MS Faces Hard Sell in EU Antitrust Case

juicy_pants writes "The software giant emerged virtually unscathed in November from an eight-year battle with U.S. federal and state authorities over how its violations of antitrust laws should be rectified. But it may not fare as well in another major antitrust case, now entering its final phase at European Union headquarters in Brussels."

Comments

Lawsuit XP

[kbonapart]

The Justice Department released today the long awaited upgrade to the "Lawsuit `92" This update will fix the "Well there is always Linux" bug, and the ever persistant crashing or the case's funding.

EU here we come

[Anonymous Coward]

Between the Partiot Act 2.0, France's digital cash, and Certain articles about Italy, I'm considering an expatriot act of emigration...

This quote is priceless :)

[graveyhead]

Microsoft worries that competitors such as Sun Microsystems Inc. would use that information to clone its servers.

Oh yeah, THAT'LL happen... I can just imagine Scott McNealy saying "Hey, I got a great idea! We've been spending far too much time and money on this 'Solaris' thing. Let's implement Windows NT!"

I think what they don't really want to come out and say here is that they don't want Solaris to play nice with Windows (wasn't there a fiasco with Samba a couple years ago?)

Re:This quote is priceless :)

[DrXym]

Itemise all the things that would be required to make Solaris or Linux a drop-in replacement for NT and protocols would be top of the list.

I can well imagine that if all the various protocols implemented by MS were fully documented that Sun or others could very well sell a box that mimiced an NT to such a degree that people would be able to migrate away from it completely.

That's what Microsoft is afraid of.

Re:This quote is priceless :)

[MrPoopyPants]

That's what Microsoft is afraid of.

You mean competition?

Re:This quote is priceless :)

[BerntB]

Protocols used by Solaris machines are documented.

Proprietary protocols are used by O/S selers that don't want competition and lock in their users so they have a hard time integrating their systems with other people's machines. It gives many of us daily trouble.

In this case the seller of a "lock in" OS also are condemned criminals. So what are you arguing about?

Re:This quote is priceless :)

[DrXym]

Who says I'm arguing? I'm just pointing out the reality of the situation from Microsoft's point of view. They live in a world where lock-in is part of their business model - software is everything and they use proprietary protocols to keep people using MS products. Throw that away and with no hardware or anything else to distinguish themselves from anyone else and they have nothing.

Favourite quote

[rekulator]

"... the Europeans are also studying whether Microsoft must disclose more information to competitors so they can develop software that interacts with Microsoft's server software, the central brains of computer networks. Microsoft worries that competitors such as Sun Microsystems Inc. would use that information to clone its servers."

Huh? Sun would clone MS servers? Come on.

Re:Favourite quote

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd be surprised, man. Microsoft is busy eating Sun's lunch with Intel+Win2K Server, and they've been doing it for a couple years now. With Windows Server 2003 out the door in a couple months you'll see more migrations away from Sun, because the price/performance is better way down low. It's hard to convince people to buy SPARC these days.

Re:Favourite quote

[vsprintf]

A note to moderators: A post similar to another but posted one minute later should not be modded redundant. I hope that gets taken care of in M2.

Cool

[autopr0n]

Lets face it, this is really all political. I doubt the EU will be as lenient as the US has been, simply because it's not at all in their interests to have a powerful company based in the US controlling their desktops. Not that the US really does, but M$ is really a huge and powerfull company. It's value to our economy is enormous.

The really intresting thing is that for the first time there's a real alternative to microsoft in the form of Linux and Free software. The rest of the world is jumping on it in order to escape.

Re:Cool

[NigelJohnstone]

"Not that the US really does, but M$ is really a huge and powerfull company. It's value to our economy is enormous."

Do you really think so? I don't.

For a few reasons:

firstly the various companies (Netscape, Novell, Real etc.) that they have killed or are attempting to kill are all US companies, so success or failure in killing them doesn't help the US.

Secondly, they have 40 billion tied up in defensive investments and cash - thats dead money in the US economy.

Thirdly, they are no different from Wang, Polaroid or any other large company thats had success and simply churns the same old ideas. If Wang was allowed to lock us into wordprocessors, we would never have had the PC. If polaroid locked us into instant cameras, we would never have had the digital camera and so on. Who knows how many great new ideas would have come out if the PC software market was not locked down.

Fourthly, a large chunk of that money is going on foreign subsidies in markets where Microsoft isn't strong and on new development centers in India and China. They're training the US's future competition just as much as the next major US corp.

Fifth, the License 6 money came from markets where Microsoft dominates, which for the most part means they took it straight out of US IT budgets (their biggest market).
They contributed to the wave of IT sackings, but they don't pick up the unemployment cheques.

Sixth, these license revenue tricks makes their earnings look better, so US NASDAQ money goes into Microsoft shares instead of other NASDAQ startups. Those other companies may be the *next* Microsoft.

So no, I don't think this is healthy, even for the US.

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

For the first time?!? Linux has been around for a while, buddy, and has been viable since a few years after the release of NT. It isn't some rising star that appeared out of nowhere.

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

> So no, I don't think this is healthy, even for the US.

It is healtly for US politiciancs, so that enough.

(Unfortunaltely, it is also going to be healthly for EU politicians, so I think the EU antitrust case will end in their favor)

Re:Cool

[NearlyHeadless]

Secondly, they have 40 billion tied up in defensive investments and cash - thats dead money in the US economy.

Well, if they put that money in Bill's mattress, it would be dead money. Actually it's kept in banks, money market funds, etc., so it's very much part of the economy.

Re:Cool

[fymidos]

>It's value to our economy is enormous.

really think so? Its' impact on the economy is enormous, its' value though...
The presence of monopolies is devastating for the free economy. I remember reading an article back in '98 stating that microsoft would actually like a fall of the dot.com business, as it is big enough to handle it, while all those rising little companies would be eliminated. The field is clear on the web business, 4 years later.

Re:Cool

[Melantha_Bacchae]

autopr0n wrote:

> Lets face it, this is really all political. I doubt the EU will
> be as lenient as the US has been, simply because it's not
> at all in their interests to have a powerful company based
> in the US controlling their desktops.

That's true. But normally they would face intense pressure from the US government to drop it. However, now they are facing intense pressure from the US government to march on Bagdad, which means they might slip a judgment in against Microsoft relatively unnoticed. The US (my government) appears to be getting quite frivolous in the random slapping on of economic sanctions, as they are proposing slapping them on Germany for daring to disagree over Iraq.

Once sanctions have been used, what does the US have left to twist the arms of fellow nations over Microsoft? Mind you, the US should not be arm twisting sovereign nations, but I don't think Bush views other nations as all that sovereign. His loss.

> Not that the US really does, but M$ is really a huge and
> powerfull company. It's value to our economy is
> enormous.

Microsoft is a medium sized corporation (IBM is far larger). Its value to our economy comes from illegally abusing its monopolies (it butchered other companies and achieved a strangle hold over its markets). From that economic value, you must subtract:

1) the massive profit margin on Windows and Office milked from its customers.

2) money extorted from companies via Licensing 6 and costly BSA audits.

3) the productivity cost and damages to data from Microsoft's swarm of bugs and security holes.

4) the cost to our technological future by having a monopoly squashing other companies and the innovations they would bring to the market.

The result of your subtraction: it becomes obvious that a big greedy tick has hung on the side of the US economy for years. A tick that would be painful to remove, but that must be removed for the long term health of the economy.

> The really intresting thing is that for the first time there's
> a real alternative to microsoft in the form of Linux and
> Free software. The rest of the world is jumping on it in
> order to escape.

First time? Gee, where has Apple been all these years? Apple is better positioned as a desktop competitor to Microsoft. Don't worry though, Linux can make it on the desktop. Watch us, we'll show you how it's done. Then we can play all kinds of fun, healthy competitive games while sharing our open source with each other (like KHTML). It'll be great! You little waddling penguins are gonna have to get into shape though, if you are going to out run a Jaguar and out fly Mothra. Catch us if you can. :)

"Mothra Leo, the fluttering of your wings is Life!"
Japanese language song "Mothra Leo", "Rebirth of Mothra"
(Mothra resurrected an apple tree and the surrounding 8,000 acres of scorched earth,
six days before Apple's surprise announcement of the return of Steve Jobs.)

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

"Not that the US really does, but M$ is really a huge and powerfull company. It's value to our economy is enormous."

Economics is such a silly science. I am far more inclined to think that the money funneled to the Microsoft monopoly is a DRAIN on society in many areas.

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

I see the moderaters are finally waking up and scoring this moron down. And yes, this should be -10 troll.....

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

"Fourthly, a large chunk of that money is going on foreign subsidies in markets where Microsoft isn't strong and on new development centers in India and China. They're training the US's future competition just as much as the next major US corp."

That wouldn't happen if they hadn't estimated a profit from it. OBVIOUSLY there are a couple of billion possible consumers in China and India.

Don't twist things plz

Re:Cool

[Jedi Alec]

we still owe Bush a favor for last year .

Re:Cool

[carolinef]

Maybe M$ should be running a pension fund instead of making software then.

Re:Cool

[Saint Fnordius]

One little thing I have to point out:the EU antitrust case will be decided by bureaucrats who are "untouchable". They've been insulated from interference by member states, much less foreigners like the USA. Any decision they come to will be pretty much removed from political interference. Current signals suggest that MS lobbying has even backfired.

Europeans are upset by the fact that the EU is not a democratic institution but a bureaucratic one. Ironically, it may be to their favour in this case.

nothing to lose

[spongman]

yeah, it seems to me that the EU has nothing to lose. they've been bitching to the US for ages about their preferential import tarrifs and other homeland economic beinfits. how better that screwing one of their most successful companies than to obliterate their ability to compete in the european market.

can you say: "steel, bananas, oh fuck it, almost everything else!?"

i'm just waiting for the chinese anti-microsoft anti-trust suit. how ironic would that be?

Re:nothing to lose

[gotan]

The USA's was supposed to "screw" Microsoft, because Microsoft so blatantly screws their competitors and their customers. But it wasn't to be, Mr. G. W. Bush announced, even before he cheated his way into the white house, that Microsoft would get off easily and so it happened. So the USA decided not to apply their own laws to get a grip on Microsofts monopolistic bullying, and now you're complaining when other countries don't let Microsoft as easy off the hook as the USA? The EU would probably benefit more from regulating the MS-monopoly than the USA, but how is that a reason not to apply EU law in this case?

Re:nothing to lose

[10Ghz]

can you say: "steel, bananas, oh fuck it, almost everything else!?"

Funny, of the EU vs. US disputes in the WTO, US has lost most of them. You won the bananas, I'll give you that.

