How is this situation different than what exists right now without bundles? Firefox has achieved ~10% adoption rate at the expense of IE without any bundles (unless you want to count Linux distributions).

  Bundling is an advantage as it equals guaranteed distribution but word of mouth doesn't require bundling.

If all the EU is interested in is making a quick ruling and then patting themselves on the back for a job well done then they are wasting resources on pointless theatrics.

  As far as I'm concerned if a government is going to step in and regulate then they better be ready to commit the resources to proper enforcement.

  How difficult would it really be? If the Slashdot crowd hears about MS shenanigans then it's not exactly a big secret and one government official should be able to confirm or deny the reports. When it comes to bribery; not much can be done about that.

  Once all the incompatible sites are universally broken then you've essentially restored balance and Microsoft would then have to convince web developers to ignore Firefox, Safari, the mobile browsers based on Webkit and Opera, etc.. to pick the proprietary Micrsoft technologies again.

  I don't think it'll be an issue this time around since the market is a different place than it was in the 90s.

  Then again, maybe I just don't understand the problem because based on that criteria it shouldn't be a problem right now...

I fail to see how forcing the bundling of a different browser(s) solves the problem. It will only result in a worsened out of box experience for the end user (which is already incredibly horrid when it comes to big box Windows PCs) in that it forces them to make an uninformed decision the first time they want to connect to the web.

  If the user knows the difference between browsers, it's a non-issue since they can just go download their choice straight away which will usually result in it becoming default during the installation. Problem solved. If they have no idea they'll just be irked and pick the first one on the list.

  The solution, IMO, would seem to be forcing Microsoft to ditch the "compatibility mode" in IE and stick to the standards so that new IE is as broken on sites coded to work with previous versions of IE as any other browser. Then, prohibit them from making any further "extensions" to the specs which caused the problem to begin with.

  A unified, standard plug-in model to prohibit the use of ActiveX on web sites would also be nice.

  Such a decision may wreak havoc with many websites but that's the price of progress and in the end it means all browsers can compete strictly on their merits.

I'm gonna go on a bit of a tangent from the main topic here (shocking for Slashdot I'm sure).

    On the topic of ad blockers I'm curious as to just how the ad model works. On the one hand I know that clicking an ad generates a click-through which generates revenue.

    However, ad blocker or not I'm certain that I won't be clicking on ads because I'm not a good little consumer drone and really don't care about what's trying to be sold to me.

    I shop when I need something at which point research, not advertisements, point me to the best product and I then know exactly what I want.

    From the tone of website owners who dislike ad blockers it sounds as though the mere act of blocking ads from being shown damages the site's revenue. I'm presuming that people paying for ads or companies that serve ads track their distribution by the number of times an ad is loaded by a certain site or page.

    My question here is, if Adblock works by blocking the actual loading of the ad by the server thus denying revenue to a website why can't it be designed to load the ad but simply not display it? Would this not prevent websites from losing revenue to ad blockers?

    In the end, all I want is to not see annoying flashing, blinking, video animated crap in loud colors all over my screen when I'm trying to read. My goal is not to deny a site revenue. I don't imagine there are many people out to intentionally damage a site's revenue but they hate the way advertisements are presented.

    How would loading the ads but not displaying them hurt either A) the ability of Adblock to function or B) a site's revenue stream presuming people are like me and would never click an ad to begin with?

You want to talk about an organization that screws everything up? Let me tell you about this company I used to work for... How many people have stories like that?

  Corruption? Come on. No sane person can say private industry is free of corruption and mean it.

  Private industry is not intrinsically more efficient than government.

  The only operational difference between the two, as far as I'm concerned, is that government's mandate is to provide a service within the budget granted while private industry is tasked with providing a service in budget AND with a profit margin.

  The other differences are procedural and irrelevant since procedures can be changed with effort.