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Microsoft To Be Fined E500M By European Union?
An anonymous reader writes "According to a Reuters story, the European Commission is in the process of fining Microsoft 497 million Euros ($613 million). The most important reason for the fine was the refusal by Microsoft to share more information about its products with competitors. Mario Monti, the EU competition commissioner, decided to impose the fine after talks with Microsoft broke down last week." The last estimate was a mere 100 million Euros, and it's noted: "If the full European Commission backs the fine as expected on Wednesday it would exceed the 462 million euro penalty imposed on Hoffman-La Roche AG in 2001 for being ringleader of a vitamin cartel."
~ The Timeline ~
March 25, 2004 Microsoft fined E497M by the EU.
April 05, 2004 Microsoft files appeal.
June 11, 2004 Verdict upheld.
June 22, 2004 Microsoft contributes heavily to the Republican party.
July 05, 2004 EU declared part of the "Axis of Evil"
July 13, 2004 Colin Powell declares the EU has "Weapons of mass destruction, without a doubt."
July 27, 2004 US troops roll into the EU to promote Bush's "World Liberation '04" re-election campaign.
Trolling is a art,
Nothing strikes fear into the hearts of your enemies like being "the ringleader of a vitamin cartel." :)
What is E500M in Windows 98SE licenses?
We Eurocits can get a tax rebate too! Thanks, BG!
Hang on. This is all going to pay for around 4 days of the CAP. Big deal.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
From the article:
The fine amounts to slightly more than one percent of Microsoft's roughly $53 billion cash on hand and did not impress analysts and critics.
"This is a traffic ticket for Microsoft," said Thomas Vinje of Clifford Chance, who represents Microsoft critics.
Neil Macehiter, an analyst with London-based technology research firm Ovum, said even a $3 billion fine would have been "an irritant to Microsoft but certainly wouldn't break the bank."
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
All I wanted was sharks with freaking lasers on their heads?
How freaking hard is that?
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
It's nice to see that some governmental anti-trust bodies have the backbone to stand up to Microsoft. Rather than finding them guilty of anti-trust laws, then slapping them on the wrist....
I am concerned about any program, any piece of hardware, any treaty, any law that treats me as a consumer, not a citizen
but does this hurt MicroSoft's ability (and willingness) to do the same behaviour again and again?
Doubtful.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
why would MS have to comply? Couldnt they just say 'okay, BYE' and not sell in Europe anymore? I know MS sells a lot in europe.... but who would be more injured by such a move, MS or the EU?
or is there some international law that says MS MUST comply?
not a troll, just some questions, as IANAL.
What are the chances Bill G. & Co. will pay off the fine by buying cheap laptops in NYC and selling them in Europe while dodging the VAT?
The summary failed to mention that they will be forced to release a version of Windows without Media Player and 'encourage' the use of other media players. Good riddance to bad rubbish!
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
Can you even say that phrase with a straight face and not think of Fred Flintstone as a Columbian drug lord?
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
It's good to know that European courts aren't as flawed as our American ones.
It almost restores your faith in humanity. Almost.
- Sherman
"Cash okay..?" <while reaching for his wallet>
With $53 billion in the coffers, $613 million is a big ol' slap on the wrist.
The article says that the major reason for the fines is Microsoft's refusal to license information to competitors to ensure compatibility.
In other words, the actual software that these laws protects is horrible stuff like RealOne and Quicktime. Open source projects can't afford to license things. I'll be even more impressed than I already am if Mplayer and the like can continue their higher quality in the face of such crappy capitalistic laws.
Would even US$750 Million be enough to get them to change their ways? Would they change if they took a dent in their corporate image? That being said, how much money would it get them to take to change their practices or how many dents? They seem to have alot of both already.
Victory is gained, not in knowing your opponents next move, but in preempting them.
Step 1) Eliminate Competition
Step 2) Profit! ($40 Billion in cash)
Step 3) Get fined $0.5 Billion for being naughty
Step 4) More profit!
Value of fine benefits of bad behavior. Bad behavior continues...
When are governments going to get a clue? Screw fines - almost no amount of money you can take from them will really have an effect on their behavior or the market. What the EU ought to do is to tell MS that if they want to do future business in Europe, they need to make the Office file formats an EMCA standard, and that any patents they have on the formats must be licenesed royalty-free. That would create real change and competition in the market - let them compete on implementation, as it ought to be!
The Free desktop that Just Works
I did not see a mention of the removal of media player. Is a fine the only recourse the EU has? Can they not see that cash is not something that will hurt MS but stripping windows down is? *sigh* Another slap on the wrist for a company that buys their way out of any legal troubles yet never addresses the real problems.
Stay tuned for new sig...
Woo Hoo!! This will teach evil monopolies like MS or DeBeers not to mess with us consumers...
Pfft, yea right. Like the corperations would ever let that happen.
Check out this Reuters Article. I'm sure you can find it online, it was sent to me via 'business watch'...
