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Competitors Cry Foul At Windows XP, 2K Service Packs
caudron writes "According to an article at ZDNet, a trade group partly funded, not surprisingly, by Microsoft's competitors is claiming that WinXP SP1 and Win2k SP3 contain 6 separate violations of both the letter and spirit of the proposed DOJ Settlement. Equally unsurprising, Microsoft disagrees with them. And so the Case-That-Wouldn't-Die drags ever onward."
the problem is that MS (as part of the deal) was to start operating as if the deal were approved right from the get-go, and not wait for the judge's seal of approval.
This could be used show the judge that the deal proposed is not sufficient in controlling MS's behavior.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
I found this charge to be very interesting:
The .Net runtime does not even come included with Windows XP and Windows 2000. Why would they need to include an option to disable the .Net runtime, if it's required that the user of the OS to have downloaded and installed it?
Forget the whales - save the babies.
I'd prefer it if they were to "Cry 'Havoc'! and let slip the dogs of war"
Hopefully this will make the DOJ wise up to the fact that MS will find a way around anything.
If *you* can do *your* work *without* Microsoft Windows, then none of this stupidity about their service packs, EULAs, etc, etc, needs to bother you.
On the other hand, if Microsoft continues to expand its monopolies into new parts of the computer industry, that may jeopardize *my* ability to do *my* work *without* Microsoft Windows. For instance, if the CBDTPA (or whatever Hollings is calling it this week) passes, requiring all computers to have a digital restrictions management operating system (which, incidentally, M$ has a patent on), M$ will have a federally sponsored monopoly on computer operating systems. Moving out of the United States has its own drawbacks.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Microsoft cannot be held accountable for violating rules that don't yet exist.
Trade group: Would you please tell Microsoft to stop?
Judges: We can't do it, man! That's discipline! That's like tellin' Gene Krupa not to go boom boom bam bam bam, boom boom bam bam bam, boom boom boom bam ba ba ba ba, da boo boo tsssssssss ! We don't believe in rules 'cuz, like, we gave them up when we started livin' like freaky beatniks! We tried nothin' and we're all outta ideas.
...My impression of the Service Pack's "Set Program Access and Defaults" was that it offered an easy, centralized way for users to make MS products their defaults. Your choices for each item (Browser, email, ect) are something like
... A single place to change to ALL MS. The "Non MS" button would only work if you have 3rd party programs already installed, right? So if you choose it and things get fucked-up, you'd probably want to revert to "MS." The "Custom" option is the Advanced one, and it includes a check box "Enable Access to this Program " which seems to mean that even though you're disabling IE, you have to take an additional, criptic step to really disable it.
Use Internet Explorer
or
Use Your Current 3rd Party browser
The easy, inviting option is the MS ones. The use of "Your Current 3rd Party Brower" instead of "Mozilla" or "Opera" or whatever is detected, lends an air of complexity. The 3rd Party choices aren't laid out, but the MS choice always is.
But before you can choose your specific programs, you need to first choose whether you want to use "MS Windows" "Non MS" or "Custom"
Compared to the process of, say, the "File Types" config, where you choose a program for any file-type, this interface privilages the MS products. But of course, setting a File Type no longer means that a certain program becomes the default...
McDonalds' employee: Welcome to McDonalds, may I take your order you please?
Bill Gates: A big mac please.
McDonalds' employee: A big mac, a coke. $2.99.
Bill Gates: Sorry, I ordered just a big mac.
McDonalds' employee: The coke is part of the meal.
Bill Gates: I don't want the coke, just the Big Mac please.
McDonalds' employee: The coke is free and is part of the meal.
Bill Gates: Until recently the Big Mac was priced at $1.99?
McDonalds' employee: But now the Big Mac has new features. It is bundled with a coke.
Bill Gates: But I already have something to drink so I don't want the coke.
McDonalds' employee: Then you won't get a Big Mac.
Bill Gates: I will take just the Big Mac and pay $1.99, ok?
McDonalds' employee: You can't separate the parts of the meal. They are seamlessly integrated and it would destroy the Big Mac if we seperated them.
You mixed up your facist dictators... An honest mistake. You should have previewed first!
Service Pack 1 for Windows XP itself is not readily accessible to consumers, and thus the mechanism purportedly settling the antitrust case is, by definition, not readily accessible, ProComp wrote in the letter.
.Net Framework Common Language Runtime, an alternative to Sun's Java Virtual
.Net technology to carry them well into this decade and into the next. I'm sure MS will fire off a few of their own comments to the court in defense of .Net. Too much money and too much time has gone into this and I don't see Bill backing off.
Consumers have three choices for obtaining the service pack. The first is to use Windows XP's Automatic Update feature to retrieve and install a 30MB file. ProComp noted that the time for retrieval, as stated by Microsoft, would be 1.25 hours over a standard dial-up connection.
Honestly, if you're still using dial-up, then you should expect longer download times. And Microsoft does offer a CD ROM; granted $9.95 does seem a bit high for S&H.
The third violation, ProComp charges, is that the middleware control is not intuitive and comes with no Help file for understanding how to use it.
As a Technical Writer myself this does bother me, but honestly it isn't something with which I would walk into Federal Court.
The fourth violation alleged by ProComp shifts to Windows 2000, which, with the release of Service Pack 3, was updated with a leaner version of the middleware control.
In the letter, ProComp emphasized that the middleware controls installed with the two service packs are substantially different. The trade group contended that the Windows 2000 version is substantially less intuitive than (the one) in Windows XP.
So, the service packs are different for different Operating Systems? That seems fair. I think between this complaint and number 2, Microsoft is guilty of not putting their creative power behind the middleware control.