And what about the steel? US is using illegal tariffs to shield it's lame steel-industry from foreign competition. In Europe we had a wave of consolidation. Lame companies disappeared, healthier companies merger, alot of money was invested in production-facilities. In US that has not happened. You have old and inefficient steel-mills, companies that are stuggling under debt. That is why they can't compete and that is why they went whining to Washington.

Re:nothing to lose

[spongman]

...companies that are stuggling under debt. That is why they can't compete and that is why they went whining to Washington.

What, like Sun? Sorry, had to...

Re:nothing to lose

[10Ghz]

What, like Sun? Sorry, had to...

I was talking about steel-companies. Last time I checked, Sun is not in the steel-business.

Re:nothing to lose

[gilesjuk]

Knowing how undemocratic and corrupt the EU can bee, if they want to raise some cash they'll let Microsoft buy their way out of this.

Re:nothing to lose

[Shinobi]

Oooops, I guess I've always misunderstood the point about Sun and their Big Iron then....

Re:nothing to lose

[SpaceJunkie]

Knowing how undemocratic and corrupt andy world government, authority, organisation can be- its always a possibility. But no - the US has currently annoyed far to many europeans to let this one slip. What will happen to microsoft - is a public hanging. This is making an example - showing - yes - Europe can hurt US companies. And no- the states are not untouchable- they still need to answer to the world in terms of business and export..

But then is the US not big enough that were it economically sanctioned/isolated(okay this is hypothesizing to an extreme) that it could still manage a self-sustaining economy?

Two words- China, Russia... The message is clear - "Dont p*ss us off!"

They were going to bribe the EU politicans

[gatesh8r]

But they couldn't figure out how to convert US dollars to Euros...

Re:They were going to bribe the EU politicans

[Anonymous Coward]

We're they using Excel ?

Re:They were going to bribe the EU politicans

[MonTemplar]

But they couldn't figure out how to convert US dollars to Euros...

Swap the Dollar symbol for the Euro symbol, like everyone else, surely! :)

Re:They were going to bribe the EU politicans

[Anonymous Coward]

And you must have used the Word spell checker :)

Re:They were going to bribe the EU politicans

[blane.bramble]

Nope, swap the Dollar symbol for the Euro symbol and add between 50% and 100% to the price. In the same way that with so many American products $1 = £1 by the time it gets over here...

Re:They were going to bribe the EU politicans

[SpaceJunkie]

Is there a Euro Symbol on US keyboards?
Germany would be hard to Bribe given their Coelition...
As for my very own uk government... George only has to tell Tony to bend over.. or heel...
Man, the England really has been an*lly raped by the president...

Re:They were going to bribe the EU politicans

[Ozan]

Swap the Dollar symbol for the Euro symbol, like everyone else, surely! :)

But don't forget to swap the charset to 8859-15 or you will try to bribe with question marks.

Re:They were going to bribe the EU politicans

[Corporate Troll]

Is there a Euro Symbol on US keyboards?

No there isn't.... In europe you have to use the "Alt-Gr" key in combination with "E" in order to get the sign. However, the "Alt-Gr" key doesn't exist on American keyboards. The "Alt-Gr" key is on the right side of the space bar on european keyboards, while on american keyboards there is another "Alt" key.
I've always heard that "Alt-Gr" is equal to "Ctrl-Alt", so you migh try "Ctrl-Alt-E" in order to produce the sign. I wouldn't bet on it though.

Suuure

[Anonymous Coward]

European human beings are just as susceptable to bribery as American human beings. Maybe they've more pinache so it will look official right up to the end. But the outcome will be identical.

Case Dismissed.

Re:Suuure

[Anonymous Coward]

Although the EU and Continental governments tend to be considerably more corrupt than their Anglo-American counterparts, attempting to bribe officials regulating monopolies would be incredibly stupid.

What matters is ideology. Bush and his appointees tend to be very pro-market, and sceptical of state intervention, preferring light regulation to sweeping diktats. The EU, on the other hand, tends to like regulating everything from the sugar content of jam to the shape of bananas. The Eurocrats would instinctively love the chance to regulate one of the most important American firms.

In contrast to the instinctive desire of the EU to regulate everything under the sun, however, is the fact that the euro-zone economy has been stagnant for years, and is only getting worse. If Monti et al. think severe regulation of Microsoft could do any damage to the EU economy or competitiveness, you can bet they won't do it.

Re:Suuure

[LeftOfCentre]

According to the transparency index, many (but not all) of the EU member states are perceived less corrupt than the US.

Re:Suuure

[fymidos]

Yes, but political parties are not, MS would have to 'assist' quite a few in many different countries to have the effect they had on US.
And as it is, even though MS got out cheap from federal court, it didn't get out clear. It is hard for a european political to accept 'help' from a convicted monopoly.
I agree that the final ruling will not be too hard on microsoft, but for entirely different reasons.

Re:Suuure

[Conor Turton]

Only problem being the EU courts who will be presiding over the case are completely non political. They do not bow down to any political influence whatsoever as quite a few EU member states' governments have found out. You are thinking like a typical Merkin, that everyone is te same and it is all a matter of money.

Re:Suuure

[Anonymous Coward]

Perceived, bah! Just because the common Joe doesn't have to stuff some government official's pocket to get something done. All it means is that the European companies are more stealthy about it. Western Europe has a highly stratified society. There is an upper class, where royalty, semi-royalty, money people and politicians live, and where everyone else is denied entrance, no mater what. You just don't get in, period. The upper class operates like a black box, and no one concerns themselves with it much as a result.

Re:Suuure

[Anonymous Coward]

What utter nonsense. Your Anglo-American ignorance is all too evident.

Re:Suuure

[Anonymous Coward]

If you look at the 2002 version (http://www.gwdg.de/~uwvw/2002graph.html) of the survey you've chosen (why did you choose 1998?), you'll see that not only France, but Germany, Italy and Spain (among other EU member states) are ranked below the USA, while the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada are ranked above it. Additionally, two of the three least-corrupt member states of the EU are Scandinavian (Denmark and Sweden), and, like the UK, very Eurosceptic and not part of the eurozone. Moreover, Norway, Iceland and Switzerland, which are even more Eurosceptic and have wisely remained outside the corrupt and imperial monstrosity called the EU, ranked better than the average for EU members.

The survey you've chosen therefore tends to support the view that the Anglophone countries are less corrupt than the core EU countries (centred on France and Germany), and that Eurosceptic countries are generally less corrupt than Europhile ones (and especially less corrupt than France, which dominates the EU). Other corruption surveys, e.g. reported in The Financial Times and The Economist (and which aren't published on the web) support this view as well.

Mario Monti

[Vollernurd]

Mario Monti, the EU competition comissioner is a real ball-buster. MS will have more trouble "buying" the trust of the Eurocrats than they did in the US. It will just be interesting to see what they end up doing.

BTW, when I say "US", I refer, of course, to the administration, not the citizens.

Where does the money go?

[caluml]

I'm sure it's partly due to the fact that Microsoft is a US company, and is a large money spinner for you guys.

Over here, slowing down the torrent of money that floods out of Europe into the US can't be a bad thing for us.

It's another reason why Open Source is good for non-US countries - money doesn't go to Microsoft, Sun, IBM etc - it stays in the local country (consultants, etc)

PS. I'm posting this over 3G - is it a first for ./ ?

Re:Where does the money go?

[10Ghz]

Over here, slowing down the torrent of money that floods out of Europe into the US can't be a bad thing for us.

Actually, US has a big trade-deficit with Europe, so it could be that there's more money flowing from US to Europe than vice-versa.

Re:Where does the money go?

[Anonymous Coward]

PS. I'm posting this over 3G - is it a first for ./ ?

I don't know if it's a first.. what the hell is Dotslash?

Re:Where does the money go?

[Anonymous Coward]

3G or GPRS (2.5G)? If it really is 3G, I assume that you are on an O2 network?

Re:Where does the money go?

[broeman]

Eventhough I would like to say the same, in Denmark for example Microsoft just bought one of our major (minor in international view I think) computer-companies Navision. A lot of "Microsoft-money" flow into Denmark, but the question is if the former CEOs can sell those stocks.

Re:Where does the money go?

[caluml]

3G. UMTS. As in the web address in my prefs. And no. Not O2.

Painful to watch

[rhyd]

MS will be found guilty and given the biggest fine ever. MS appeal - and the appeal process takes forever - RealPlayer fades away (nobody notices or cares)- Bill Gates donates $100M to fight AIDS in eastern Europe and is lauded as Europe's hero, a selfless white knight whose moral integrity should never be questioned again.

Re:Painful to watch

[MonTemplar]

MS will be found guilty and given the biggest fine ever. MS appeal - and the appeal process takes forever - RealPlayer fades away (nobody notices or cares)- Bill Gates donates $100M to fight AIDS in eastern Europe and is lauded as Europe's hero, a selfless white knight whose moral integrity should never be questioned again.

Whoa! Slow down there, Mystic Meg! :)

I think you're getting a bit ahead of yourself. Sure, the EU beaurocracy is slow, but I think that in this case there may be more effort going into the proceedings. And Real ain't going away anytime soon, either. As for Bill's charitable activities, well good for him, but it won't make him a white knight if the press in Europe have any say in the matter... *grin*

Re:Painful to watch

[wuschel]

That may be very true. The upcoming extension of the EU to the east may very well paralyse the European commission for a few years, until a European constitution has been passed. The initiation will increase the number of heads in the commossion and could make them unable to take any decisive action until Europe has decided how solve these issues.

If Microsoft times it just right, they can still emerge unscaved.

Also, we have just seen - in their positions towards the Iraque conflict - how willing the eastern European states are to follow any directions from the U.S.-government.

Re:Painful to watch

[Selanit]

MS will be found guilty and given the biggest fine ever. MS appeal - and the appeal process takes forever - RealPlayer fades away (nobody notices or cares)- Bill Gates donates $100M to fight AIDS in eastern Europe and is lauded as Europe's hero, a selfless white knight whose moral integrity should never be questioned again.

Here's an alternate scenario.

MS is found guilty and given the biggest fine ever. (10% of their total global revenue is the upper limit, according to the article - so 2.8 billion dollars.) They appeal. The appeal takes forever. RealPlayer fades away, and there is much rejoicing.

Now the interesting part: the appeals run out, MS is still guilty, and with all appeals exhausted, they have to pay the huge fine. They pay it. The EU promptly uses the money to hire a bunch of crackerjack programmers to make the Linux desktop a true drop-in replacement for Windows. The code is GPL'ed.

Or, on an even wilder flight of fancy, MS in its arrogance refuses to pay the fine. The EU slaps a heavy tariff on all MS products, and diverts the revenue from that tariff to Linux desktop development. The code is GPL'ed, and the ongoing revenue stream from the tariff means that they can keep working on it till there's no good reason not to use Linux.

Not that I think that MS would be stupid enough to refuse to pay a fine. But one can always dream, right?