If you don't want to read it, here it is in a nutshell: There are seveal processes that exist that will keep the verdict in the court system for up to 7 years before any payout has to occur. By then? Who knows...
March 22, 2004 13:26:00 (ET)
By David Lawsky
BRUSSELS, March 22 (Reuters) -- Microsoft (MSFT,Trade) will win one thing after it loses a landmark EU antitrust case this week -- months and possibly years before it must do what the European Union executive orders, experts said on Monday.
The European Commission is scheduled to rule on Wednesday that Microsoft is an abusive monopolist which used the power of its dominant Windows operating system to damage competitors.
As soon as the ruling is issued, the U.S. software giant will go to court and be assured of months of delay.
Microsoft will be ordered to pay a fine of hundreds of millions of euros, the topic of an advisory committee of EU member states on Monday.
The Commission will order the company to sell a version of its operating system without Windows Media Player and to encourage computers makers to provide other audiovisual software.
And it must license information at a reasonable rate to make the low-level servers of rivals, used for printing and file services, more compatible with Windows desktop machines.
But as Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith said last week soon after settlement negotiations ended in failure: "Today is just another step in what could be a long process."
Microsoft has always made maximum use of courts to assert its rights and this will be no exception, experts say.
"There are enormous possibilities open to Microsoft to buy time," said David Wood, an antitrust lawyer for Howrey Simon.
The company will appeal the Commission ruling and ask the Court of First Instance to suspend remedies until the underlying case is decided. Until the court decides that first question the remedies are suspended.
BACK BURNER
"If they lose the application to suspend they can appeal that to the European Court of Justice. During that period -- the better part of a year -- it is likely the substantive case will be put on the back burner," Wood said.
The court case itself could take two or three years and an appeal will take an equal amount of time.
The Commission is expected to argue such a long delay will make its remedies irrelevant, because the market will have moved on and it will be too late to stop damage to other companies and to consumers.
Microsoft is expected to argue that if it is forced to carry out the remedies ordered by the Commission it cannot undo them and will suffer irreparable harm.
Some cases move on fast track, if one party agrees to narrow the issues and the Commission agrees to suspend the remedies. But that would pose no advantage for Microsoft.
"Microsoft clearly wants to have the issues examined as fully as possible. This seems to make it unlikely that they would wish to use the fast-track procedure," Wood said.
The worst case for Microsoft is that the remedies would begin to bite once an appeals court ruled they may not be suspended, which could take seven months or more.
The best case is that the remedies would be suspended until the case is finished, which could be seven years or more.
Even if the issues are suspended, the Commission is expected to move full steam ahead on two other investigations of Microsoft for business practices similar to those that got it in trouble this time.
And although the remedies may be suspended, the precedent set by the Commission in labelling Microsoft for its abuse of dominance will not disappear.
"You can expect the Commission to apply the precedent they have in their own decision in comparable cases regardless of whether the court delays the entry into force of their remedies," said Sven Voelcker, an antitrust lawyer with Wilmer, Cutler and Pickering in Brussels.
-Mark
Dovie'andi se tovya sagain.
Unforunately, like all big businesses, any government fines or restrictions will inevitably be passed on down to their consumers. But I have a feeling none of this 500 million slap-on-the-wrist will go anywhere near Microsoft consumers. Expect to see price hikes in the future.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
AFAIK both the UK and France have nuclear weapons.
It is about smacking them in the head to get their attention.
If Microsoft doesn't change its practices, we can see more fines such as this. Eventually, Microsoft will change.
Why _SHOULD_ microsoft go out of business?
It is one thing to aim for fairness, it is another thing to just be blinded by hate.
The current ruling could set a useful precedent... with someone finally having the guts to intervene against illegal abuse of monopolies, Microsoft may finally have to pay for the damage it has done to the software industry and users
Yay about 1 euro each :)
I would prefer that we spend it on Space exploration, or even better, fund Open Source development to the tune of 500M euros... that would give some nice returns for the planet.
To be fair though, it should probably be spent on the 10 ex-soviet (and other) countries that are joining the EU in May... perhaps a moving in present (50Million euros investment in the infrastructure of each country would go a long way since their average income is relatively low).
Warhammer forums
"EU investigators found the price fixing started in the vitamin A and E market in the 1990s,"
Oh those crazy 90s.... They always said vitamin A was the gateway vitamin, but we never ever listen to the signs.
- All your BMW and Mercedes cars
- The jet engines from your aircraft (invented by Sir Frank Whittle in Britain in 1945)
- All your nuclear weapons and X-Ray machines (since radioactivity was discovered by the French Marie Curie in the 19th century)
- The ideas that the Wright Brothers stole from Leonardo Da Vinci (Italian)
By return of post, we will send back:
- Macdonalds
- All our Hoover vacuum cleaners (since we now have the much superior British Dyson vacuum cleaners)
- "Charmed", "Smallville" & "Dawson's Creek" (however, we'd like to keep a copy of "The Simpsons" just to remember you guys by!)
