Slashdot Mirror
EU's Mind 'made up' on Microsoft
Alain Williams writes "The BBC reports that Microsoft could soon be facing multi-billion euro fines and other sanctions for breaking European competition law.
The European Commission has finished drafting its decision in the case it brought against the software giant." Let's just hope that the EU can fine them cash and not accept Microsoft coupons like the US does. Clearly the best solution to an operating system monopoly is to give free copies of windows to school and eliminate the competition as early in the education process as possible.
England wants to knight him. Europe wants to hate him. Strange.
I want audio and video software as part of my OS, nicely bundled and integrated.
I don't want to a half-baked OS that requires a lot more decisions to get a useful modern OS.
Maybe with MS have been "forcing suppliers to include its own media software", but have MS been preventing suppliers from also supplying other media software? The BBC article does not make clear.
It will be nice though if MS do "reveal more information to its competitors about how its operating system interacts with others and with software applications"
blog.sam.liddicott.com
No other DRM system actually lets you choose your player. iTunes only talks to iPod, at least w/o burning and re-ripping. You want to talk product tying -- MS doesn't even sell an MP3 player, let alone force you to use theirs.
But heh. Don't listen to me. I'm just a hardcore Linux user w/ a half terabyte RAID-5 FreeBSD box with fond memories of his old Apple IIgs days.
Not to mention I think this round of DRM won't end up any differently than it did for DAT/Minidisc/Dataplay -- eventual marginalization vs. products that actually want to work.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
. . .and may demand that it stops forcing suppliers to include its own media software at the expense of competitors such as Real Networks and Apple.
I'm not a great fan of Media Player, though it does it's job pretty well, but doesn't the modern definition of a desktop OS contain a media player?
From what I can tell, the options Microsoft will have would be to either have no media player whatsoever, or a vast myraid of them. I would be willing to guess that MS will take the former option, with a recomended update through Windows update being Media Player.
So, by removing some functionality of the OS, how will this help consumers in general? Indeed will they be more likely to use another media player simply because there isn't one currently available, or will they simply get the recommended one from Microsoft?
Microsoft is a legal entity in many EU countries. They have a large presence in Ireland (research & production) and local sales & translation offices almost everywhere.
It doesn't matter wether or not media player or ie are bundled or not. It has been my experience that the only reason people use these things is because they don't know any better. Absolutely everybody I have shown Firebird has switched. Some even thank me, almost as if I saved their lives. A single ad campaign for Mozilla Firebird will destroy Internet Explorer. People just have to be told it exists. Same for winamp 5. If you show people that it can do more than media player ever could they'll switch because it is better. I really hope that mplayer for windows actually works soon though. That will be the best.
Microsoft has done much worse things like preventing the sale of naked PCs (do that, and your OEM licence discounts miraculously shrink), embracing and extending everything from Java to HTML and, of course, spreading FUD left right and centre about anything that might threaten Bill's plans for world domination. These are the issues the EU should be focusing on, not whether they bundle a Windows app that plays MP3s.
Oh yeah, and Bill gives loads of money to charity, but there are more tax-efficient ways of giving to charity than overpaying for mediocre software.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Probably not. I think that the best we can hope for is MS being required to publish the file (e.g.: Word or Access) formats and make them available, at little or no cost, for interoperability.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Why do none of the remedys require microsoft to release all APIs? This would solve the problems, would not destroy their business but would reduce their ability to harm consumers more than any other action.
Well fines aren't supposed to put a company out of business... If MS has to give up a few billion dollars in cash, you can bet they'll change their ways...
At the very least it will make the stockholders take notice and perhaps even dump if MS doesn't change their ways under a significant penalty.
The funny thing is that if Microsoft was a company based in the EU they would be getting government money and protection from the EU
What is funny is that EVERY TIME an article about EU/MS pops up, someone says this. They then tend to get modded to +5 insightful whereupon the following thread turns into a US vs EU flamefest. And speaking of which:
A shining example of this is Airbus who clearly benefits from government subsidies, etc.
