boohaha - Slashdot User

Submission + - Europe charges Microsoft with abuse of monopoly ag (goodgearguide.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 18, 2009 @10:32PM

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft has been formally charged with monopoly abuse by Europe's top antitrust authority, the European Commission, over the way it bundles the Internet Explorer browser with Windows. The move follows an unsuccessful attempt by U.S. authorities nine years ago to strip Internet Explorer (IE) of its unfair advantage over competing browsers. European authorities were more successful in their prosecution of Microsoft over similar antitrust offenses five years ago, fining the company over EUR1.6 billion and ordering it to change the way it does business. (MS is also being sued by Wisconsin small business for allegedly misrepresenting the capabilities of its Live Communications Server, so not such a great week.)

Comment Re:No wonder media companies go under (Score 1) 74

by boohaha on Thursday January 01, 2009 @07:30PM (#26294463) Attached to: New York Times Sued Over URL Linking

I agree with your sentiment it's ridiculous. However, this claim isn't correct:

the REAL cost of a news paper is the paper and the printing of such...

The real cost of producing a newspaper is actually the reporting/editorial side of things...

Submission + - Dell helps Microsoft: Vista to XP upgrade now $150 (pcworld.com)

Submitted by

ozmanjusri

on Sunday December 14, 2008 @01:23AM

ozmanjusri writes: "Dell has tripled the charge to upgrade Vista PCs to XP.

Under current licensing "downgrade" agreements, system builders can install XP Pro instead of Vista Business or Vista Ultimate, however Dell has opted for a surcharge of $150 over the price of Vista for the older but more popular XP Professional operating system.

Rob Enderle says the downgrade fees could potentially be disastrous for Microsoft;

The fix for this should be to focus like lasers on demand generation for Vista but instead Microsoft is focusing aggressively on financial penalties," says Enderle. "Forcing customers to go someplace they don't want to go by raising prices is a Christmas present for Apple and those that are positioning Linux on the desktop.
"

Comment Another article here (Score 4, Informative) 32

by boohaha on Tuesday December 09, 2008 @05:20AM (#26044623) Attached to: Intel Boosts Optical Communication Speeds

There's another article about it here. Interesting snippet: "Earlier this year, Sun received a US$44 million contract from DARPA to boost computing performance by enabling chip communication using lasers over silicon and to reduce power consumption by placing chips close to each other."

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