, and only peripherally knew of Linux, but none of them liked IE or Outlook. They just used it because it was there.
And yeah, that's why I support making Microsoft either un-bundle their software or install competitor's software, like Opera and Mozilla.
If they shipped installers they could install the selected package from CD (or the net) withouyt actually having to bloat the install with ten different browsers, etc. It would probably be the best method because they'd have to ship the OS without Media Player, not just Media Player and Real Player.
Re:Abuse for 10 years - 10% earnings of one year? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:There is a technical reason (Score:1, Interesting)
I don't think so. (Score:3, Interesting)
And what will happen (hopefully) is the EU will simply force them to provide seperate installtion of the backend dlls, and the front end apps.
Re:and yet... (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, the Pro versions of commercial Linux distros run you $60-$90. The Home versions of commercial Linux distros run you $0-$40. Example here is SuSE. SuSE Personal costs $35; $50 for the academic version; $80 or $90 for the Pro version (although Amazon lists it for $65).
According to Amazon, Windows XP Home upgrade is $100; XP Pro upgrade is $190; XP Home full is $190; XP Pro full is $270. ("List prices" are $100, $200, $200, $300, respectively.)
Finally, to see how badly you're getting screwed, remember that the end user will generally only get Windows with a new PC; the vendors spend $70 or so per copy of Windows (numbers here in the paragraph are from estimations I've heard around), and the Windows group's profit was 416 (or was it 450?) percent, despite the fact that it generally only sells through OEMs for highly discounted rates.
While true in FOSS [the developer may or may not have been paid by your distro], it's not true if they have to pay the developer. While also true in a monopoly situation (since they can charge what they want without impacting the quantity demanded much], if a normal business is paying developers for something, you're helping fund development, and the price would necessarily be less, since the developers have to be paid.
I'd write more, but I have to take a shower and grace my new laptop with Gentoo [can't wait until I can custom-order a PC with Linux reliably. Stupid vendors.]. :)
Re:Europe isn't a hive mind (Score:3, Interesting)
And you have two World Wars to prove it!