Agh, and you just had to bring up the Airbus/Boeing conflict too? This ought to be a subset of Godwin's law.
For the record, I think both Airbus and Boeing use government subsidies to prevent fair competition, and it sucks. However, in the EU/MS case, could it not be possible that somewhere in the EU beaurocracy there are some people who are actually trying to do the right thing?
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
This is just a ploy by the EU to try and influence global commerce beyond their reach. They want to matter.
Hhhmmmm...
Poor little us, not being big enough to matter to global commerce! Methinks you need to look at some statistics comparing the GDP of the USA with the EU.
And you've been modded as "insightful". I think there should be a new category of mods. "Insightful (American)"
Kids' minds are like sponges. Give them the chance and they can learn a lot, especially when you make the learning fun. This has been shown many times in foreign language education; the eariler a kid starts learning another language, the higher the chance of that kid learning the language and learning it well. The reason why foreign language education still doesn't start at an early age for most children is due to adults' prejudices. They think it's too difficult to learn another language, so therefore it is way too difficult for the kiddies.
It's the same way with computer stuff. Computer-phobe adults are the ones who end up instilling a "fear" of computers in children. You know the drill. "I don't understand computers." "It's too hard to figure out." Because adults think Linux is too difficult (often without trying it first), they think kids can never learn it.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
You know I find it interesting that any post that is even slightly anti-*nix and pro-windows gets modded down within a few seconds of posting. People like Windows. If they didn't, they wouldn't buy it. People want a computer to do things for them and not have to do things for their computer. Microsoft provided the masses a way to do this, albeit for a high cost (cash and security).
No, they won't. They simply use it because it is there, its the default app, and does the job, however horribly, that they need. 'Most' users, anyway.
OTOH, if YOU install it for them, and make it the default, they will happily use it and learn its features.
Unfortunately, even installing the simplest of software still scares the crap out of a lot of people. Or even saving a copy of a document to a floppy disk instead of in their My Documents folder is totally over their head.
(Stolen sig) Remember: it's a "Microsoft virus", not an "email virus", a "Microsoft worm", not a "computer worm
"Clearly the best solution to an operating system monopoly is to give free copies of windows to school and eliminate the competition as early in the education process as possible."
You know, I remember all through school (k-12) we were forced to use Apple products of varying models. Since then, I have never used an Apple, and all the forced Apple knowledge was wasted.
The obvious long-term solution in this "war on IT terror" is for the EU and other nations to rebuild their IT infrastructures cooperatively and relatively inexpensively upon open source foundation. By removing the bottleneck that is at Microsoft Way One, Redmond, countries (incl. the US of A) can launch a renaissaince of innovation and information sharing between countries and individuals while nurturing a more balanced distribution of local employment across the world.
Governments are fundamentally responsible for establishing the basic infrastructure upon which the people can build their lives and business without artificial impediments. Imagine what the life would be like today if printing presses, typewriters and even the lowly sheets of paper had been incredulously controlled by some mediaval robber baron!? Why should one provenly immoral corporation be allowed to "own" the formats in which data (incl. writing itself!) is excanged, recorded and backed up!? It's insane.
The EU is fully capable of first introducing a set of recommendations and later (after the OSS-based support and development structures have been established) requirements for publically-owned and open IT systems that can also be easily adopted by other countries across the globe. Microsoft is fully welcome to participate in this "New Deal" but they must remove their foot from the oxygen tubes or risk becoming totally irrelevant.
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
Europe isn't a borg collective. There are people who have difference opinions. Believe me, more people than not don't like Gates in England. Just because the Queen has given away a KBE doesn't mean that everyone's falling over themselves to grovel at his feet.
As I recall, the US government wasn't particularly harsh on Microsoft. Does that mean all USians adore their products?
"Could this be the start of an open source Windows version?"
Probably not. I think that the best we can hope for is MS being required to publish the file (e.g.: Word or Access) formats and make them available, at little or no cost, for interoperability.
