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Microsoft's Longhorn Faces Antitrust Scrutiny
benore writes "The Department of Justice
will be reviewing Microsoft's Longhorn product as part of the company's antitrust settlement. One analyst opines that Mircosoft is appearing to soften its image to become kinder and gentler. 'They don't want people to hate them anymore. They've learned from their mistakes.' Hmmm."
One area that DOJ regulators will be looking at, in particular, is a control panel in Longhorn that facilitates use of a browser and media player other than the Microsoft versions that will be pre-built into the system.
Great. We have government "experts" who think the choice of media player really important and they aren't even looking at the whole Trusted Computing initiative and the monopolistic implications thereof.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
A government that uses closed-source, proprietary software is not an independent government. A company that uses closed-source, proprietary software is not an independent company.
Yes, Microsoft is abusive, and will remain abusive until its abusive leaders are gone, but that is not the point. The point is that you should not pay someone to keep secrets from you.
Sigh. And since I use Windows at home and at work, I am not a free man? Even if I chose to use Windows.
The owls are not what they seem
For boxed copies of Windows, I agree 100% - it should include anything MS wants to put in the box. For OEM copies it's a different matter. It should include the kernel, basic subsystems, Windows Explorer, and very little else. OEMs could then be free to decide what media player, office suite, browser, etc. they bundle, and customers could then buy from differentiated OEMs. MS should not be allowed to use their effective monopoly in the OS market to create monopolies in other markets (e.g. the web browser market), and this is exactly what the antitrust laws state.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It's a funny irony that as Linux has grown, simply because of Microsofts attitude, that Billy and Steve have become almost obsessed with Linux. that they have in my eyes ended up looking like silly cartoon villians.
I'll get you next time Linux! just you wait!
No offence, but this is offtopic; congratulations on getting modded up to +5 for a post that has almost nothing to do with the article. I don't blame yo, but the sheep-like moderators, modding up anything anti-MS and pro-linux.
Two things I sort of take issue with, though:
as well as forced upgrades
What forced upgrades, how? My company is still using Office 2000, and have not been "forced" to upgrade, despite some clients using Office XP; the documents still open just fine. There are still machines running NT 4; similarly, nothing is forcing us to upgrade them. Sure, support is running out/has run out, but the same is true of older releases of Linux distros. Without a leet C hacker or two on staff, businesses using them are similarly "forced" to upgrade if they wish to have continued support.
will be advocating limiting the use of MS products to anyone who will listen
Rather you should be advocating the use of the best tool for the job. If that tool happens to be from MS, then so be it. MS isn't the answer to everything, but then neither is Linux.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Microsoft's early mission statement was "A computer on every desk, running Microsoft software".
Their current mission statement is: "To enable people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential."
Before October 2002, it was "To empower people through great software -- any time, any place, and on any device."
The early mission satement was far better, and more representative of how they actully do business. If you were an employee, which statement gives you the most clear goals? If you were an investor, which company's stock would you buy? Of course, there's no mention of integrity, quality, ethics, but nevermind that...
Back to the topic, has anyone seen any real changes in behavior (not just some analyst saying they want to be nicer)?
You totally miss the point, like most people.
Microsoft isn't using it's monopoly in OS to get monopolies in media players, web browsers etc. It is using it's web browsers and media players to force proprietary standards, like WMF, WMA, ms java, etc, which will only work on windows. This then reinforces the windows monopoly.
For example, microsoft licensed java, then added extensions to intentionally break compatability with any other OS. They created internet explorer to kill netscape, because netscape was the killer app at the time, and was available on every platform under the sun. Then you have a situation where IE is at version 5, meanwhile the only reasonable browser on other OS's is netscape 4. This is before Mozilla and Firefox came along, and greatly hurt the competitiveness of alot of platforms, as using netscape 4 is just slightly better than eating razor blades.
strides forward in the fields of Digital Rights Management
You should not call DRM "Digital Rights Management", the term is "Digital Restrictions Management". This isn't just a linguistic trick, it's framing the debate. "Rights" has a positive connotation, "restrictions" has a negative one. The idea is that you define the debate in your terms, so that your opposition has to defend itself using your terms.
The master of this is Frank Luntz. His way of framing debate with words is called "Luntz Speak". I don't agree with his politics, but I admire his methods tremendously.