In the fifth alleged violation, ProComp said the updated Windows XP's My Music folder called up Internet Explorer for online shopping, even after the group had selected Netscape as the default browser and had hidden access to IE.
Now, I am beginning to understand why ProComp included the previous not-so-important violations: To show a trend. If the above is true it is bad for Microsoft. I'm sure MS will try and explain it away as some kind of oversight or better yet a "feature" of XP to improve the user's experience. Better to just release a quick "fix" and remove this "feature" quickly.
The group's allegation regarding a sixth violation rapped Microsoft for failing to include in the middleware control an option to disable Microsoft's
Machine.
I smell a fight here. Microsoft is betting on the
Honestly, the first 4 "violations" are pretty weak. However, when grouped with the 5th there is evidence of a "trend" on the part of Microsoft to not act in good faith.
What will be the outcome? I don't really believe the Justice Department wants to re-open this case, especially with all of the juicy "terrorist" cases just waiting to be tried. And let's be honest, case against Microsoft is not going to get a federal prosecutor TV time, but case against terrorists will get a federal prosecutor a lot of TV face time.
We have a Dell Poweredge 2450 server including RAID 5 disks, running Win2K & SQL Server. We discovered mysterious anomolies (Control Panel not working and some other wacky stuff). Microsoft support recommends a full restore from tape. OK, we have tapes, let's go. We attempt to boot from CD and we know we need to supply a driver disk for the RAID card. Each time we attempt to boot, things look okay for a while and then BAM! cryptic register dump -- game over. This goes on for THREE DAYS of fumbing & bumbling. My sysadmin is a very knowledgable MCSE, not some newbie who uses the CD-ROM as a cupholder. Microsoft support was puzzled, so was Dell. Eventually, the Dell folks determine that we were given the wrong driver disk for our Dell RAID controller. Evidently our RAID controller had newer firmware than our driver disk (not that Win2K told us anything useful at boot time to suggest this). We download a new driver, and the restore eventually works. This series of events started out as a standard Microsoft response (reinstall the OS) to a standard Microsoft problem (anomolies with no useful clues in the event log). Dell gets some of the blame, but we expect the OS to either boot up or tell us why not.
By the time we had this little crisis under control, I gave the server in question the nickname "Atta" and wrote it on the paper label we stick on the server that shows name & IP address.
In my shop we have Microsoft and Linux boxes running side by side. I am the IT manager, so if some Microsoft salesman wants to talk about how their products can improve our uptime and reduce support costs, they will first have to listen to the story of how one of their products motivated us to name a Microsoft server after a middle east terrorist. Then they will have to explain how our costs will decline by paying for licenses/support/upgrades, and how our uptime will improve as we respond to mysterious anomolies by doing full restores on servers that can't even boot properly from CD/floppy.
Years ago, I worked at a DEC shop. Everything was damn expensive, but it was rock-solid. When things didn't work, we saw messages and error log entries that provided clues. DEC had tech. support that would investigate any crash dump and determine what happened. All of this was very pricey, and DEC got slaughtered by commoditized x86 hardware and Microsoft software. Sure, today's Wintel servers are cheaper and faster, but stability, recoverability, and support are worse now than 20 yrs. ago.
Whilst the point about non-IE browsers not being able to access the site is valid, the fact it takes 5.5 hours over a modem is not.
That is a clear violation. They have developed code that depends on IE. The fact that they provide alternate, separate code to do the same thing is irrelevent. They obviously want to play "use nice version A to do X if you have IE or use crappy version B to do X if you use something else". Version A must comply with the settlement, which means it cannot depend on IE specific functionality to install or run. It does, end of story.
So? It does what it's supposed to do.
No it doesn't. What defines what the shipped software is "supposed" to do? Nothing: there's no documentation. The user who executes documented, supported functionality cannot do anything with this software.
Call me skeptical, but this could just be an oversight.
Fine, it's an oversight. It is an oversight that results in noncompliance with the proposed settlement agreement. (See below)
It is still worth pointing out that this is a proposed settlement. Microsoft haven't actually signed anything yet.
Somebody above pointed out that one of the conditions for the DOJ to agree to support the proposed settlement was that MS agree to be compliant with it immediately. You assert that they haven't signed "anything" yet, which contradicts this. Who is correct?
MS has gone before the Court and said that they agree that the proposed settlement will remedy their anticompetitive behavior. If they then turn around and issue software that doesn't comply with THEIR OWN position, while they simultaneously and wrongly assert that it does, then doesn't that mean that A) they are acting in bad faith and B) greater enforcement oversight is needed.
Suppose that McDonald's is the only place to buy hamburgers and that there is a vital nutrient in hamburgers (let's call the vital nutrient grease). Now, you can get grease if you buy a steak...but most people can't afford steaks. You can make your own hamburgers...but most people don't know how to assemble an all-beef patty.
Suddenly, McDonald's requires that, in order to get grease, you must pay extra money. You have no choice unless you want to skip your daily grease ration. Furthermore, they are requiring you to purchase a known-addictive substance. You don't have to consume it, of course - you could pour it out and get water from the hose outside. Unfortunately, since most people are sheep, McDonald's knows that most people will drink cola, diminishing the demand for water until cola is so cheap that water is not readily available anymore (of course, you could dig a well and purify it yourself, or you could purchase Dasani (a Coke product) but I digress)
For the irony impaired...McD=MS, grease=consumer software (which the economy is now dependent upon), steak=high-end OS, hamburger=OS distro, McD hamburger=Windows, and home-made burgers=any free Unix-alike.
Your error