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US Government Keeping Close Eye on Longhorn
skrysakj writes "CNN/Money has a new article describing the close eye the Feds have on Longhorn and its compliance with the anti-trust settlement. I wonder how discerning their eye will be considering past decisions and lax enforcement. Also, this prompts the question, what is the EU doing to examine Longhorn?" The longer Washington Post piece has more information.
They should put the Department of Homeland Security on it too. You know, for securities sake.
Microsoft, which has delayed Longhorn's rollout, has not said when it will be released as the successor to Windows XP, the current version of the personal-computer operating system. Several industry analysts have predicted introduction of Longhorn in 2006 or possibly 2007, which is when the antitrust settlement is scheduled to expire. - Washington Post Since Longhorn will be distributed after the terms of the antitrust agreement expire they can do whatever the hell they want. They can show one thing when in reality they mean to implement another. I am not saying thats what they are going to do, its just a possibility.
Longhorn will be expected to deliver phenomenally in terms of 1. Security 2. UI 3. "Seamless" integration of internet/multimedia tool. It is, however, this precise policy of "integration", or rather, forcing users to go with MS software, which is the bee in Microsoft's bonnet. Recent technology previews of mozilla firefox and thunderbird, along with other web content software (shareware as well as open source) are much better in terms of performance than the existing stuff from the MS stable. LongHorn will have to outperform in more ways than one to battle Linux as well as opensource
From the article:
[The feds are monitoring Longhorn] to make sure it is not presented with a "fait accompli" version of the software that would be difficult to change.
The feds don't want Longhorn to be difficult to change. They are making sure they catch any violations before it is unreasonably difficult for Microsoft to change the software to fix those violations.
"Preceded by itself yields falsehood" preceded by itself yields falsehood.
No wonder it's taking MS so long to release Longhorn.
From the MSNBC article:
"Several industry analysts have predicted introduction of Longhorn in 2006 or possibly 2007, which is when the antitrust settlement is scheduled to expire."
Is it just me or does anyone else find it interesting that Longhorn is delayed until just about the time the M$ Antitrust settlement encumbrances ( such as they are) go away.
'1. Feds want Longhorn to be "difficult to change"'
Where did you get that? The only thing that I read about 'difficult to change' was this:
'...the government wants to look at the software, code-named Longhorn, early enough in its development so that it is not presented as a "fait accompli" that would be difficult to change.'
In other words, the government wants to watch Microsoft's development, so that, in 2 years, MS can't show up with a 'final' version of the OS which is in gross violation, and then say, "Oh, but it's so hard to change now that we're done." That's basically what MS did with the Internet Explorer integration- they got it nice and stuck in the OS, and then said, "Oh, but we can't take it out! That would be impossible! If only we had known ahead of time that you wouldn't like it, we wouldn't have put it in, but now, what's done is done! We can't undo it!"
...which, of course, is BS, but it's what Microsoft claims, and the government doesn't want a repeat.
When the fox gaurds the henhouse
I thought it was well known that FOX mainly guarded the White House.
I read the shorter article (many words = enemy), and I can't help but wonder how the gov't actually intends on enforcing this issue. Are they really hiring programmers of thier own to look at the code? If not, would the average gov't employee know what he/she is looking at? Even if they were given some sort of a design document (hehhe) would they even be able to determine the true intent or implementation?
I for one welcome our new [insert main topic] overlords.
Sorry, my metaphor stack overflowed at that point.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...