Ciao, toodle pip and au revoir.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
The real penalty for Microsoft is having to extract it's media player from the OS and collaborate with other software company media companies. This will increase their support costs in the long run.
humble and proud of it.
Mario Monti: "Here's the plan. We fine Microsoft and we hold them ransom for......five hundred MILLION dollars!"
EUC Number Two: "Uh huh hum. Well, don't you think we should maybe ask for more than five hundred million dollars? Five hundred million dollars isn't exactly a lot of money these days. The EUC alone makes over ninety billion dollars a year."
Mario Monti: "Really?"
EUC Number Two: "Uh huh!"
Mario Monti: "That's a lot. Okay then. We hold Microsoft ransom for..... five hundred BILLION dollars!!"
*Evil Laughter*
Microsoft associate general counsel for Europe Horacio Gutierrez said in a statement the fine was unjustified. "We believe it's unprecedented and inappropriate for the Commission to impose a fine on a company's U.S. operations when those operations are already regulated by the U.S. government and the conduct at issue has been permitted by both the Department of Justice and the U.S. courts," he said.
I'm sorry, but if you trade into the EU, then you are expected to obey the laws of that market. Doesn't matter where the head office is. I'd have thought that Bill would employ lawyers with a clue - at least enough of a clue not to make a stupid statement like this.
613 million US dollars is nothing to Microsoft! They have billions of dollars in cash. Let's hope the final verdict consists of more than that. If the fine and removal of Windows Media Player are all that the EU is going to propose then I say why even bother. It amounts to a slap on the wrist. Not that any goverment body can really do anything to Microsoft. OSS is what will contain the beast and eventually take away it's bite.
so, if you make 100K per year, you will have no problem giving me a grand right? I mean, it is chump change compared to what you make annually.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
- All your BMW and Mercedes cars
Fine - they are unrealiable: we are keeping the Japanese cars tho.
> The jet engines from your aircraft (invented by Sir Frank Whittle in Britain in 1945)
You can have the prototypes the he never managed to get working - took the Germans to do that, and the US to perfect them.
> All your nuclear weapons and X-Ray machines (since radioactivity was discovered by the French Marie Curie in the 19th century)
Yeah she really did a bang up job with that, eh?
> The ideas that the Wright Brothers stole from Leonardo Da Vinci (Italian)
OK here you have me - the wearable bat suits and cork screw helicopters powered by men walking around in circles are all yours.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Well, I keep hearing talks about Microsoft being a monopoly and needing to be punished. But, what I want to know is what are they actually being punished for.
For being a monopoly. Or rather, using their monopoly position to leverage themselves against competitors.
Spending millions of dollars to develop IE which was then distributed free with Windows pushed Netscape out of the browser business fast.
Now they're trying to do the same with AIM, Real, iTunes, well, you name it!
Doing that kind of stuff is not legal in the USA, nor is it legal in any western country. And for good reason: Monopoly practices are bad for everybody except the monopolist.
It's damaging to the economy. It's damaging for consumers.
Or to put it another way: Capitalism is it's own worst enemy.
(and that was pretty much agreed upon until certain politicans realized that big businesses had bigger pockets for campaign spending)
I'm pretty sure that at least one of the European Union countries is involved in Microsoft's Shared Source program. If they don't pay the fine, the European Union could seize the copyright (in lieu of payment of the fine), get a copy of the code, and sell the source code to one of their own software companies. That would presumably be worth the 500 million euros, even ignoring any other assets that may exist.
;)
:)
Microsoft traditionally outsources most of their development, so there is no reason to think that the new company couldn't continue development. Possibly with the same Indian developers as are working on the Microsoft code
Maybe they will even open source it to fix the bugs
- The jet engines from your aircraft (invented by Sir Frank Whittle in Britain in 1945)
While I agree entirely, Whittle had a jet powered aircraft flying in the mid 1930s. And Germany had operational jet fighters and bombers in service in 1943/44. Just a minor nitpick :)
Think of it as affirmative action for European tech companies that were kept down by "the man." This could help equalize the playing field again!
In the OS I installed,
Lived a player,
By Microsoft,
And it told us what to do,
With our music and DVDs,
So we took it to the EC,
And we told them what we found,
And they gave Bill a big fine,
And they told him to take it out,
-Chorus-
We don't need your stinking DRM,
We are European,
We are European,
Bill can stick his codecs in the bin,
We are European,
We are European.
And our friend is little Tux,
Cos he let's us do what we please,
Bill can go and boil his head,
While we drink beer from Ballmer's skull
-Chorus-
We don't need your stinking DRM,
We are European,
We are European,
Bill can stick his codecs in the bin,
We are European,
We are European.
Now we live a life of ease,
Everyone of us,
Is European,
We can play the tunes we like
We can watch the films we need
We don't pay no MS tax
We are free from DRM
-Chorus-
We don't need your stinking DRM,
We are European,
We are European,
Bill can stick his codecs in the bin,
We are European,
We are European.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Before you bomb us Europeans, can we please have back:
- All your BMW and Mercedes cars
- The jet engines from your aircraft (invented by Sir Frank Whittle in Britain in 1945)
You seem to be under the misguided impression that Britain actually enjoys being part of Europe.