That would actually be worse than the current situation. As things are now, reverse engineered MS formats can be used for GPL projects. If Microsoft releases the file formats but charges a license, even $1, for usage of these formats, it will be incompatable with the GPL and we will be unable to use their formats AT ALL. In fact this seems to be what they are doing with the FAT file system.
You know what I would like to see ... is that Microsoft just pull all copies out of all of Europe and then let Europe experience the horror of trying to use Linux. Sure Linux is good for us nerds, but lets see how much of an uprise there is when the internet market in Europe takes a dive because the mom and pop shops can no longer use the ineternet to place orders and mom and dad can no longer buy their goods off line because they can't figure out how to launch the internet browser.
Creating a good OS isn't hard. Look at BeOS. If Microsoft did pull out all it's copies from Europe, then there'd be a race to see who could fill the gap in the market. Capitalism, you see, when not abused by monopolies, responds well to situations like that. People could use OSX, or a few billion could be thrown toward Linux, and the problem would be solved. The only difficulty is lock-in. If you remove that, Microsoft wouldn't stand too much of a chance. Look at IE compared to Firebird. Clearly the latter is superior, but the former is more widely used. Why? Because Microsoft bundles it in.
You guys all have Microsoft to thanks for the advancement of the internet on the masses and if you think anything else you are crazy and blind. The internet would still be something that is used in the back of corporations down in the basement if it wasn't for Microsoft giving everybody a PC that they could easily use.
This is the same Microsoft that missed the whole start of the home internet revolution? If Microsoft wasn't around, that doesn't mean that there wouldn't be easy-to-use PCs. Hell, there's always Macs, even if you can't accept the possibility that other companies and individuals can design OSes much better than Microsoft can.
Unfortunately that's not always true.....
I've tried to "help" several people who compain about IE crashing, popups, etc, by telling them to use Firebird. It's amazing but I usually hear "I tried it and it worked fine but I don't like it, how can I fix IE."
You can lead a fool to Firebird but you can't make them browse or something.
Because Media Player and IE themselves are just frontends. They are just wrappers that make calls to system services. In Media Player's case, it's DirectShow, in IE's it's the MSHTML engine. Well ripping these out of the OS is a bad idea since many things depend on them. To remove DirectShow is to break all pro A/V software, alternative media players that use it (such as Media Player Classic), many games, and so on.
Remember: Windows isn't Linux and 99.9% of users don't want it to be. Linux is defined as nothing but a kernel, what you put from there is up to you. So you can have Linux systems with totally different UI's libraries and so on. This is fine for geeks, but frustrating for normal users since you have no gaurentee that you have the dependencies you need (and have to go track them down and download).
Windows (and MacOS, and Solaris, and many others) are defined as not just the kernel, but other associated services and such. It is expected that Windows will have it's GUI, it's HTML rendering and such. It's all part of the OS. While this may be frustrating to geeks, it's precisely what normal users want. They don't want to have a program say "sorry, but I can't run until you download X and Y and Z libraries and get them running on your system". They just want it to run.
Did you explain to them why it didn't work? Non-techie's need to be educated in terms that they can relate to, and I find the association of computers to cars to be a very simple way of making that comparison. So when you tell that that the reason Firebird didn't work isn't because the car is broken, but instead it's because the road was intentionally made for specific cars to use and will cause non-equipped cars to crash, they may begin to understand.
If enough people start making layperson comparisons like this and can complain loudly enough, we might get somewhere. But if the average computer user simply caves into whatever works, it doesn't matter whether it is a piece of crap or if the competing product is the greatest thing since sliced bread -- people will instinctively use the easiest tool to accomplish something as possible, and IE fits that bill. If the converse were true, we'd have turbine engines in cars and Betamax would never have lost to VHS.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
That's a very dificult argument to make when the site in question is someones bank or utilites company.
After all bills have to be paid, no matter what browser your using.
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5