Re:Painful to watch

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the way you think, dude!

Re:Painful to watch

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Why $100M?

He can give just $10M and buy the entire Europe thing. Or he can donate $1M to all the european citizens (that's about 0.2 cents/person), and he will be worshiped like a God. The average European billioner will probably not make 0.2 cents in his entire life!

Are you crazy?

Re:Painful to watch

[Anonymous Coward]

MS is still guilty, and with all appeals exhausted, they have to pay the huge fine. They pay it. The EU promptly uses the money to hire a bunch of crackerjack programmers to make the Linux desktop a true drop-in replacement for Windows.

Why would crackerjack programmers work for copies of Windows 95?

Re:Painful to watch

[hany]

Why would crackerjack programmers work for copies of Windows 95?

Fines can't be paid with CDs - CDs with whatever content are not currency. At least not now. :)

IMO only quite short-sighted people sue MS for damages (because they lose money and health and whatever because of MS' behaviour) and then agree to get CDs with some MS products from MS instead of hard cash. But such people exists, I heard such sad stories ... :/

Re:Painful to watch

[Alsee]

Or, on an even wilder flight of fancy, MS in its arrogance refuses to pay the fine...

Or even better:
The EU BANS the sale of new copies of Microsoft software and virtually every European company hires every available programmer to switch them over to Linux. The impact would be far greater.

-

Europe is pro linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

Legal Cases

[Anonymous Coward]

Slightly off topic, but while we are discussing legal stuff...

As you well know by now, the **AA has convinced a California Court to claim jurisdiction of Sharman Networks (Kazaa) of Australia.

Now that this Slammer worm hit South Korea, can they now claim jurisdiction of an American company seeking damages, now that precedent has been set by the Americans that it is OK to indict entities outside their country?

Re:Legal Cases

[Anonymous Coward]

"the **AA has"

That should be either *AA or ??AA

Re:Legal Cases

[SN74S181]

That would be a cool precedent, what with the value of the dollar and all that. The next time I get sixty pieces of spam from some Asian company, I'll end up owning about 15% of the country.

Re:Legal Cases

[Kwil]

Of course they can.

Good luck in collecting anything though.

Time for Comedy portion of this article

[cioxx]

To blockquoth the article:

"...Europeans are also studying whether Microsoft must disclose more information to competitors so they can develop software that interacts with Microsoft's server software, the central brains of computer networks. Microsoft worries that competitors such as Sun Microsystems Inc. would use that information to clone its servers."

Emphasis added.

Does anyone think this is the most hillarious thing ever, or what? I'm pretty sure Sun is dying to clone IIS or the .NET Server to replace the unstable Solaris for once and for all.

Re:Time for Comedy portion of this article

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the article is referring to the ease of administration of Win2K Server, and more importantly, interoperability with domains .. making it easier to migrate to Sun, should one be so silly, is obviously something Sun would like to implement. The company's going down, Solaris sucks, the hardware's no longer fast, and they will do anything to hold on - even stealing customers from Micro$oft, if they can. Makes sense.

Re:Time for Comedy portion of this article

[SpaceJunkie]

In my office, we buld our own authoring tools for game meta data and content. I built mine on a linux box I requested, using MySQL, Php and Apache. A number of others wrer built by guys who would swear blind by Microsoft Exhange Server for mail. and Microsoft SQL server... This last week was when I had the last laugh...

Re:Time for Comedy portion of this article

[WNight]

No it wasn't [the last laugh]. If they keep using it you'll get a regular laugh, every six months or so. Until someone writes a nasty payload for once and wipes every Windows machine from the planet.

Re:Time for Comedy portion of this article

[SpaceJunkie]

One of my colleagues reactions - and we are talking a "seasoned" windows guy - was to run around his desk and pull out the ethernet plug, then panic until a fix was found. Meanwhile - I ate lunch leisurely..

Where was the anti-trust officer re Opera ?

[NigelJohnstone]

Yeh they really blew it with that Opera attack.

Where exactly was the anti-trust officer when Microsoft's websites were sending Opera bad style sheets? Isn't this exactly the sort of thing he was appointed to prevent?

So they proved to the world that the enforcement officer was just a sham concession.

Also another question. If MS can't see anything morally wrong between throwing a bad style sheet to disadvantage a competitor, how do we know that Microsoft doesn't also make the cache a little slower for Oracle, or the sockets a little slower when connecting to Sun?

I mean if they did that to code that we can see, what the hell are they doing with the code we can't see in Windows?

Re:Where was the anti-trust officer re Opera ?

[rseuhs]

I mean if they did that to code that we can see, what the hell are they doing with the code we can't see in Windows?

This is probably one of the most insightful sentences I have seen lately on slashdot.

Re:Where was the anti-trust officer re Opera ?

[nomadic]

Microsoft will continue to do it because they think they can do it with impunity. And they're probably right.

Re:Where was the anti-trust officer re Opera ?

[toastyman]

I realize this belongs back in the Opera story, but apparently a bunch of people missed this.

Take an old copy of Opera (6.0). Load up www.msn.com in it with the special MS "broken" style sheet. It looks great. Now, Remove the hack that msn.com put in there if it sees "Opera" in the User Agent. (set that -30 to 0 or something). *Poof* Broken looking page.

Yes, if they put a hack like that in there after the release of 7.0 they should have tested again to see if it was still necessary and refined their filter to only catch the known buggy version, but come on guys...

They actually made an effort to make the page look right on something other than IE, AND went so far as to detect a competitor's browser that wasn't rendering the page right (due to a bug in Opera - or at least a very creative interpretation of the HTML spec) and give that browser a style sheet with a workaround in the style sheet.

I agree it caused problems later when Opera 7.0 came out, and they probably should have found/fixed it by now, but I'm betting once the right person hears about it it'll be fixed, if it isn't fixed already.

Microsoft has done some truly crappy things in the past, but this was not one of them.

Re:Where was the anti-trust officer re Opera ?

[duffyjunkie]

Did you actually try out the css's that msn serves to IE, Opera6 and Opera7?

I did and I saw exactly the same as the Opera developers did:

• Neither IE nor Opera can render the Opera pages
• Opera (6.00, 6.04 and 7) renders the IE pages just fine

Which brings me to the same conclusion as the Opera developers: MS made an active effort to break the msn site in Opera browsers!
I wasn't surprised, but reserve the right to be disappointed that MS feels it is necessary to play dirty...

Re:Where was the anti-trust officer re Opera ?

[toastyman]

I didn't investigate this more than a few minutes, but a friend who brought a laptop over happened to have Opera 6.0x installed on it. Without the "-30" hack in there, many elements on the page had way way too much space in them.

Perhaps it's only Opera 6 under one version of Windows. Maybe it's got to do with a certain font size. I dunno. If it doesn't happen to everyone, it makes this even stranger, but I did see exactly the behavior it looks like they were trying to fix.

All I'm saying is that without a heck of a lot more evidence, pinning this on malice is a HUGE stretch, even for the tinfoil types.

Re:Where was the anti-trust officer re Opera ?

[SN74S181]

Too late.

The 'Microsoft attacks Opera' fabrication has already made it onto the list of Micro$oft infractions, and there's a long list of misinformed propaganda for people to link to when citing it, so it'll be a bullet point for the duration of the 'war.'

It sits there on the list, near the 'Windows NT stalls battleship out at sea' fiction.

Re:Where was the anti-trust officer re Opera ?

[inode_buddha]

I must agree and second this comment. Hrrmmm, and I just also happen to have an ISO image of Win98 on this linux box, with od, as, and a few other tools available as well....

Re:Where was the anti-trust officer re Opera ?

[SpaceJunkie]

Much like the recent UK Iraq dossier, and Kolin Piles farcical evidence, stuff like this may end up serving to discredit the action against microsoft- and should therefore be seriously avoided. What we need to do is consolidate real serious evidence- forget the urban myths and concentrate on the point in hand - being the way in which Microsoft has systematically eradicated their competition.

Re:Where was the anti-trust officer re Opera ?

[Conor Turton]

Where exactly was the anti-trust officer when Microsoft's websites were sending Opera bad style sheets? Isn't this exactly the sort of thing he was appointed to prevent?

He was on an all expenses paid holiday in the Carribean courtesy of Microsoft...

Re:Where was the anti-trust officer re Opera ?

[Yankovic]

You know, i never understood how this is ANYTHING but legal. They don't have a monopoly in portals. They aren't leveraging their OS monopoly into portals. Even if, and this is a big assumption for something that can easily be chalked up to programmer error, they did it intentionally, what's the problem? MSN.com has no ties what so ever to Windows, they could make it completely impossible to view in any competing browser, and that's their right.

Further, MS has no monopoly on the server either. The majority of deployments out there, by revenue, are on UNIX. If that's the case, Sun should LOVE Windows being slower at all, as it just gives them additional fodder. The funny part is that Oracle IS slower, but never chalk up to malice what you can attribute to bad programming. Larry actually takes resources off the Windows team at Oracle to fund the Unix and Linux teams (because he thinks that this will help kill Windows).

Re:Where was the anti-trust officer re Opera ?

[WNight]

Misrepresentation of a competitors product. Lying. Can be illegal is done for your benefit.

Re:Where was the anti-trust officer re Opera ?

[vrazhumin]

I can say for a fact that through the evolution of the Windows NT product (NT 3.51 - XP) the speed of accessing NetWare servers has steadily decreased.

In fact, WinNT 4.0 had a MUP.SYS problem that caused NetWare access to be slow, for which they released a hotfix. When Win2k and XP exhibit the exact same problem, M$ claims they can't find the solution. Every time we ask them how the fix is going they say they're still working on it.

We also had to take a NetWare box over to NT because an in-house developed app (using M$ Visual C++ products) slowed to a crawl when we upgraded the clients from NT to 2k. Same machines, same code, just upgraded from NT to 2k.

XP is even worse.

There's more evidence we have collected. But there is no doubt in my mind that M$ is trying to drive the nails into Novell's coffin through purposefully sabotaging the performance of accessing NetWare servers.

Re:Where was the anti-trust officer re Opera ?

[rseuhs]

Do something!

The least you can do is do some benchmarks and publish them on a website.

Also inform Novell, I guess they could use that information.

A simple, easily implemented suggestion for EU

[Anonymous Bullard]

EU should require that file formats being used in software sold in Europe are publically documented in full to prevent the twisted (and existing) situation where customers are required to unnecessary buy upgrades for their software when other parts of the whole environment are made obsolete. Users should never be forced to pay just to continue accessing their own data. That would go a long way towards solving the root of the problem, instead of only chasing the ever-changing symptoms. Such requirement would also be totally fair since the real innovation lies in developing new features and ideas on manipulating the data and not in intentionally obscured ways of putting strings of data on a file.

