Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Defies EU Commission
otahkgeek writes "Wired News is reporting that Microsoft claims that by removing Windows Media Player from Windows, it would be forced to ship a substandard version to European consumers. This is on the heels of a three-day hearing by a European commission to determine the validity of charges that Microsoft illegally abused its power over the home computer market."
True - however, I'm of the belief that it is M$'s software - and no one should tell them how & what to bundle with it!
They have a right to bundle their software as they see fit....
--dukeluke
Seems like yesterday this was Internet Explorer.
You are really missing out. Get with the program. WMP is crap. It can't play every video format, it is slow, and its interface is chubby and wastes space. It was strange how WMP actually got slower after WMP 6.4. The interface was also changed to the chubby monster it now is, with large space wasting empty borders.
The absolute best video player for Windows is open source, has an interface similar to WMP 6.4, is faster than any other video player, and it can play any and every video format! It is called Media Player Classic.
Seriously, you are missing out. Install the latest WMP so that you have the latest MS codecs, do the same with Quicktime, Real, DIVX, etc... (again in order to get the codecs) and then install Media Player Classic. Give yourself a week of using Media Player Classic for all video playing, and I know you won't go back to WMP. You won't be able to tolerate WMP's slow startup times, sluggish performance, its chubby interface, and its lack of codec/format support.
Media Player Classic. Just keep repeating those words. Open source, free, faster, more versatile, and just plain better! One media player to rule them all!
What are you waiting for? Just try it!
I never claimed he said they're legally allowed to do anything. I suggested that MS won't shoot themselves in the foot, ever, if we let them do whatever they want. I claim that letting MS do whatever they want will not backfire on them, it will backfire on us. Why? Because they will use illegal methods to prevent marketshare erosion. They almost had Apple and Corel buried a while back, but gave them small bailouts to keep the illusion of competition. Left alone, MS will have no reason to even feign competition, leaving Apple and other competitors to wither on the vine. MS has attacked the GPL and open source to the point that it's clear -- to me, at least -- that they intend to void it and pillage the community's work, or else have it declared un-American (and later, anti-European, and so on), thus outlawing the competition. Or they'll tie DRM to hardware, leaving other competing systems at a visible disadvantage. Or they'll do the same things that came out in court already -- strike (illegal) deals with hardware vendors such as Dell and HP that prevent them from pre-installing competitor's products. Left to do whatever they want, it's a small step from there to striking deals with vendors for "exclusive drivers" so that other Operating Systems have no viable means of making hardware work.
In this fashion, as I just described, Microsoft will take advantage of being "allowed to do whatever they want" to the point that they lock in as many people as possible, and the 1% that goes against MS will have a miserable time of it. You need to understand this. If Microsoft is left alone, they will make "donations" to corrupt government officials to pass laws against competitors, they will lock-in hardware vendors with contracts & DRM schemes, they will do anything to keep control. Why? Because if we do what the original poster naively suggested ("let them do whatever they want"), MS will take it far beyond what you could ever imagine.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &