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Microsoft Facing European Sanctions
Shakrai writes "CNN and Money Magazine are reporting that a draft decision by the EU committee overseeing the Microsoft investigation appears to recommend fairly severe sanctions against our favorite software company. The article states that the ruling will likely force Microsoft to offer a second version of Windows without 'built-in audiovisual software' (Windows Media Player) for EU customers. While this sounds like a good thing, the article also mentions that Microsoft has an appeals process and will likely get an injunction against enforcement while they pursue said appeal, which may take years."
...found within bundled software like IE, OE, Media Player and Movie Maker. M$ would voluntarily unbundle these components or run out of cash quite soon.
"The European Commission draft requires Microsoft to share proprietary information with rival server makers"
That's always my sticking point. I'm not as much bothered that they support video playback in their default system (they also support image playback and text playback, after all) as to their generally incompatible and excessively proprietary methods.
I personally don't like Microsoft... but you have to ask yourself if Media Player is removed who is affected by this in a negative way?
I think the 'normal users' will be hit hardest, a lot of them just want their media to play and in my opinion it is the place of the Operating System to provide the functionality. We might install something better, but it doesn't hurt us to have it there even if we don't use it. I think the same is true with IE.. it has helped the new users a great deal even if it is bug ridden and crappy.
Who are they trying to fool? When they said this about Internet Explorer I could imagine how this could be true, but what parts of Media player might be essential for other applications???
Yeah, but the idea is that the OEM does the video installation. Says that in the article :)
Semper en excreta sumus solum profundum
I'm sure many businesses would love to be able to only purchase the parts of windows that they wanted.
Many distributions ship with software such as XMMS, mplayer and the gimp. Should Mandrake, SuSE, Debian and the like be fined for carrying this software?
First: no one of those distributions has a de facto monopoly in the OS market and it's trying to abuse that position to get the monopoly in other markets, such as the media players one.
Second: on the average Linux distro, you have twenty different text editors, a dozen media players, and another dozen graphic manipulation programs.
So, your is, indeed, a non sequitur.
You can save space. Or you can save time. Don't ever count on saving both at once. -- First Law of Algorithmic Analisys
Why doesn't Apple get any heat for including iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, QuickTime, Safari, etc?
Because Apple doesn't control 90+ percent of the desktop. Because Apple isn't trying to leverage an OS monopoly into other market segments. Because Apple doesn't have a history of trying to "cut off the oxygen supply" to their competitors through use of monopoly.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Of course it's convenient to get all of that stuff included with your operating system. But if you remember, there used to be a market for things like browsers and video playback software. That market is all but gone, thanks to Microsoft including these products with their OS. I know, there is something called Mozilla for us staunch MS-haters. But good luck trying to sell (or even give) your alternative browser to the public at large.
I don't feel too bad about MS including such things with their OS, even though I am sure producers of, say, video editing software are having nightmares about MS including that functionality with Windows in a few years time. it's hard to draw the line: sure, no one would argue against operating systems needing a decent file manager, for example. Yet people used to make a living developing and selling separate file managers, a long time ago.
What I do have a problem with, is that MS sometimes not just includes browsers and video software with the OS, but made sure that it was rather hard to install an alternative product as well. That is what they should be punished for... but this ruling doesn't really accomplish that. As far as browsers and video playback software is concerned, it's all water under the bridge, and you correctly note that it will be consumers who will be hurt by removing these from the OS. MS probably doesn't care a great deal.
I would have preferred a big fine for MS, to make it clear what is unacceptable behaviour. It has to hurt if it's to heal.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
And I'm not sure why anyone would post that this isn't fair, if you can't see MS is once leveraging it's desktop monopoly to control yet another market, you are blind or at least obtuse. Do we really want another Netscape on our hands, it's taken 5 years for the likes of Mozilla, FireFox and Safari to revive browser innovation while IE 6 has remained a stagnant, insecure and non-compliant piece of junk. Killing competition in browsers hurt the web, although it will be years before the useless business analyst get around to acknowledging this. We don't want the same thing to happen in media players/codecs, instant messaging or a raft of other technologies. Time to stop MS now. And vote with your damn wallets, if you don't like what MS does then switch to Mac OS X or Linux and put your money where your mouth is!
I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
Microsoft should not be allowed to sell Windows with any additional apps whatsoever.
With Linux you have different distributions, why can't Windows work on the same principle?
You don't get Mandrake saying "Oh, we're not going to put into our distro, why should we put other people's apps in our distro's?"
The whole point of distributions is that you get loads of apps from loads of developers, and you get to select exactly what you want from the best available apps.
Having Windows distributions is the only way I see of overcoming Microsoft's anti-competitive monopoly.
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
MOZILLA IS NOT SLOWER THAN IE!!!
Mozilla startup takes more time than IE, IF and only if you don't consider the time it takes to start IE at system startup. Other than that, Mozilla, and Firefox especially, literally kick the pants off of IE. There was a wonderful page I found that simply drew images and removed them repeatedly that demonstrated this, IIRC IE took about 10 times as long as Mozilla.
There are 11 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, and those who can't.
Cheaper version of Windows? I think it will be funny if MS sells the new version for the same price and just tells them the player was a freebie.
Because PCs are very versatile, your DVD player is disigned to do a total of perhaps three things (and you do have to install "software" each time you put in a disc happily it is very standardized). Your PC can do many many more, and the things you want to do out of the box, may well be very different from the things I want mine to do out of the box. One of us might want to download music the other rips it. One of us might play FPS, the other wants to play bejeweled and browse slashdot. One of us might work in word processors, the other spreadsheets, and another guy might only want to use a text editor and compier. Each of these tasks requires a special addition to our generic tool, and we might not care about being able to do the things that the other tools allow us to potentially do. That's why you have to install software on your computer, the alternative is buying a task specific computer (a developer workstation, gamer's box, office machine, network terminal, but each of these would require that the seller know all the software you plan to use for the life of the computer.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
I can, however, use another program to read the text files that I've created with Notepad, use my extremely simple math formulae on another, competing calculator program ( heck, I can even port that sucker over to Linux with little trouble ), or set my new taskbar clock to the same time by using the system time, like I always have, but I cannot use that DRM enable .wmp file with just any media player: thus, no lock-in and another troll bites the dust. ;(
And another one's gone, and another one's gone...
Oh, sorry.
Put identity in the browser.