Also, Microsoft's anti-competitive power and their ability to use it is not just about Windows and its ever-mutating versions. Having some government geeks take a peek at the OS "shared source" does nothing to guarantee a competitive marketplace. It's about the apps. Requiring standards compliance allows the all suitable, competitively priced and well-supported software to succeed yet without locking anyone out of the market.

Re:A simple, easily implemented suggestion for EU

[Anonymous Coward]

> Users should never be forced to pay just to continue accessing their own data.

As we go from a software buy to a software rental model, users are going to pay to continue accessing thier own data.

That's the whole idea of software rental.

Re:A simple, easily implemented suggestion for EU

[NigelJohnstone]

Thats a good part solution, but I also think they should be hit with a large fine.
I mean big enough to make the shareholders go OUCH.

I reckon the shareholders back the management, because they think all these abuses are earning money for them. So you hit MS in the pocket and the shareholders will then keep the company on the right side of anti-trust laws.

I think its better than the EU micro-managing a solution.

Trouble is, the EU can only levy a smallish fine (a couple of billion isn't going to have the OUCH effect).

Re:A simple, easily implemented suggestion for EU

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no "DOS subsystem", and that phrase makes you look extremely ignorant. DOS is emulated in XP, and sort-of emulated in 2K (it doesn't do much of what DOS did).

Re:A simple, easily implemented suggestion for EU

[mlk]

Eah? I have a Win95 and Office 97 box, I have never had to pay to carry on reading my own data, as lo and behold it has stated the same (always edited in Office 97).

(note: I'd love to force every office suit into using an open format, but the logic giving above does not work out!)

Re:A simple, easily implemented suggestion for EU

[SQL Error]

Fine MS $40 billion and give it to NASA to build a new shuttle fleet. Oh, and $1 million to me because it's my idea.

Re:A simple, easily implemented suggestion for EU

[Anonymous Coward]

> As we go from a software buy to a software rental model

What you mean 'we', kimosabe?

Re:A simple, easily implemented suggestion for EU

[Anonymous Coward]

We, the software industry, and the end users.

When you bought a computer in the early 80's, you had software on it, and you could use it until the end of the universe.

In a few years, you will not be able to use the software you buy (license) forever. In fact, only a subscription could prevent you of beeing the target of the BSA.

You can argue that the rental model is not new, and always been the standard in business software. But in the consumer space, it was not.

Of course, Free Software prevents this. That's why I type this on a FreeBSD powered Mozilla.

Re:A simple, easily implemented suggestion for EU

[mickwd]

That may be the whole idea of software rental.

And the reason why it will fall flat on its face is that users will never willingly pay just to continue to be able to access their own data.

We will not be going from a software buy to a software rental model, because the only reason for it is to generate more money for software companies.

Re:A simple, easily implemented suggestion for EU

[bigdavex]

As we go from a software buy to a software rental model, users are going to pay to continue accessing thier own data.

People can, and I suspect will, say no to this if it means they will pay more. Software rental might catch on in the business world for reasons of long term negotiations or accounting concerns. But I don't think there'll be much appeal in the home market.

I mean, Microsoft et al. have a lot of influence but the buyers' still have to sign the checks. I think this is a pretty likely scenario:

Big company: To use our software, you have to send us money every month.
Buyer: No, go fish.

User (like yourself) will start sniffing around free or cheaper solutions.

Besides all that, the rental model doesn't parallel well the actual costs and thus will be problematic.

Re:A simple, easily implemented suggestion for EU

[SpaceJunkie]

Well lets hope the time never comes. I much prefer the model of open source software. The revenue for these comes from a number of sources- government funded projects, a tighter copyright system which allows competative advantage for a maximum of two years or so- after which the project would be compulsorarily open sourced.
Continued revenue streams could still be exploited through site-maintenance contracts, but then many companies already hire their own sys-admin support professionals(MIS teams).

Re:A simple, easily implemented suggestion for EU

[SpaceJunkie]

But are you operating as a company/corporate/SME or as an individual? I am not sure about Microsofts licensing for sole-partner or self-emploment business models.
The standard business contract terminates, the software is still physically on the disk, but the license is no longer legally valid, and when certain software inspectors knock on your door- it aint gonna hold up. So you must upgrade. Now for individuals, once all the companies have upgraded- true- their own data is still accessible, and will continue to be so, but they are then excluded from converse data-flow, as future versions have no guarantee of backwards compatibility. Importing into a newer version is not impossible, exporting in an older versions format may not always be available...

Re:A simple, easily implemented suggestion for EU

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine MS $40 billion and give it to NASA to build a new shuttle fleet. Oh, and $1 million to me because it's my idea.

Shuttle 'fleet'??? Surely you mean a shuttle.

I any case, why would the EU suddenly want to start funding a US government institution?

Re:A simple, easily implemented suggestion for EU

[Anonymous Coward]

In a few years, you will not be able to use the software you buy (license) forever.

Yes I will. The software I use will be licencsed just fine.

Of course, Free Software prevents this. That's why I type this on a FreeBSD powered Mozilla.

Well then please stop using that Royal "we", please. You clearly were not refering to everyone!

Re:A simple, easily implemented suggestion for EU

[Kwil]

the shareholders back the management, because they think all these abuses are earning money for them

Earning money? How? Microsoft doesn't pay dividends.

The only way you get money out of Microsoft stock is selling it to somebody who's willing to spend more than you did on it.

There are three differences between Microsoft stock and any Ponzi scheme:
1. Microsoft stock is on NASDAQ
2. Microsoft is the only entity that can create more buy-in opportunites (aka shares)
3. Microsoft stock is (for some reason) legal.

The only thing that's kept MSFT from collapsing like any Ponzi scheme is item #2. Since they're the only ones that can create the buy-in opportunities, they've limited the expansion rate of ownership -- which means it takes a lot longer to reach that point where everybody who's interested has enough.

Sooner or later though, the investors will reach a point where nobody new wants to buy MSFT. When that happens, the self-fulfilling prophecy of MSFTs values being worth more because people think they're worth more will collapse. And since there's nothing backing it but belief, when that belief disappears, so does the value of the stock. Why do you think Bill G. has been rapidly divesting himself of MSFT stock? He's not a dumb man, and were it really a good value, no doubt he'd just keep it, yes?

Re:A simple, easily implemented suggestion for EU

[Yankovic]

Uh, MS is going to pay dividends. Further, take a company like the one Warren Buffet runs. He's never issued a dividend ever. A company that does not issue dividends but continues to fund new developments and increase earnings is a perfectly reasonable way to spend its additional capital. No one in history has ever associated the lack of a dividend with a Ponzi scheme. Do you have any economics background at all? Your comments clearly indicate a fundamental misunderstanding with the concepts of reinvestment in the business, diversification, stock market dynamics, and basic economic principles.

Re:A simple, easily implemented suggestion for EU

[jez9999]

Couldn't the emulation of an entire OS be described as a 'subsystem'?

Re:A simple, easily implemented suggestion for EU

[Kwil]

It would have been nice if you'd have presented a link to contradict so much evidence to the contrary, including this link from Yahoo news, 5 days earlier where a MSFT spokesman say they have "'no near-term plans' to pay dividends" but after hunting around, I found that you're right. Jan 16th, they announced a plan to pay dividends of 0.08 cents per share after a split.

This changes most of my claims for them. But I still challenge you to present the material differences in what I said for the general case of companies not paying dividends to stock-holders. Is it not true that the only place a stock-holder can make money in that case is by selling to someone who is willing to spend more? Is there any other inherent worth to owing a non-voting share of a company that does not provide dividends? What are the stocks of a non-dividend paying company valued on other than belief? It's not as if they'll entitle you to get anything if the company goes bankrupt, because the company will be, well, bankrupt. A Ponzi scheme is exactly the same, in that it's the belief that you'll be able to get somebody else to invest in whatever it is, and from that is where you'll draw your profits.

The difference, as I've said, is that a Ponzi scheme does not control the "buy-in" opportunities - which allows it to over-expand and crash as people at the bottom of the chain realize nobody wants to purchase the pieces of paper they've purchased.

Reinvestment in the business and diversification are all good things, I'll agree, however they are only good so long as there is some indication that stock-holders will eventually see some return on the money spent in these things.

MSFTs decision to provide divdends surprised many share-holders even. These are people who weren't counting on making money from the company directly, but rather on selling their pieces of paper to someone else.

Can't you see the rather obvious flaw in the idea that "I'll purchase this knowing that the only way it will have any use is to sell it later at a higher price". Eventually someone will find that nobody is willing to pay the higher price.

So people who purchase non-voting stocks with no dividends are either taking the risk that they won't be the person at the end of the chain, or they are trusting that sooner or later dividends will be paid.

Re:A simple, easily implemented suggestion for EU

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry. English is not my first language, and having both precision and concision is hard for me (If I start making a sentence to pass the fact that:
- Retail Software Industry is going into a rental model
- This model alreay exist in the business apps, where it actually make sense
- Uninformed scared consumers are accepting that model
- Most proprietary software from 10 years ago can only run on barely legals emulators
- Open standards and Free Software is the only way to empower the users [even if those users are not developers]
- Investing into learning a proprietary system that can dispear due to a marketing decision is a nonsense. Paying for that is utter stupidity
, that sentence will bore everybody and my point will not pass)

Anyway, I think I see you point, and definitely agree.

Re:A simple, easily implemented suggestion for EU

[Fjord]

Companies do have real valuation based on future earnings. Thus the real value of a stock is based on future earnings per share. Since future earning are unknown to us (the happen in the future, duh), projections are used.

If you look at their filings and projections, you'll see they have an EPS avg of 2.04, with a 5 year groth estimate of 14%. Their stock is at 46.58.

Whoopde doo, so what does it all mean, basil?

Basically, if I were to say to you "give me 46.58 and I'll give you 2.04 this year, 2.04*1.14 next year, 2.04*1.14^2 the next, etc etc" you might say "wow that's good" or you do some math and say "that's equivelent to a 5 year bond at 5.2%, not really that great but better than the bond market." You might do math on other companies and find it's not really that good a deal compared to many other stocks on the market, even ones higher on the F500 list than MS.

Now I know you're saying "they don't issue dividends, so they aren't actually giving me that." The leap here is realizing they don't have to. Think of it as if a big company came along and said, "we have enough money to buy all of microsoft and issue ourselves dividends from the profit. Is it worth it?" That's the end of the Ponzi scheme: someone buys it out. Int his case the company sees they'll get a 5.2% return on their purchase, which as I said before, isn't that great. The belief in this model should come from the fact that as the share price drops lower and profit is unchanged, then the % return on the investment is higher. Eventually, it makes sense to do a buyout.