Last time there was a poll on the matter (by The Sun), the majority of people in the UK wanted to be part of the US more than they wanted to be part of Europe.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
One of the things I love about being in the field of computer science is that it is still young. Years and years from now, there will be discussions in history books about Microsoft and all the good/evil things that came about from their aggressive domination of the industry. This EU judgment may even be cited... "Microsoft began to lose power in the early 21st century as it fell victim to a barrage of heavy fines for anti-competitive behavior. In 2004, the software giant faced its stiffest fine yet from the European Union at $613 million dollars. While this was a drop in the bucket to a company with $40 billion in cash reserves, it set a precedent that other countries soon followed."
Magnatune: Quality (DRM-free) MP3/FLAC/
Shut up. They'll take back the porn!
That's almost too good... pad it up with a few hundred words, do something fancy to it in word, and sell it to M$ as a "business case"... Welcome to the world of "consulting"...
Shift happens. Fire it up.
It's not chump change. It's a small but significant dent, which they've unceremoniously been given in spite of Ballmer's best efforts to talk the authorities down last week.
It's also widely rumoured to be accompanied by (a) a compulsion to ship a version of Windows with Media Player completely stripped out, in order to remove the artificial dominance Microsoft has secured over the multimedia world, and (b) heavy penalty conditions if Microsoft gets up to this stuff again, so lengthy court action can be replaced by abruptly hitting them when they're down. These are, for now, only rumours, since the ruling won't be made public until later this week. However, no-one's jumping up and down denying them, and it's well known that all the European parties and Microsoft have seen that ruling. Draw any conclusions from that you like, or wait to see for sure mid-week.
At any rate, this isn't meant to kill Microsoft. It's meant to make them behave, and to reopen competition in the marketplace for the benefit of the public. In that respect, it seems fairly well judged, assuming the above rumours are reasonably accurate.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Fines are a weak response, as it has been stated over again, this is piss in a pond to the likes of Microsoft.
On the other hand, the European Commission has the power under Article 81 and 82 of the EC Treaty (which where anti-competitive behaviour is prohibited) to impose structural remedies: to insist upon corporate re-organisation or say an order to disclose information or to unbundle software. This would be a far more appropriate remedy that would actually be economically useful rather than a bit more cash in the bank for EU.
If the commission really has spine, it will seek this type of remedy rather than the easy way out. It may in fact seek a combination of fines and structural remedy, so we'll just have to wait and see.
A fine should at least make it unprofitable for me to commit the crime again. If I stole 1 million and was fined 1000 then that is not exactly going to stop me is it? So how much did MS make by violating the law? More then 500 million? Then they ain't gonna stop.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It's not really stupid, it's arrogant. It's another sign of the extreme arrogance that Microsoft operates with. They think that just because the US allows them to get away with bad behavior that everyone else should too.
In the real world, companies have to operate under the laws of every country they operate in. If you open up a Saudi Arabian branch of your company, you can't make advertisements there with scantily-clad women, and complain when the Religious Police shut down your operations there that these ads are allowed in the US.
I don't think the parent did justice to explaining this, so I just want to provide a quick example. Also this needs to be repeated over and over. One day I'll put something on my personal website about this, because this question is asked over and over and over.
In your normal business environment, people compete for your business. They advertise, market, and change prices in order to try to do better than their competitors.
The problem is a monopoly by definition has no competitors. Lets say you have a company which has agressively marketed RAM chips. You cut costs and make deals. This drives all the competitors out of the market and they close their doors. You now have a natural monopoly. This sometimes happens, and the government has to recognize it. If you are a natural monopoly, you fall under new rules because you have no competition.
For example, as a monopoly, say you go to some PC manufacturer and demand they have to pay twice what they pay now? As a monopoly, the PC manufacturer has no recourse and you are now bullying them. Not fair, and illegal as a monopoly. If you had competition, and you did that to someone, the PC manufacturer would laugh their ass off and switch to another RAM provider. This is one example of general "price fixing."
There are other examples, but that's the general idea. Competition means you have to fight to keep your customers. A monopoly means you can bully your customers in a way that's not fair to them. In general, competition is good because competition is the check against unfairness. This is why there is lots of talk about mergers and huge conglomerates who have too much control. Too much control is generally BAD, because the more control you have, the more prices you can fix. Most companies do more convoluted price fixing of sorts these days because that makes it harder to get caught.
Something else that Microsoft did is give away their IE browser for free. Netscape had a browser which eventually cost money and people had to buy. IE stepped in and leveraged their current monopoly by giving away IE. They made huge amounts of money on the OS and office, but made IE attractive by making it free. This is like owning all the oil in the world and giving away a free car when someone buys enough of your oil. The oil may be marked up astronomically, but hey, free car! This will drive the competition for cars into the gutter as their cars still require oil.
Note its also illegal in the US for companies to work together directly to fix prices.
Thus ends the lesson.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
If they could charge more for their product, then why don't they do so now?
Monopolies charge what the market will bear. This fine doesn't impact what the market will bear, so it shouldn't affect prices. Monopolies set prices at the level where any increase in price would decrease profits. They have no incentive to set it lower, and it would be stupid to set it higher (as it would decrease profits).
Think of it from the other perspective. If a company received a sudden windfall of money, would you expect them to reduce prices? No, they would take the windfall and maximize profit with current prices. Giving the windfall a negative value doesn't change anything but the level of profit. The company will still set prices and production so as to maximize profit.
That's quite a logical leap in four years. It's possible that Iraq developed the aforementioned weapons in four years, but based on what the troops found in the country, such a program would be in its infancy at best.
Regardess of who the company is, they broke the law.. so they have to pay the piper.
Something tells me that the fine was worth it to them, an 'acceptable loss' to hold on to the market.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
... and perhaps Microsoft will consider changing their business tactics.
$50b / $613m ~= 82, or 1.2% of their on-hand CASH.
Had the EU (such as it was) approached Microsoft ten or fiteen years ago, and said: "We'll let you engage in anti-competitve practices in operating sytems, office applications, web browsers, and media players all you like for a crisp half-billion dollars, payable on delivery", do you think they would have taken the deal?
They have $50 Billion dollars in cash. 1% of one's cash reserves (never mind revenues) is simply not a punishment.
Imagine being taxed one percent of your life savings for a license to break all the laws you like. That sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me.
The problem with fines is that business already thinks in terms of money. Punishments for breaking the law are intended to deter behaviour. Fines are instead framed by the company as just the cost of doing business.
Agreed that 500-600 million is nothing for Microsoft, but what IF they took the money and used it to fund FLOSS. Assume the govts weasel 50% off the top! That leaves 250-300 million for FLOSS.
:) ]
This is where the real damage to MS could occur, if the penalty cash is dished out to the right FLOSS projects that threatens MS directly.
Proposed split based on what I think would help FLOSS and hurt MS:
50million for the Linux Kernel to get their security certifications finished for govt usage, driver improvements to the kernel, SE-Linux integration, whatever else Linus wants
50million for Apache Webserver, Tomcat, and other Apache-based projects that really eat into IIS market share
25million for OpenOffice with a focus on compatibility with MS Office.
25million for GNOME & KDE, split evenly on whatever they want, but with a preference on creating a Win2k-style desktop emulator so the riff-raff can change their screensavers like before
10million for plug-ins/features into Eclipse IDE that help emulate the best features of Visual Studio, and better integration of non-Java languages like Perl, PHP, C#/Mono, etc
10million on Bitkeeper replacement and/or Subversion to get great source code control mgmt, tied into Eclipse IDE enhancements above
10million on modeling tools for code or databases like SQL Navigator, or Rational Rose
10million for PHP on whatever they think they need
10million for Wine to get us closer to running lots of apps on non-MS Operating systems
10Million for ***BSD Flavors [Just because they have created so much with so little
10million for RMS and GNU with the promise he wont complain about everyone else's cash allotment
AND
25million for an investment fund that donates 50% of the yearly profits as grants to future promising FLOSS projects
Many MS file formats have been mostly deciphered and are generally becoming easier to decipher. There has been word processors for a long time that have been able to deal with Word documents pretty well - but we still see Word around to the extent that many would call it a monopoly.
.NET and general XML-ization have certainly made MS much more open. And MS would love to have legislators believe that these are large steps towards an open, competitive environment. Regardless of how open .NET remoting or a new Word format is, this kind of change will not make that big of a difference.
I'm not saying that fully open file formats wouldn't help - just that they are not necessarily the central issue.
Having MS release their file formats (and Client-Server communication protocols) as an open standard would restore the Free Market
Not really. For example, MS could safely release all of the WMP codecs and formats and still crush the "free market" in players by distributing a free player tied to its OS - that's why WMP is still an issue on the table with the EU folk.
Closed formats are one piece in a big puzzle. There are many other possibilities for MS to abuse.
Having MS release their file formats (and Client-Server communication protocols) as an open standard would restore the Free Market.
To a certain extent, they have.
In reality, there won't be big changes in the desktop market until Linux (or someone else) steps in with a significantly better, polished product, or until some government royally tromps MS with a motion intended to bust. I don't see the US doing the busting (economically unsound), and the EU likely realizes that serious action has a good chance of sparking a trade war.
Even if MS halted all "bad behavior", their monopoly would continue for some time. As such, we'll have to wait for the slow progress of open software OS's to bash things back open.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
So how much did MS make by violating the law? More then 500 million? Then they ain't gonna stop.
Yes, this is exactly the problem. Where I live, there is a suburb that has repeatedly dumped raw sewage into the river that runs through the city rather than send it to a waste processing facility because the EPA fine is less than the cost of the treatment. There is no incentive for the city to stop doing this as long as it costs less.
The same analogy applies to Microsoft. If they make more by squeezing out the competition unfairly than they lose in fines, it's still a net gain for them overall and the next time around, there's fewer players to have to squeeze out. It's a win-win for them and a lose for everyone else (except the custodians of the fine money, it seems).
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
Nope--there was nothing funny at all about the price-fixing in vitamins led by Hoffman-LaRoche. I know a manager at a local plant of Hoffman-LaRoche, and used to work (in a different industry) with a man who at one point was HLR's general manager of animal vitamins. So I've heard about the court case (which went on for years, and included anti-trust action in the EU and in the United States, and possibly elsewhere).
Is price-fixing in vitamins a big deal?
First, we're not talking about somebody trying to corner the market in One-A-Day tablets. We're talking about a small group of chemical companies colluding to fix the prices of (and markets for) vitamins that are included in food products. That's things like the Vitamin D in your milk. And--more significantly in terms of market size--it is the vitamin supplements included in animal feeds.
A brief discussion of animal feed
I am a geek--but I am a geek who is heavily involved in 4-H (non-U.S. readers: 4-H is a program for American youth [mostly farm youth] funded by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture.) People who are feeding animals frequently want to feed a "complete" feed--a feed that includes all of the nutrients an animal requires. Example: dog food. You don't want Bowser running down kids in the neighborhood to supplement the meager protein requirement you feed him: you want him to get all the nutrition he requires from his bowl. In the same way, most cat owners don't want little Fiona sneaking out to hunt down the local rodent population just because there isn't enough "meat, and meat byproducts" in her Fancy Feast. (In case you're curious, a "meat byproduct" is what goes crunch when little Fiona does manage to eat one of the local rodents.)
Are you with me so far? If you live in the urban jungle you may not think of animal feeds beyond dogs and cats. And while that business is not small, there is also a huge business in other animal feeds. Think of cows, horses, chickens, and turkeys. In a nutshell, "chicken feed isn't chicken feed." Animal feeds are a multi-billion dollar business--and a major cost component for a feed manufacturer is the cost of the vitamin supplements included in the feed.
So the manufacturers get together...
It has been illegal for many years, in the United States, for manufacturers to compare prices or sales practices for common customers. But price and/or market collusion was not illegal in many other countries--and a number of multinational companies got a bit clever. If it wasn't illegal to collude on pricing in Switzerland (and in the 1980s it was not) you simply met with your counterparts in Switzerland, agreed on your prices and markets, and shook hands. According to a friend who was involved in some of these meetings (in Switzerland) everybody benefited: the people involved made their sales quotas, kept their profits up, and were spared the headaches of having to endure real competition. Sure--the customers (and ultimately the consumer) got rooked, but that was a "political issue." My friend (a U.K. citizen) assured me that Americans were far too zealous about such things. All of that ended when the U.S. government found out about it--Hoffman LaRoche, a Swiss company, settled for $500 million; BASF ("we don't make the products you buy, we just make them cost more") agreed to a fine of $250 million; other companies involved paid lesser amounts.
Want to know more?
One of the really cool things about the Web in general, and SlashDot in particular, is the ability to click on a link and go off on a tangent--learning something you'd never even thought of before. This link connects to a law firm involved in the matter.
1. Linux is just the kernel. An operating system sits round the kernel provides a user shell and tools to interface to and manage the hardware. A distribution provides additional tools that manage & change data-file types like MP3s, docs, etc. Windows is therefore a distribution that contains operating systems tools.
2. Linux distributions are designed by organisations who create what they deem to be the most suitable suite of tools for their users - no different to what MS does with Windows.
3. Linux distributions are varied - Red Hat, SuSE, Mandrake, etc. provide a complete environment of tools, including media players, in their distributions - this is why lots of people buy those. However, the installation programs for all these distros allow any package to be removed at installation time provided that you choose to "Install indvidual packages".
4. Other distributions like Linux From Scratch & Gentoo allow you to choose exactly what software to install from the beginning - you do not need to even have a GUI environment if you don't need one.
In summary, when installing a Linux-based machine, you not only have a varied choice in what distribution you use but also what packages you choose. As such, you could choose Gnome or KDE media players, XMMS on any X-Windows environment or even a command-line media player. However, all of these players will share some common libraries and codecs in order to handle the media types that they do.
Because of the totally proprietary nature of WMP, 3rd party tools do not have access to many of the Windows codecs and libraries that WMP uses. Therefore, the media player choice on Windows is much more restrictive.
There is therefore no comparison between media players in Linux and in Windows.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I'm pretty sure that would be a violation of international law. I don't believe there's anything in international law that allows governments to seize copyrights as remediation in lieu of fines. I'm also pretty sure that MS made it so that no one who participates in Shared Source can do anything worth a damn for similar reasons as you outline.
The strange thing is the eerie silence in the european media about this kind of stuff. Or is it just me? I love the americans for their angry websites and wild discussions when stuff like this happens. I have to read about this and on an americam website. Should i as a dutchmen check german websites or learn french or swedish to hear about this ?
So Microsoft, why not just say "We are not paying and we will pull all of our products off your shelf and reject any licenses from your government office for updates to any Microsoft products".
Obama = Socialism.
I can see that the Anti MS sentiment is strong enough for everyone to overlook this, but doesn't it seem a bit unfortunate for half a billion US dollars to fly off to fill some European government treasury? I mean if this was a company we liked it might seem a bit like the EU was overstepping their bounds. Imagine if they fined Google half a billion dollars for search engine antitrust. (a bit ridiculous, but hey)
e _deficit/
We have pretty significant trade deficits already.
from http://money.cnn.com/2003/02/20/news/economy/trad
"Exports to Western Europe slipped to the lowest level since 1997"
"On an individual country basis, the U.S. trade deficit with Germany set a record in December at $4.1 billion, fueled by a record $6.3 billion in imports"
- Fine Microsoft scary amount of cash (just for show)
- Have Microsoft appeal in the most painstaking, bogged-down way imaginable
- Watch incredible amounts of $$$ flow into the European legal business and become EUR=> Profit
Do you now see the brilliance? All that cash being siphoned off from America's flourishing legal system, will be transferred directly to Europe. And the best thing is, Microsoft is doing all the dirty work for us!Divide et impera!
What happens if none of Microsoft's appeals work, and they have to pay the fine? Will things improve for anyone? Microsoft can simply think of this as part of the cost of doing business in Europe and pass the extra cost onto YOU. Worse, Microsoft could be encouraged to continue their predatory practices because, heck, they've already paid for their license to do so.
What should REALLY happen to Microsoft:
1: The company should be split into two, one that sells Windows, and one that sells all of the Applications and addons like Office, IE, Windows Media, MicroTunes, etc. These companies should have no financial relationship with each other except:
2: The OS company should be forced to lower their prices by however much the App company charges for the unbundled pieces. For example, if the App company charges $19.95 for Windows Media, Windows itself should get cheaper by that amount. Think what that would mean for IE! If the App company wants anyone to buy their browser over free options like Mozilla, it really needs to be better than Mozilla. Wow. Competition based on merit....
3: The App company should have to freely publish their file formats. When everyone who has a word processor or spreadsheet application can easily read and write the Office formats, users won't be forced to use Microsoft products if they don't want to. If the products REALLY ARE better, people will use them, but not because they have to.
None of these thing should be objectionable to Microsoft if they actually have the best products and can legitimately compete on the basis of merit.
I know, it'll never happen.
-John
Fight Frist Psoting!
Browse Slashdot with 'Newest First'!
How about we just get rid of people who need to bash others so much and cite silly historical issues that no one is really in a position to change anymore?
No one is coming to YOU personally for help for anything. You have no power. Your "don't come to us" really means "don't come to the powerful folks in my country's government who probably won't even talk to me if they saw me in the street".
Please go back to your troll-cave.
Thanks.
Bye bye.
I plan to plan / Dutch course in The Hague
If Europeans think Microsoft is unfair with their products, there is an easier solution that levying fines upon the company: stop buying the product. If everyone in Europe did just that then things would be much better for them. On the other hand, if the Nation of Europe's government wins out with this fine then what Bill ought do is be be like John Galt and close down every European operation plus terminate all Microsoft exports to Europe. Granted, Microsoft would loose a ton of money, but it would probably hurt Europe Microsoft than Microsoft. On the other hand, if Microsoft is as unfair as the Europeans seem to think that they are then they should be able to fare just fine without Microsoft. Being one who uses Apple and Linux exclusively, I personally believe either of these two scenerios would be better than levying fines since it takes the moral high ground of free wil and, more importantly, also lets the Europeans get their hands on the cool (ie non-Microsoft) toys!
"The State is that great fiction by which everyone lives at the expense of everyone else." -Frederic Bastiat.
Well, chump change adds up.
Add this money to the payouts that have come before it, and the ones that will come in the future.
Why is it that people believe any old lie no matter how silly.
He did not have any sort of a program in it's infancy. He used to have lots of chemical weapons (we gave him the knowhow). He used them during the Reagan Admnistration (you may want to read up on that).
After the first gulf war he was ordered to dismantle both his nuclear programs and his stockpiles of chemical weapons. He destroyed the nuclear program under the watch of the weapons inspectors. Both Hans Blix and Mohammed albredaei (sp?) have documented this phase. They also claim that they destroyed all the chemical weapons but not all of the destruction was documented. That's why a second round of inspections were ordered. During those inspections every single scientist interviewed stated that they destroyed the chemicals. They told the inspectors where the destruction took place. The inspectors found evidence of destruction but it was impossible to determine exactly how much was destroyed.
Those are the facts. I know they don't fit everybodies ideology but they are facts nevertheless.
It may be that not all the weapons were destroyed but it's highly unlikely that those chemicals are still viable. Even if they exist they are probably inert by now. If he had them we would have used them.
The best way to support the US war effort is to continue buying American products.
