EU Sleuths Think Microsoft Sabotaged Windows

Adam Zweimiller writes "The Inquirer is reporting that in it's ongoing battle with Microsoft, the European Commission is investigating the possibility that the Vole has sneakily sabotaged the Media Player-free versions of Windows it is obliged to ship to the EU. A report (subscription required) in today's Wall Street Journal suggests Microsoft has fiddled with the registry in its stripped-down Windows offerings and the result is that video clips embedded into Microsoft Word documents don't run properly, for example."

Comments

At this point ...

[Anonymous Coward]

if I were Microsoft, I'd pull out of the EU market. It's insane how far the EU is going in this. I'd say, fine ... we're done. Enjoy, and walk away.

Re:At this point ...

[mc6809e]

The whole Euro market is bigger than the US..

Would be a great boost for Linux though if they did.

The mere fact that europeans have much less to spend than USians is a great boost for Linux.

If the European Union were a U.S. state, it would rank forty-seventh in per capita GDP, according to a report from Timbro, a Swedish free-market think tank. (Yes, there really is one.) In annual income the average European is on a par with residents of Mississippi, West Virginia, and Arkansas. (And the report excludes the newer, poorer EU nations of Eastern Europe.) The picture isn't much rosier even in wealthier European states like France and Britain, both of which have per capita GDPs slightly lower than Alabama's. Only tiny Luxembourg scores better than the American average. The United States' material advantage extends beyond income: Americans spend 77 percent more annually than Europeans, own more appliances, and (presumably thanks to our wide open spaces) have homes providing, on average, 721 square feet per person--nearly twice the average size of European residences. The study's authors allow that fast-growing GDP is "not the be all and end all of happiness and prosperity," citing more "intangible" (and quintessentially European) factors such as equality, leisure time, and the environment. But they note, with a defensiveness undoubtedly endemic among Swedish free-marketeers, that "material resources" are a "precondition of much of the wellbeing which people like to call intangible."

Let me get this straight...

[Anita Coney]

The EU wanted Microsoft to remove all video players from Windows. Now the EU is complaining that video doesn't play.

Oh, I get it. You guys are simply fucking with Microsoft. Sort of like a kid pulling the wings off a fly. Funny stuff your bureaucrats do over there!

Re:Microsoft's Twinkie Defense

[spectecjr]

Depends on the DLL doesn't it? If for example the DLL couples a DOM and ECMAScript implementation to the oeprating system, in detriment to existing competing implementations, I'd say the judge is justified.

Yeah, but you're a kneejerk anti-Microsoft bigot and not a software developer.

You can't have it both ways - either they remove everything, and other apps break, and you complain that they're doing it to spite the judge, or they just remove the IExplore.exe shell and leave the rest in, don't break anything, and then they're in "unfair competition" with rival DLLs.

Clue for you: People used to sell TCPIP implementations for Windows. There were lots of "existing competing implementations". The idea of not having TCPIP built in today is ludicrous. But it flies in the face of your idea of "detrimental to existing competing implementations" - and a good thing too, because it's sound engineering practice, good for consumers, and is expected in a modern OS.