MS right now is in a ponzi scheme mode because 5.2% isn't a good ROI. Unless the XBox or some other thing they are working on takes off and gives a positive "surprise" for the projections (possible), or the global econonmy shifts in such a way that 5.2% is a good ROI (pretty impossible), the share price as it stands won't be justified, and someone will eventually lose. Don't get me wrong tho, 5.2% isn't the worst on the F500 (some are sub-1%), but it isn't great (many are above 10%). I'd say most of MS's share price currently is because of the name recognition and past stock performance that has amatuer stockholders saying "I've gotta have this, it's a sure thing," and not realizing that there are better sure things out there, like Citigroup at 10.5% (still not the best, but 10.5 is pretty damn good for an F500. High risk bonds often yeild less).

Re:A simple, easily implemented suggestion for EU

[Anonymous Coward]

The most obvious point you're missing is that corporate shares are backed by the underlying value of the corporation. For example, the book value of MSFT is $10.43 per share, meaning that if it were to cease operating tomorrow, each share would be worth roughly $10.43 in assets, most of which is cash.

The reason the share price is higher than $10.43 is that MSFT generates a profit, which increases the value of the shareholders' equity over time (earnings amounted to $1.74 per share last year). If the profit (or part of it) is returned through dividends, it goes to the shareholders directly. If it's retained, it increases the book value of each share, thereby indirectly going to the shareholders.

In contrast to a profitable corporation, a Ponzi scheme doesn't generate any value. Any money returned to the participants has to come from the money paid into the scheme by the participants. As a result, the value can never be higher than the amount paid in, and is simply redistributed, with a positive return to one participant necessarily entailing a negative return to another.

Re:A simple, easily implemented suggestion for EU

[Anonymous Coward]

This is actually true of the stock market in general. Today, hardly anybody owns stock because they expect to make more in dividends, but because they expect to be able to sell at a higher price.

Sometimes it succeeds, sometimes not. People make money and lose money in the stock market. Compared to a Ponzi scheme, it is more unpredictable, since there isn't a single collapse (when it gets deep enough), the same stocks can go up and down several times...

But I agree that it is not a good thing that people buy stock only in order to sell at a higher price.

Re:A simple, easily implemented suggestion for EU

[Anonymous Coward]

Intuit seems to do pretty well renting TurboTax out every year. If you use their web service, you can't even download your data.

Re:A simple, easily implemented suggestion for EU

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, subsystems that implement particular OS personalities are a key part of the Windows NT/2000/XP architecture. At the lowest level is the native NT OS, which was designed to be able to implement the functionality required by multiple OS personalities (e.g. Windows, MS-DOS, OS/2 and POSIX). Above the NT OS is the Win32 layer, and the other personalities are implemented in subsystems which run alongside it.

Windows NT originally included Win32, plus three subsystems: OS/2, POSIX and MS-DOS. The OS/2 subsystem has since been dropped. The POSIX subsystem was upgraded from a generally useless POSIX 1 implementation to a full POSIX 2 implementation that's been certified as UNIX, but it's now sold as an add-on called Services for UNIX, rather than included with the OS. The MS-DOS subsystem is still included in 2000/XP, and some features were added in XP.

The subsystem architecture is actually one of the more interesting features of the Windows NT design. Rather than designing a kernel to implement one OS, the NT kernel was designed to implement multiple OSes, by enumerating all of the features needed by each. So, for example, the Windows NT/2000/XP kernel can create processes in different ways: from mapped executable files in Win32, or by forking and execing in POSIX.

GE couldn't make EU to say "Yes"

[LinuxXPHybrid]

> I doubt the EU will be as lenient as the US has been...

MS has been spending a lot of time and $ and lobbying in Washington to handle the anti trust suit domestically, and they've been very successful. However, apparently, even with that money and power MS can't handle European politics.

> ... whose past victims include General Electric Co.'s legendary former chairman Jack Welch (from the article)

The article is talking about Honeywell acquisition right? MS is becoming a big player in Washington, but I'm guessing that GE is still a bigger player in Washington and the world politics. They couldn't make EU to say "Yes", so it'll be tough for MS. Of course, it's not that I'm taking their (MS) side though.

Re: GE couldn't make EU to say "Yes"

[Black Parrot]

> MS has been spending a lot of time and $ and lobbying in Washington to handle the anti trust suit domestically, and they've been very successful. However, apparently, even with that money and power MS can't handle European politics.

Europe isn't ruled by Republicans who will fold a winning hand in an anti-trust suit for ideological reasons.

Nothings changes, move along...

[rusty spoon]

Maybe I'm being too cynical but I seriously doubt anything will change.

The worst that will happen from MS's POV is that they'll waste a bunch of money on lawyers and maybe pay a big fine...and *possibly* have to publish documentation for some stuff they don't currently publish.

I'm pretty sure it will be a harder punishment than the US gave them but it won't be enough to hurt.

Nothing will change, just like nothing has changed since the US anti-trust stuff.

RealMedia with 3/4's of the global market??

[Niadh]

Microsoft's position has been that unbundling Media Player would tear an irreparable hole in Windows and stifle future innovation. It has also said that Media Player's main rival, a product made by RealNetworks Inc., has more than three-quarters of the global market

Two points.

1. What exactly does RealNetworks have 3/4+ of the global market in? being the default media player? Or in web streaming? or maybe being a fk'ing annoying resource hog thats only life blood is a closed source streaming protocol that most people think of as "pretty nifty"?

2. If RealNetworks Inc. indeed does have more than three-quarters of the global market (we'll assume default media player) then isn't that proof that Microsoft's bundling of Media Player does NOT have a major affect on competitors?

I see where they are coming from but i'm just worried where the courts draw the line of OS and application. After all, if I make a calc program for windows and try to sell it would Microsoft have to not include "calc.exe" in the next release? Keep in mind this is setting precedence that could possible haunt linux distros and MacOS down the line.

Re:RealMedia with 3/4's of the global market??

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure this would haunt %Linux_distro or MacOS. But only if they would be able to reach monopoly status and preven others from modifying the bundled set of middleware. It would be interesting to have a look at such a Linux distro.

Re:RealMedia with 3/4's of the global market??

[Anonymous Coward]

Does that mean in that when the monopolised version of linux comes out that microsoft will have to make LINE-(a linux emmulator) to stay in buisness?

Re:RealMedia with 3/4's of the global market??

[am 2k]

This already happened to Mac OS X with the iApps and Sherlock, there were huge discussions about that. It even bit myself when they bundled a PPTP-client (less features, but working) while I tried to sell mine.

Well, software developers have to deal with it in a graceful way, mostly by adding more features or moving on to something else.

Re:RealMedia with 3/4's of the global market??

[SpaceJunkie]

Considering the difference... With most linux dists - you are given a huge choice(sometimes too much) of media players, offce apps, and there at least three or four GUI calculator apps you can choose. No I really dont think it could be a bad thing.. In the commercial software model - coexistance like that could never work...

I never thought I'd say it....

[GrodinTierce]

and it's especially ironic in light of the recent decision regarding the constitution, but thank God for the EU.

Tierce

Make sabotaging other browsers illegal in EU settl

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully the EU will restrict ms from sabotaging other browsers through stylesheets and other actions, attaching stiff daily monetary fines for such actions, as part of the settlement.

Adopting a policy throughout the EU for adhering to w3c standards when designing web pages for government sites, and ensuring operability of the top 5 browsers of different manufacturers for any government sites that enable or require transactions with governments through the internet would go a long way in adhering to standards. While internet puke explorer would be covered since its use exceeds 90%, at least 4 other manufacturers would be covered, if they adhere to standards, enabling other players to enter and stay viable.

The top 5 should cover i(puke)e, mozilla, jaguar(?), opera, and whatever other manufacturer/developer would be in the group. Others wouldn't have to worry, as long as they adhere to standards, their browsers will work just as well.

Forcing ms to release operability code to others should also be part of the settlement, and it should be ensured that as part of this, the samba developers will get the necessary info for operability.

Hopefully someone within the eu who is part of the negotiations/case will read this, and include this as part of the settlement. It didn't get into the US settlement, but if it gets into the eu settlement it will help the public in the US, and everywhere outside the eu, as well as within the eu. If the multinational banks for example are forced to adhere to w3c standards in the eu, I doubt they'll have good code in the eu, and then intentionally break it for their US customers.

Re:EU here we come: I wouldn't recommend it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm 100% Italian blood. Believe me when I tell you that if you think the US government is screwed up, it's nothing compared to the Italian government. The Italian government is a mess of political parties with all kinds of special interests, including a fascist faction that still has some clout in government, although luckily not as much as earlier periods, and is kept in check by others who strongly revile them.

You need to do a little research before you make such statements.

I don't know if it is still true, it probably is: If you are an Italian citizen up to a certain age and are male, you'll have to serve in the Italian Army. I know relatives who live in the US who almost made the mistake of visiting their home country while a young adult, and would have been forced to serve in the military because they made the mistake of visiting relatives at their age. This is for Italian citizens, but if you emigrate there, it's possible you'd also be obliged to serve.

btw, if you want to publish a web site in Italy, you need a permit from the government first. The leader of Italy made his fortune, and still is an international publisher. Think about that for a while.

Re:Fucking France and Germany.

[Anonymous Coward]

The past 1000 years? Explain, will you, how exactly you were bombed before the 20th century.

The US was invaded by the Brits (obviously) during the revolution, and by Mexico over a dispute over Texas. Just because you're incredibly ignorant of history, don't assume all of /. is.

Insight? on Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh oh...we have a breach here. Quick get me an "IN SOVIET RUSSIA.." quip in here STAT! Damnit! I'm not gonna lose this kid!

Re:Insight? on Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, Linux Writes YOU!!

Re:EU here we come: I wouldn't recommend it.

[moonbender]

(Note: I'm German. We've got problems of our own, but nevertheless:) Agreed, the state of affairs in Italy is pretty terrible. I'm always horrified when I see a TV report on Berlusconi's latest madness, I can't believe stuff like this is happening in 21st century's Europe. I wish some European politicians would speak up (as they did in the case of Austria's Haider - this seems more serious and thus far worse to me), but I assume they can't afford more open internal distress at the moment. Or something.
Of course, your laws on marijuana are apparently a bit more advanced than ours. ;) But I think we're getting there, too.

Oh and I know this is off-topic. I don't care - this is important enough to burn some karma on.

How about the bundling of Windows with hardware?

[irexe]

All the anti-MS cases so far have focused upon the fact that Microsoft bundles software with its OS. There is another, more serious matter going on though: Try to buy an A-brand laptop these days without Windows. It is virtually impossible.

Microsoft's OEM license differs from the normal Windows XP license in that it shifts the refund burden upon the manufacturer. If, by chance or design, the manufacturer does not want to give you a refund for Windows, you are stuck with a top-dollar license for an OS you are never going to use. Microsoft cannot be blamed, because it is apparently the free choice of the manufacturers to ship whatever they want with their laptops.

