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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.
I have a loose consultative association with prosecutors trying the antitrust case in France. He feels it's a fairly straightforward case in legal terms, but the real challenge is the remedy phase. I have been persuading him to shoot for a remedy that forces Microsoft to port all of their major products to Linux so that they may easily be installed by a commericial vrsion of apt-get or similar packaging tool. Trusted apt-get has been in development for some time and is the obvious choice for deploying Microsoft products whilst still providing the security and necessary commerical restrictions that Microsoft requires for all of their products.
Expect to hear about Microsoft and this apt-get remedy shortly. Watch this space.
idiot, your parent post is soliciting an an estimation of some actual monetary amount, not some dumbass redundant piece of information.
get a clue, or stfu.
The shear fact is that the EU is totaly anti-american, be it Bush jr, or MS. Ok, I'm not a fan of bill's little crappy os'(writing from a g3 with osX on it) but lets look at the "anti-competitive" aspect of it.... 1 Do consumers have choice of what OS comes with the G4/G5?(if you said yes, think again) 2 Can you buy Linux based computers from OEMS(if you said no, go back to the end of the line)
3 IS Linux the answer to all of your problems?(maybe, but it still won't stop those pimples on your face) The EU is a very angry organization, infighting, always stabbing each other in the back. If you are SO anti(whatever this minute) Stop using windows. You have half a brain make that choice! Look I'm not here to defend M$, but I don't think that we should start forcing people to ditch something they are used to either.
Microsoft does something clearly wrong.
Governments overstep their power and instead of simply enforcing laws, agendas come into play.
Microsoft gets a slap on the wrist, but no true enforcement is enacted. (this would be fair)
Microsoft gets bent over and shafted because of public opinion/government power plays.
Microsoft's bad reputation has swollen past the reasonable line. Mod me down if you want, but Windows is still the easiest and most polished OS around... But the fanatic MS-haters can't admit that it is the main reason for windows' success... can it? Of course not, because there is a group of MS-haters that are pushing their agenda... and the ignorant power-hungry polititians are just going with the squeaky wheel instead of being truly fair. I'm as interested as Microsoft being taken down a notch as anyone else, but we're past the stage of being simply fair and simply enforcing laws. We're now into the greedy, lawsuit-happy bastards stage where every government tries to rob the rich corporation for as much dough as possible without really putting restrictions on the monopolistic practices.
Why don't they just write a law that says "if you are bad, we'll take everything you own and you'll be our biatch for the rest of your life"?
The price we pay for immortality... is death. Narnia The Great Fall
Consider:
---- It won't be as bad as you fear or as good as you hope, but it will take twice as long as you plan.
" 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."
Right, I suspect that most people want that. The issue, though, is in _how_ Microsoft bundles and integrates their media player into their OS. If they did it in a nice, clean way so that there was a well documented API for integration into the OS so that anyone could implement competing players that provided the same benefits, that would be better.
Of course, there's the issue that MS Windows is a "monopoly" and MS has repeatedly violated settlements that it negotiated, so it has to live with restrictions that wouldn't apply generically to any OS company. Most importantly, it's _illegal_ for MS to use its monopoly power in the operating system market to promote products in any other market. So if they bundle Windows Media Player (etc.) with Windows in order to promote it over its competition (QuickTime, RealAudio), that's _illegal_, just as it was rulled _illegal_ for them to have bundled the web browser into the operating system in order to suppress competition in the web browser market. And _illegal_ for them to bundle DOS into Windows in order to suppress competition in the DOS market. And _illegal_ for them to bundle a disk compression program into the operating system in order to suppress competition in the disk compression market. You get the idea -- repeated use of the same _illegal_ tactics in market after market.
In the US, the settlements tend to slant heavily towards a "slap on the wrist and a promise not to do it again", which is meaningless since MS doesn't need to do it again in that market because they've "won" by the time the courts make any rulings, but I suspect that the dynamics in the EU are rather different.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Get a clue!
get a clue yourself, Honda doesn't hold a monopoly position in the automotive market.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think this is an EU vs USA thing. the EU _hates_ depending on America. It's trying to pretend like that's not whats going on. The political top-down approach to getting MS software out of germany reeks of principle/idealism as opposed to a well thought out plan. The way it totally backfired is indicative of that.
The whole IRAQ showdown with a few of the more independantly minded EU nations really put a perspective on the EU's struggle for legitimacy as the next super power... the EU wanted solidarity in opposing the IRAQ war but many of the new member nations (uncoincidentally the ones that had suffered under butcherous regimes, some of which the US had a hand in liberating) would not speak out against the US.
As a result, the EU solidarity on the issue dissolved and some of the more vocal states felt the US was to blame.
The US pretty much told europe where to go on the IRAQ issue.
Look for the EU to start militarizing under the EU banner as opposed to its independant nation states. The collective memories of the french and german governments are apparently not quite 60 years long..
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
That's the fairy tale you tell yourself when you go to sleep at night. You hide behind the myth of Microsoft being out of control when your real motivations is to see anything that is American and dominate torn down. I hope you are satisfied with your dreams as you will get no other satisfaction.