I hate to break it to you, but the only reason mplayer is a viable alternative to things like Media Player, Real One and Quicktime is because it uses the Win32 DLLs in a very dubious (license-wise) manner. The Win32 DLLs written by the "crappy capitalistic companies" like Microsoft, Real and Apple (all of which have released open source software, by the way).
No, it isn't all using win32 dlls. IIRC, here's the breakdown:
* AVI and ASF (the wrapper formats) have been reverse-engineered and reimplemented natively.
* RTSP has been implemented natively.
* RealMedia's codecs are implemented by using a Linux-native shared library that Real exposes *specifically* to allow third-party software to do decoding. Seeking in RealMedia content is not supported.
* divx (not technically from MS, though the original codebase originated from MS code) is implemented natively.
* Quicktime (the wrapper format) is implemented natively for older versions, but newer versions require use of Win32 DLLs.
* Sorenson v1 and v2 are reverse-engineered and implemented natively.
* Sorenson v3, I believe, requires use of a Win32 DLL.
* Indeo requires use of Win32 dlls.
The Win32 DLLs written by the "crappy capitalistic companies" like Microsoft, Real and Apple (all of which have released open source software, by the way).
The problem has nothing to do with the company releasing open source software. The problem is that, while it's difficult-but-doable to make your own video codec, it's extremely hard to produce an exactly compatible player without format information. This has nothing to do with Apple, Real, or Microsoft having better designers -- it has to do with none of them having to reimplement someone *else*'s codec without technical information.
May we never see th
What do you mean "worked"?. Clinton's Iraq policy did indeed work in that it accomplished what he wanted to accomplish. The goal being keeping Saddam under control and a non threat to the US and it's interests. Saddam was declawed enough to make him a non threating to the US, it's allies and it's interests. Clinton accomplished this with minimal amount of expenditure of lives and money. His plan worked perfectly and accomplished exactly what he wanted to do. As I said he had no desire to cram socialism down their throats. He felt that saddam was the problem of the Iraqis and it was up to them to do something about it. He really didn't care all that much about your average Iraqi, he was only concerned with US interests.
Bush had different policy goals. He wanted to invade and occupy iraq and was not content to merely contain saddam. His motivations were complex (oil, his father, biblical prophecy, US hegemony etc) but he knew from day one that he wanted to control iraq totally and absolutely. He too accomplished what he wanted even though it cost lots of money and lots of lives.
In the end both Clinton and Bush were looking out for their own interests. The interests of the Iraqis was and remains totally irrelevent.
If Bush had stood up before 9/11 and said "The US will use it's wealth, power and military might to end opression in the world and to destroy all dictators" I would be lining up to give him money and support. If he had said "we will deliver democracy to everybody and free everybody from the chains of opression and bondage no matter what it costs in lives and money" I would walk around my town begging people to vote for him.
He didn't say that because that's never been his goal. He will not lift a finger to deliver freedom to chechnians, palestenians, africans, tibetians, chinese, and the tens of millions of people suffering all over the world because they don't have something he wants.
I am still waiting for somebody (anybody) to explain to me why the Iraqi people deserved socialism more then any other people on the planet. Why they had to be delivered from evil first. It seems to me that your average north korean is and has been much more opressed. The average chechnians is much poorer, the average east timorese has suffered much more death and bloodshed, the average tibetians much more misery and ethnic cleansing. Too bad none of them have oil, too bad the bible makes no mention of them, too bad none of their leaders tried to kill his father.
The best way to support the US war effort is to continue buying American products.
I have to disagree with you because MS has all most all of the desktop market. How about what MS has done too:
DR-DOS - Would not run under 95 because of a TSR that look for DR-DOS
Stacker - Added to DOS 6.0 to kill them
Netscape - IE for FREE with OS
OS/2 - OS2 and Win 3.1 was going to come out at the same time. MS did not wait.
Lotus 123 - The OS is not done until Lotus does not run.
Word Perfect - Lets give Word with the OS to lock people in.
Java - Lets change the stander so MS JAVA would not run on any other platform.
Is Real Audio or Google next?
If there was five large companies making an OS systems, I would now have a problem with them adding new stuff. But when one company has 90% of the market and killing anyone else that might have a good idea. I have a real problem with them.
If you look at the pricing of MS it is starting to come down because of Linux. I have seen MS paid to fix problems with their systems because the company was going to switch to Linux for that service. There servers are going over slower to Linux now. It would have been faster if MS was not helping.
I think the writing is on the wall we just need to wait.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Like with iraq; that worked out real great, didn't it? /end sarcasm(?)/
It's always so cool to see how the USA condemns countries with WMD, after they delivered the means to these countries to develop them in the first place.
Or how they invade and sanction countries that have WMD - while having WMD themselves, ofcourse, exept Isreal, Pakistan and India. But only when it suits them, ofcourse, because let's not forget they DID imose sanctions on the latter two, untill they did the bidding of Bush and his cronies.
Or the USA much uplifting struggle for freedom and democracy in the world, while supporting ruthless dictators and human-rights-abusing monarchies...as long as it is to the economic and political benefit of the USA, of course.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---