In Europe, there are laws against bundled sales. Basically, they say that you can't force a consumer to buy a product A when buying a product B. While these laws would certainly inhibit Microsoft from bundling their software with their OS, it does _not_ stop laptop manufacturers from bundling the OS with the hardware. Why not? Well, let's do the math:

An exception to this bundled sales law states that, if a retailer has less than 30% of both markets (in this case the retailer is, say, Sony and the markets are the OS- and laptop-markets) then, the retailer _can_ bundle products. So, if all the laptop manufacturers ship Windows with their product, that is perfectly legal, as long as no single manufacturer grabs more than 30% of the laptop market. Divide and conquer.

Of course, since nearly all laptop sales are from said big manufacturers, somewhere along this line, the consumer is screwed. It boils down to the choice of buying either a B-brand laptop without Windows or an A-brand laptop, at the cost of a voluntary 260 euro donation to Microsoft. This is immoral. It is however not illegal. Shouldn't it be?

So how much is that bridge to Sicily costing?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the latest scandal on the bridge to Sicily?

How much spent so far, how much is latest estimate to completion?

Any of the local families implicated in dipping their hands in the pot yet?

Huge difference

[Anonymous Coward]

There is at least one HUGE difference between the US and de EU: Microsoft cannot blackmail the EU by threatening to remove the NSA- (and other) backdoors from their Operating Systems as they allegedly did with the DoJ (headed by the paranoid christian ayatolla Ashcroft). The current USA governement depends heavily on this 'feature' in their so called 'war on terrorisme/drugs/whatever' as allegedly this backdoor is frequently used by intelligence services to spy and plant/remove 'evidence' in Windows based computer systems all over the world.

Re:How about the bundling of Windows with hardware

[dnaumov]

"All the anti-MS cases so far have focused upon the fact that Microsoft bundles software with its OS. There is another, more serious matter going on though: Try to buy an A-brand laptop these days without Windows. It is virtually impossible."

Has it ever crossed your mind that the reason for this is not an evil conspiracy, but the fact that there is simply not enough CUSTOMER DEMAND to make it reasonable ? That's not fine with you ? Write to the OEMs and make your Linux-using friends write to the OEMs. Maybe this could change something.

Re:Fucking France and Germany.

[Anonymous Coward]

How many millions died?

Re:How about the bundling of Windows with hardware

[irexe]

"Has it ever crossed your mind that the reason for this is not an evil conspiracy, but the fact that there is simply not enough CUSTOMER DEMAND to make it reasonable ?"

Well, aside from the fact that they could sell all laptops without a OS by default (as was normal until recently) there is absolutely no need to ship it with a different license, now is there? Why not put an ordinary shrinkwrapped Windows CD in the laptop's pizza box with a normal license that says: 'if you don't agree, ship me back'? But please don't take it from me!

Moderators: Please mod parent up...

[Spoing]

Thanks!

and more...

[Ender Ryan]

Microsoft is also attempting to lock down the computer so it is no longer a general computing device. The are attempting to turn it into a black box that you can't fiddle with.

If they are successful, where are all of the U.S.'s future programmers going to come from? They won't be allowed to tinker with computers in any way not sanctioned by MS, enforced by U.S. law, so either the pool of programmers will shrink to the point of disappearing, or they will come from outside the U.S.

But what about security profressionals? While we will still have some programmers, because MS will allow people to learn the MS way of doing things in schools, security professionals depend on researching how to break systems, hack into them, how the system works on the lowest level, etc.. Are we going to hire foreign security experts to work on things our national security depends on? It will become literally impossible to legally become a security expert in the U.S., and in fact that is already starting to happen.

We're really shooting ourselves in the head, over here in the land of the "free".

Re:and more...

[NearlyHeadless]

Microsoft is also attempting to lock down the computer so it is no longer a general computing device. The are attempting to turn it into a black box that you can't fiddle with.

If they are successful, where are all of the U.S.'s future programmers going to come from? They won't be allowed to tinker with computers in any way not sanctioned by MS, enforced by U.S. law, so either the pool of programmers will shrink to the point of disappearing, or they will come from outside the U.S.

Which planet are you living on? On my planet there are more programmers for Windows than for all other platforms combined. Microsoft makes available huge quantities of technical information for free. Their compilers have always been reasonably prices (you can even download .Net for free).

Re:and more...

[hplasm]

Hi BillG!! Welcome to /.

Sun, IBM, etc.

[Ender Ryan]

Hmmmm... Excluding MS and a few others, the U.S. itself has a LOT to gain from Open Source.

Sun, IBM, HP, RedHat, and etc., all have investments in free software and stand to gain from all free software development around the world.

Really, Microsoft in particular, and a few other companies, are the only ones who stand to lose. And just think about it, Microsoft DOES NOT help the U.S. economy. Remember, MS/BillG, has over 40B in cash that is not invested back into the U.S. economy. Microsoft forces a lot of companies out of business, while they fill their coffers instead of allowing that money to go back into the economy.

How can anyone argue that MS helps the U.S. economy; they are a damn leech. I say we burn that damn thing off :)

Apparently, many of our foreign ambassadors must be MS shills, because they have been favoring MS over companies that support free software, like IBM, HP, and RedHat, companies that arguably are much more healthy for the U.S. economy than MS.

haven't they been caught in the past?

[Ender Ryan]

Haven't they been caught intentionally doing these sort of things in the past?

DOS isn't done, until [something] doesn't run.

I don't know if that's correct, but I've seen something like that before. Is that an actual quote?

And we already know MS hides certain API's to give themselves an advantage over competitors.

Re:How about the bundling of Windows with hardware

[CrackedButter]

How about buying a fucking Apple mac laptop? Or one from Walmart with linux installed? Duh!

Re:Make sabotaging other browsers illegal in EU se

[LeftOfCentre]

The EU has issued a recommendation for official government websites, and they encourage W3C compliance and such things. Pretty good stuff. The link above is a good starting point for more information.

Re:Fucking France and Germany.

[Anonymous Coward]

The US was also invaded by Canada!

Another step further

[WindBourne]

MS charges various prices on different products in different countries. In china,XP is USD 5.00. MS now ssends 100's of millions of USD to China in an attempt to keep Linux out. China has not put that much money into MS's coffers. Most of those "donations" is coming from the US economy as we are paying the top dollars. The same goes for India, Africa, and South America donations. Basically, we get screwed all the way around by MS.

Re:Another step further

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

Is that true? Isn't that a form of price dumping, or is it different because it's IP and not a physical product? Sony almost got burned for doing that with the PSX, IIRC...

Re:Another step further

[SpaceJunkie]

Considering these particular states - I am not sure there is much that coudl legally challenge microsoft or anyone "price dumping" products there. I do not beleive there are international laws to regulate such practices - but IANAL.

Re:Another step further

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is "donating" money and product to countries. Sony was selling metal at subsidized prices .

Re:Another step further

[Max von H.]

" I do not beleive there are international laws to regulate such practices - but IANAL."

IANAL either, but I do know there's the World Trade Organisation which regulates such practices, of which both the USA and China are members.

I wonder how one could prove it's anti-competitive since the only competition (Linux) is free. But I guess it could be considered dumping, which is illegal.

Cheers,
Max

Re:Another step further

[Anonymous Coward]

More likely Microsoft could, if they needed to, prove that the unit price of production per copy of Windows is less than what they are charging in China et al, so they are not really dumping, instead they are making a huge profit in the "regular priced" countries...

Re:Another step further

[Anonymous Coward]

What is your source for this claim? I just read an article in Forbes which claimed the opposite; that MS uses the same pricing structure in all countries, so, for example, the average Chinese would have to pay several months' salary to buy Windows (which is why almost all Chinese who buy Windows buy pirated copies, which do cost about $5).

if they order a break up will MS just get out

[the_2nd_coming]

I mean what authority will the EU have over MS if MS decideds to pull out of Europe? no sales, no service, etc...I think they would opt for doing that before they allow a foign body to break them up.

Re:if they order a break up will MS just get out

[LeftOfCentre]

Not a chance. Consider what was said earlier about 1/4 of Microsoft's money being made in the EU. That's quite a staggering amount. Even with a huge fine it'd still be preferable than leaving the region and loosing all that business.

Re:if they order a break up will MS just get out

[LarsG]

I mean what authority will the EU have over MS if MS decideds to pull out of Europe?

And, umm, why would they do that? A simple analysis would show that pulling out of the EU market would cost them more than a company break up.

Re:Fucking France and Germany.

[Anonymous Coward]

You Yanks, fortunately for your families, have /never/ experienced an aggressive enemy invade your country.

Well...that is a problem especially for the French (because of the German's ironically), mostly because france simply doesn't defend itself. They are generally good at two things...cooking and putting their hands in the air. The U.S., like most countries (even European countries) - would defend itself. Convieniently enough, citizens can even have guns in the U.S...it has been that way for a long time. Germany's view on guns was that they were of no use to citizens...if they wanted guns...go join the SS.

Europe does not represent the world...and France and Germany do not represent all of Europe, though they will try to twist things over there into their favor. It's not as hard these days as it's more fashionable to hate America.

Re:How about the bundling of Windows with hardware

[SN74S181]

A top dollar license for an OS you are never going to use??

"Top dollar" would be the retail box price for the OS seperate from the hardware.

The OEM price is much, much lower.

Political Considerations

[praksys]

I hope that the EU does adopt some pretty severe structural remedies, but I have to say that it is pretty unlikely for political reasons.

For the most part the US and EU have had a practice of letting each other determine anti-trust policies with respect to their own corporations. In other words if two US companies want to merge, and US anti-trust regulators think its OK, then EU regulators give it a pass as well. This doesn't always happen - the EU did sink a big US merger a while back - but it usually happens for one very good reason. The US and the EU do not want to get involved in any kind of tit-for-tat trade war over this kind of stuff.

That does not mean that the EU will let MS off the hook. It just means that whatever remedies are handed down are likely to be on the less severe side (pay some fines, promise not to do it again) rather than the more severe side (break up etc).

Re:Political Considerations

[Anonymous Coward]

In the case of Microsoft, while the US was less willing to impose significant sanctions, it is unlikely that the US would be willing to get into a trade war over sanctions imposed by the EU, either, because of the remaining overall feel of having been lenient toward Microsoft.

Still, I don't believe that the sanctions will be significant.

Media player bundling and innovation

[jonabbey]

Microsoft's position has been that unbundling Media Player would tear an irreparable hole in Windows and stifle future innovation.

This is one of the more blatant examples of Microsoft's attempts to monopolize through bundling.

They made a similar case with IE.. "if we rip out IE, all the programs that have been written to include web page display functionality will break. <heavy sigh/> we could hide the icon, maybe."

The thing is, if they ripped out media player, what it would break would be the ability of software written for windows to display.. some Microsoft proprietary data formats.

Of course, this is one of those areas where you have a tipping point.. get enough users to write 'software' in your media player, and pretty soon you can't have new competition, because your new competition will be legally prohibited from playing your content, either through copyright law, patent law, or DRM/DMCA.

The EU is right to be looking at this.

Re:Media player bundling and innovation

[slittle]

The thing is, if they ripped out media player, what it would break would be the ability of software written for windows to display.. some Microsoft proprietary data formats.

Bullshit. Windows Media (WMP, WMA) does not equal Windows Media Player any more than that godaweful Quicktime player is equal to Quicktime.

Media Player and IE are just frontends for backend API that do all the work, including playing open formats. The media infrastructure behind MP is just as important to Windows as Quicktime is to Macs. (And we wouldn't need that god damn shitty player to play MOVs if Apple made the appropriate DLL for Windows; then it would play in MP or any other Windows player, game, *AHEM*VCD encoder*AHEM* or whatever).

lol!

[Ender Ryan]

Their compilers have always been reasonably prices

And just what planet have YOU been living on?

And no, you're wrong anyway. The problem will be that MS will have complete control over everything, and said "everything" will be the black box I mentioned.

Software will have to be signed by MS, and only those MS chooses to allow to program will be able to program.

Re:lol!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're referring to the Trusted Computing concept (http://www.trustedpc.org/), it is not run by MS, it is a consortium of which MS is only one member (the founder members are Compaq, HP, IBM, Intel and Microsoft, and many others have since joined).

With regard to trusted computing itself, a system designed to support it would not lose the ability to run untrusted software (i.e. it would not become a black box). However, trusted software would require a trusted OS, which in turn would require hardware that supports the trust relationship, etc.

Many people (including me) like the ideas put forward by the trusted computing concept because they allow for much finer granularity in controlling what the software we run is allowed to do. However, trusted computing is probably a bad thing for open-source software because of the cost and effort required to sign all software and whatnot (incidentally, it will not be MS doing the signing). This means that open-source software will be largely left behind as 'untrusted', while commercial software will become 'trusted'. To the extent that trusted software is better (which I think it will be), open-source software will therefore lose out.

Re:lol!

[hany]

With regard to trusted computing itself, a system designed to support it would not lose the ability to run untrusted software (i.e. it would not become a black box). However, trusted software would require a trusted OS, which in turn would require hardware that supports the trust relationship, etc.

If we look at it from one side, then yes, TCPA can bring us more security to general computing.

But if we look at it from another side, then well there is a saying: If you want to boil the frog, do it slowly - that wat it does not notice its being boiled. So maybe that's what MS wants - to "boil" us slowly. Because in TCPA there are (IMO) quite a lot of things which may go wrong if used ... say ... improperly.

Re:lol!

[Alsee]

Many people (including me) like the ideas put forward by the trusted computing concept because they allow for much finer granularity in controlling what the software we run is allowed to do.

100% propaganda. I'm a programmer. I've read the TCPA specs. I understand how it works. I understand what it can do and what it can't do. The ONLY thing TCPA does is take away your control over your own machine. The central design feature is that the owner of the machine is not allowed access to his own encryption keys.

Unless you consider losing control of your own machine to be a "benefit" there isn't a single benefit of TCPA actually requires TCPA.

If they redesigned the system to give the owner of the machine access to the encryption keys you could get all of the claimed benefits and none of the negatives. They will never allow the owner to get his own keys because the system is not designed for the owners benefit - the negatives ARE the design goal. Every single "positive" is pure smokescreen.

-

Re:lol!

[Alsee]

yes, TCPA can bring us more security to general computing.

No it can't, not if you define "security" as the security of the owner of the machine.

TCPA can only increase the "security" of other people - meaning it is a DRM system. It isn't going to prevent viruses either.

See my other post for a little more info.

-

Re:lol!

[Anonymous Coward]

How can the state of the system be guaranteed if the user has the ability to break the trust? The answer is it can't. If you allow the user to break the trust relationship, you're necessarily allowing worms, viruses, et al. to do the same, and therefore essentially offering no improvement over the current situation.

Secondly, even though the user can't break trusted software (meaning make untrusted software appear to be trusted), nothing in a TC system prevents the user running untrusted software. In other words, the user doesn't lose any control over the machine, but rather gains the ability to run a new category of software (trusted software) in addition to all the existing, untrusted software.

A significant number of people think trusted software will take off, because it's better. Hysterical opponents of TC are practically admitting the same thing by their hysteria; if they didn't think everyone would start using trusted software (which would require real advantages over untrusted software), there'd be nothing for them to fear, since nothing in the TC platform stops anyone running untrusted software.

Re:lol!

[Alsee]

Idiot anonymous coward.

How can the state of the system be guaranteed if the user has the ability to break the trust? The answer is it can't.

Sure it can. Giving the owner of the machine access to the keys does nothing to prevent the rest of the TCPA design from guaranting the state of the system to it's owner.

If you allow the user to break the trust relationship, you're necessarily allowing worms, viruses, et al. to do the same

BZZZT! The owner IS NOT SOFTWARE. Malicious software cannot take PHYSICAL action. If releasing the encryption keys requires pressing a physical button then the owner of the machine can get his keys if he chooses to - and malicious software can't.

Not that trusted computing would do anything to stop viruses and worms anyway. "Trusted Computing" wouldn't have even slowed down the latest Slammer worm. "Trusted Computing" is nothing but a fancy DRM system and the only effect it has on worms is that the worm can't break the DRM either. The worm can wipe all your files, or even STEAL your files off your machine. All TCPA does is force the worm to wipe your copy of the file when it steals it.

the user doesn't lose any control over the machine

Sure he does. "Trusted Computing" denies the owner of the machine access to his own encryption keys. It's nothing but a fancy DRM system.

everyone would start using trusted software (which would require real advantages over untrusted software)

Wrong. Again. "Most people" don't know squat about software, and "most people" have never heard of "Trusted Computing". If "most people" wind up using it, it will be because it's going to get rammed down everyone's throats. The next Microsoft operating system will ONLY run on "trusted" hardware. 90% of the people who go out and buy a new computer with the next Microsoft operating system will be running this crap because it was foisted on them.

nothing in the TC platform stops anyone running untrusted software

There's nothing in the hardware from preventing it, but there is certainly the Microsoft Monopoly and other industry cartels and the network effect to royally fuxor anyone who who declines to give up ownership of his own computer.

-

Re:lol!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really have read the TCPA specs, you might want to try again, and I'd suggest asking for help when you don't understand certain bits.

To start with, the system doesn't guarantee its state to its (the system's) owner, it guarantees its state meets the requirements set by the creator/owner of whichever data it's attempting to access. In some cases this is the system's owner, in many cases it isn't.

Re:lol!

[Alsee]

If you really have read the TCPA specs, you might want to try again, and I'd suggest asking for help when you don't understand certain bits.

I have and I understood them just fine. My entire post was 100% correct. I'd suggest you actually find an ERROR in my post before claiming I need help understanding certain bits.

The fact is the creators of TCPA are lying. Period. The central design requirement of TCPA is that it shouls hide keys from their owner. Without exception every benefit they claim for TCPA can be achieved just as well without that design requirement. The ONLY reason to conseal the keys from the owner of the machine is to take control away from the owner. Those developing and promoting TCPA repeatedly and endlessly claim it is not designed for DRM. They are lying.

the system doesn't guarantee its state to its (the system's) owner

The owner is the only one to whom it CAN actually guarantee its state. A false system state can be presented by anyone who can aquire a valid chip endorsement key, a valid manufacture endorsement key, a valid CA endorsement key, or who can get CA to sign an false key. That includes the CA, any TCPA chip manufacturer, any agency of any government, and most importantly any corporation or individual with the resources to dig a key out of a chip, plus whoever else I overlooked. Given a well stocked college lab I could do it myself.

TCPA is an attempt to say that you do not own your own machine and you do not own your own data.

-

Re:How about the bundling of Windows with hardware

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Try to buy an A-brand laptop these days without Windows. It is virtually impossible.

Done. Maybe you don't consider Apple "A" brand, but lots of other people do.

Just to remind you that there are options. Ignoring those options only contributes to the future lack of choice--but there are good options that exist now. Chose them if choice is as important to you as you say.

Cash Back

[mestoph]

Personally i'd settle for some cash back on the 4 copies of XP i have, and the copy of office and 2k i have. I mean with with the small amounts off each one, like in the US. I'd be able to get a new mouse or something :)

Micro$oft proposed setlement to European Union

[red_gnom]

This is the proposed European Union settlement:

MS will provide brand new Micro$oft keyboards in Europe with Euro sign key in the place of Delete key. That will finally make typing European currency an easy task, helping the European economy, and also give new meaning to the three-finger salute: Control-All-Euro

Re:EU here we come: I wouldn't recommend it.

[Conor Turton]

But that is Italy, only a moron would move there. Ther are far better countries in the E.U to be in.

No comment

[whereiswaldo]

Microsoft declined to issue any new public comment at such a sensitive moment.

But we all know what that comment would have been: We are confident that Microsoft will prevail in this case.

Re:How about the bundling of Windows with hardware

[irexe]

Interesting point!! I would actually have preferred an Aplle laptop in the very first place. I'm an Apple fan. Unfortunately, their pricing is no longer competitive. I tried to compile the same code with various optimizations on a 867 Mhz G4 and an athlon xp 1700. Same code, same compiler. This code was typical for the type of apps I run. The mac was two to six times slower and cost about 1000 euros more. I love the mac, but right now, it is not competitive. Sorry.

Administration vs. citizens

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

BTW, when I say "US", I refer, of course, to the administration, not the citizens.

See now, this is a big part of the problem with political discussions. The US administration did not just happen. It was elected (yeah, yeah, or not) by the US population. You can talk about buying votes all you like, but at the end of the day, money doesn't vote, citizens do. If they don't like the way they're being represented, they shouldn't have elected this goverment.

Re:Administration vs. citizens

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, the corrupt, imperial and undemocratic Eurocrats who rule from Brussels were not elected by the people of the EU member states, so their misdeeds cannot be blamed on the general population.

Re:Administration vs. citizens

[Vollernurd]

Agreed, perhaps I digressed from the original point of the post though.

However, it is plain to see in many countries, expecially the UK where I live, that Governments that were elected by the population are getting increasingly worse at doing what they are told to do :-)

I'm sorry, but not always does the "Govt. knows best" idea wash - expecially if you take a look at the UK's transport policy, for a crude example.

I guess I'm just cynical because only 50% of our population actually bothered to vote in the last General Election!

Re:Administration vs. citizens

[WNight]

So the Iraqi citizens are responsible for Saddam? 100% of them voted him in. He's got a mandate from the people that you wouldn't believe! (I mean that. You literally would not believe it...)

Less than half the US population votes for Bush, even less than half the voters who voted. And many of the ones who did voted for him simply because they were voting anti-democrat. Ditto with many Gore votes.

In a broken system that doesn't allow you any real choice, you can't be held responsible for your vote. Especially when, like in Florida, it's pretty clear than many people's votes never were counted.

In a country that actually allowed proportional representation and approval voting (or some other similar system) can claim that their elected leaders are representative of the population. In the USA (and Canada, and many other countries) you vote only to try to keep the leader who's the farthest from your viewpoint getting from getting "elected".

Re:Administration vs. citizens

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

So the Iraqi citizens are responsible for Saddam? 100% of them voted him in.

I have two points to make here.

Firstly, they didn't have a choice, but the US citizenry did.

Secondly, if you don't like the argument about citizens being responsible for their own government, perhaps you should stop large numbers of overly militant US citizens from using it as an excuse to justify the inevitable civilian casualties in your merry little war. I have heard exactly this argument -- "They have a choice, they could overthrow him if they wanted, so screw 'em if they don't" -- from several war advocates from the US recently.

Re:Administration vs. citizens

[WNight]

I agree, we should consider overthrowing out leaders more often, on both sides. If you really believe Bush is getting us into a terrible and needless war, surely it justifies trying to kill him before he gets us all killed. Seems reasonable to me, he's no better than Saddam, just another ruled sending his people out to die.

Secondly, no, most US citizens didn't get a choice of leader. The US voting system is broken. They got to express a preference, but then that preference was ignored.

is that why MS is "lending" source code?

[broeman]

I heard in the news (here in Denmark) that Microsoft is sharing its source code with specially chosen companies ... maybe somebody are trying to kiss somebodys ass again.

Re:is that why MS is "lending" source code?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think MS will supply the Windows source code to companies that have bought a large enough number of licences (I don't know what that number is), which basically covers the biggest customers of Windows. The Windows source code is also given out to certain governments, e.g. the American and Russian governments among others.

It isn't open-source since all these corporations/governments can do is look at the code (for obvious reasons they aren't allowed to change it), but it makes debugging easier and proves the lack of 'secret NSA APIs' and other such urban legends.

Nitpick

[Anonymous Coward]

Good Lord, you _ARE_ too much of a geek.

Re:Fucking France and Germany.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well...that is a problem especially for the French (because of the German's ironically), mostly because france simply doesn't defend itself. They are generally good at two things...cooking and putting their hands in the air.

3 things... you left out "putting their legs in the air".

Counting chickens.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I'll bet the EU gets right on it. After all, Euro governments aren't known for hypocracy, corruption, and whoring themselves, are they?

Oops,sorry, wrong planet!

Re:How about the bundling of Windows with hardware

[Fjord]

Yeah, but the antitrust stuff doesn't say you need a competitor with good rates. Essentially you are saying a PC with windows is cheaper than the competitor. How is this bad for the consumer again?

And yes, this is why MS has channeled funding to Apple in the past to ensure they continue to be able offer their alternative. Otherwise, MS would have a lot more problems.

Re:Fucking France and Germany.

[StonedZero]

The US invaded ?????

The US didn't exist before the Revolution.

The Britian , Netherland, France, United States invaded the lands now known as the US.

Otherwise, the invasion of the US Texas by Mexio , seems to contradict historical facts. The Six Flags over Texas would indicate that the Texas was an independent Republic before it choose to join the US of A.

Perhaps the world is full who should use the internet to over come ignorance of history?

Re:EU here we come: I wouldn't recommend it.

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC, Italy has a pretty high rate of "perceived corruption", higher than the US and one of the highest in Europe.

But the US is much higher than the best of the EU.

I think that if someone moved to Europe for a better political situation, they would have enough sense to avoid Italy (and perhaps southern Europe in general), in any case.

I would probably prefer about half of the EU countries as a place to live over the US. Luckily I do live in one of the best of them.

Actually very frightning...

[Anonymous Coward]

Picture this: what if MS wins this case?

(I leave some space here to consider all valid and scary options)

What will happen then? The terrifying answer is: NOTHING. The final frontier will have fallen. There will be no legal power in the world of any serious importance anymore capable of stopping Uncle Bill becoming King Of The Modern World. Or Duce. Whatever. It actually scares me more than it does make me glad that the EU are going after MS. What if we fuck up the way you (the US Justice Dept.) fucked up? (...) Argh...

Or am I overreacting?

Philantropy

[SgtChaireBourne]

Bill Gates donates $100M to fight AIDS

It's not as altruistic as it seems. Most of the money goes to pharmaceuticals, just like the AIDS budget announced by Bush, which gives half to pharmaceuticals. Coincidentally, Bill Gates bought a fair amount of stock in drug companies last year.

At least in India, smoke from wood fires is more of a health concern than AIDS. In Eastern Europe it's mult-drug resistant tuberculosis. (If you travel with peope working in Eastern Europe/Russia or work indoors with anyone who does, then this should be a higher prioirity than AIDS) In the U.S. it's traffic deaths.

what about quality, ...?

[hany]

They[MS] live in a world where lock-in is part of their business model - software is everything and they use proprietary protocols to keep people using MS products. Throw that away and with no hardware or anything else to distinguish themselves from anyone else and they have nothing.

What about quality, ease of use, user friendliness, security and other usefull and wanted features?

(Yeah, my response looks in current state of the world(tm) like pathetic, sarcastic or whatever, but wasn't market supposed to work that way?)

Two words.

[jotaeleemeese]

Netscape, Stacker.

Not true.

[jotaeleemeese]

The EU has stopped mergers involving US companies based in EU anti monopoly law.

They also had stopped mergers between US and EU companies, which is more understandable to the untrained eye.

Yes and No

[TheConfusedOne]

The money is in banks and short term investments. The problem is the short term part of that. The investments that MS undertakes with these funds are aimed at keeping that money liquid so it can be accessed quickly and with little delay.

hows that combines with MS abusing its monopoly?

[hany]

A significant number of people think trusted software will take off, because it's better. Hysterical opponents of TC are practically admitting the same thing by their hysteria; if they didn't think everyone would start using trusted software (which would require real advantages over untrusted software), there'd be nothing for them to fear, since nothing in the TC platform stops anyone running untrusted software.

Three things:

1. How it is going to combine with Microsoft abusing its monopoly power as alredy happened (and has been confirmed by court even if it was not punished properly)?
2. Better, better, better ... to whom? To user? Or to RIAA, Microsoft, ..., John Ashcroft, ...?
3. Trust: Trust has two sides, even where we are talking about trust between vendor and customer. Vendor can't force the trust upon customer. If forced, that's not trust. If it is enforced (by say customer being unable do what he wants with keys in TCPA part of his own PC) than it's not about trust too (because how can customer trust vendor if vendor do not trust customer as expressed by mentioned denied access to keys).

So I still se TCPA as attempt to either rob me of my money, rob me of my freedoms or rob me of both. Especialy when government get involved and TCPA gets mandated.

Re:hows that combines with MS abusing its monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

Three points:

1) Microsoft doesn't control the TCPA. The firms which back it (including Microsoft) are more or less the ones who currently run the PC industry. If you trust them (excluding Microsoft, judging by your comments) enough to use a PC, it's not a terribly large leap to trust they'll run the TCPA in the interests of PC users.

2) Obviously 'better' means better for the users. I doubt IBM is overly concerned with helping Microsoft, and equally doubt that Microsoft, Intel, HP, et al. are particularly interested in the RIAA or John Ashcroft. They're more intersted in selling their products to consumers .

3) Slashdot readers aren't typical of the average non-technical computer-user community, nor even of the average technical computer-user community. I get the distinct impression a lot of Slashdot readers belong to the aluminium-foil-beanie brigade. So if you think there are deep conspiracies behind trusted computing, I'm sure you're in good company here, but that doesn't mean there really are.

Re:hows that combines with MS abusing its monopoly

[hany]

I agree with you that it is not very likely HP, IBM, ... want to help MS nad RIAA to make more money or to help John Ashcroft "to fight terrorists". I also agree with you that HP, IBM, ... are running current PC industry.

What I do not agree with is the extrapolation: "If you trust them (excluding Microsoft, judging by your comments) enough to use a PC, it's not a terribly large leap to trust they'll run the TCPA in the interests of PC users."

Why?

MS showed us, that manipulating large quantities of not very skilled users (skilled in computing) can bring monopoly and huge profits associated with it. - A lot of users are not running Windows because its better but because everybody has it. And they do not know it can be better. And of those who know (and are able to do more about it than just switch to other OS as they are not just users) very few are willing to break ranks and provide office documents in some open format, provide their application to non Windows platforms or at least make their website accessible to non MS IE users.

So maybe HW vendors get inspired by this and are now planing to sell more HW (at higher prices) which can do less (because for example it will limit users while they are copying files - now they can allways, tomorow they will be able only sometimes) with the benefit of MPAA and RIAA members willing to hand their "data" to TCPA enabled systems (at some price, of course) which may be presented to Joe User Average as a huge benefit which is impossible with current technology.

Thus IBM, HP, ... get more revenue with side-effect (from HW vendor perspective) of MS and MPAA and RIAA members also geting higher revenues. And Joe Average User wont know that all of those "benefits" (i.e. entertainment over Net, etc.) were possible also today with current PCs at lower costs (for user) but that MPAA and RIAA members were not willing to accept low margins.

But still, you got the point - CD/DVD writer manufacturers (and those making equipment to which those writers are installed) make much more money than "content" producers so it'll be stupid for them to risk those profits because RIAA or MPAA are screaming.
On the other hand, making HW is low margin bussiness. Making "content" and "monopoly software" is high margin business - so that's tempting.
And also Woody Allen said somewthing like this: "I am paranoind but that does not mean they are not after me!". :)

So maybe I'm more paranoid than you but in case I'm right we'll be both robed quite equaly. So why not to demant those making that TCPA spec to change it so users can tamper with keys stored in there? So as owners of TCPA enabled system we'll at least feel more in control? :)

Last Post!

[alpg]

If just one piece of mail gets lost, well, they'll just think they forgot
to send it. But if *two* pieces of mail get lost, hell, they'll just think
the other guy hasn't gotten around to answering his mail. And if *fifty*
pieces of mail get lost, can you imagine it, if *fifty* pieces of mail get
lost, why they'll think someone *else* is broken! And if 1Gb of mail gets
lost, they'll just *know* that Arpa [ucbarpa.berkeley.edu] is down and
think it's a conspiracy to keep them from their God given right to receive
Net Mail ...
-- Casey Leedom

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