Slashdot Mirror
PC Makers See Little Reason to Deploy XP N
suitepotato writes "In this article, Ingrid Marson reports to CNet News that in a small survey of companies such as Dell, HP, and Lenovo, there are no real plans to deploy Microsoft's Windows XP N which was the version required by the European Union. It would seem that despite the rants of anger towards Microsoft that they were unfairly bundling Windows Media Player with Windows XP, the public at large would not seem to agree and is not actually demanding any such stripped down version. Perhaps the EU's actions were unnecessary?"
So,it looks like this whole action by th EU adds up to about, hmmm, let's see, NOTHING.
The problem is that the prosecutors (plaintiffs?) were trying to achieve a certain result - spanking Microsoft. To accomplish this, they used the method to hand: demanding debundling.
This produces the weird result that people want the opposite of what the prosecutors claimed they wanted. The prosecutors knew this at the beginning. But they pushed for the unwanted thing anyway, to punish Microsoft. Who probably don't care.
So anyway, it's absurd, but absurd for what at least some people probably think is a good reason. Personally, I think they should just tweak the laws so that they produce the desired result - open APIs - without some kind of weird, tortured legal theory. That, or just don't prosecute this kind of case.
Is that the worst name possible for a product? What does it mean?
If I recall correctly the EU specifically requested that MS change the name to this from "Reduced Media version".
All it does though is make it incrediably confusing for the consumer, the one they are trying to protect.
If I had created the world I wouldn't have messed about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers
... the EU should have mandated the new edition to be cheaper than the Home XP? If I'd have to pay the same (or even a higher) price to get less, then guess what I would do. Without mandating it to be cheaper MS will probably resort to this kind of tactics to push their media-player.
Windows needs to be forked, preferably 3 or 4 ways. Microsoft should be forced to auction off unrestricted rights to use the Windows code base and all related patents. Likewise for Office -- there's too strong of a tie in. There's no need to break up MicroSoft. MicroSoft could even keep the cash from the sale. That's about as fair as you could ask for while returning competition to the marketplace. Of course, that's just a liberal fantasy that will never come to pass. And let's be honest. Taking Media Player out of Windows and lowering the wholesale price $5 ain't going to change a damn thing.
bance.net
I don't get what the deal is. If anything Microsoft is the one being treated unfairly in ALL of these "monopoly" related trials. Heck to imply that MS is a monopoly is to disregard Linux, BSD, Mac or any other Misc operating systems as Non-existent. Not that MS has ever actually been accused of that, simply "monopolistic practices". Glad to know you can have those without being a monopoly... it makes me feel like I have a chance too! Like maybe one day I will acquire monopolistic powers so I can like force my boss to give me a raise because I am the only one good at doing my job.
If you apply the logic people use against MS to competitors, such as Apple or even Linux distributions the arguments fall apart as ridiculous:
Apple should be forced to remove QuickTime and Safari.
No Linux distribution should be allowed to place a media player and a web browser in the same installation package.
KDE needs Konqueror removed! It deters people form using Lynx and firefox!
Heck lets get down to the real point. Nothing should ever be bundled with anything. Your OS should be a kernel and you need to buy a separate piece of software to actually do anything!
None of this makes sense. The people that are complaining, the "3rd parties" like real (has anyone ever mentioned another media play in the game) and Netscape suck. They made bad products a better product overtook them. End of line.
Look how quickly firefox took off! Its amazing how many people will switch when something equal or better comes around... but wait I thought we were all brain washed by bill gates' zombie ray?! Too many people just seem to thing big business is bad and immoral. That's fine! Frankly I hate corporate America, but... at least hate everybody fairly and equally. Redhat MS and Apple oh and IBM and Sony should all die horrible deaths because they are the oppressors. Technology should be made by hand... in my garage... with duct tape and crazy glue!
I shudder to think of a present where real player had become the de-facto standard.
I can also only imagine the flame wars that would have run rampant if this mentality had existed when evil MS integrated EDIT into MSDOS. Destroying the vital text editor market for competitors!!!
The only lesson I have learned from all of this is that governments are slower and dumber and more susceptible to bandwagon mentalities than I expected.
Flame away...
I see what you are trying to say, but it really isn't the case. There is no paying for Media Player, its "free". Now your implying that they are just rolling the cost into Windows, but I don't agree with that.
They have offered Media Player as a free download for Mac OSX as well (I don't think they do that anymore, but not sure).
The issue was never about abuse of users in the way you are suggesting, it was about other companies (Real) not being able to compete because Media Player is bundled with Windows. Now you can argue it SHOULD have been about other issues, but the fact is the EU case was about other companies not being able to compete not about any user "abuse".
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
Microsoft has said that people *choose* their OS because it is "better" - this would have been a chance to prove it.
The problem with forcing Microsoft to unbundle WMP or IE is that it comes too late, the product has already been accepted by the market. The legal tools for handling this kind of behaviour are unsufficient. Since the products are distributed at no cost, customers see no reason to switch. The only way to prevent this would have been to force Microsoft to distribute WMP or IE in a similar way to their competitors, i.e. charge for it or at least make it a separate download. That way the market may have decided by choice instead by default setting.
To stop Microsoft from doing it again (Desktop Search? Music downloads via XBox2) they would have to be forced to compete in the market BEFORE they achieve a dominant position. I don't think this is legally possible.
memomo: free web based language trainer DE-EN-ES-FR-IT
There sure is a lot of Microsoft ass-kissing getting put up on this site these days.....I would say this story misses the point. The point wasn't what consumers wanted the point was unfair advantage in the industry. It's not surprising that a bunch of companies that are in microshafts pocket aren't gonna bundle XPN, I'm sure they're all scared of having their prices go up the next time they negotiate a deal. I do think that the penalty misses the point as well. Unbundling Media Player doesn't seem to solve the problem. Opening up the interface data that Sun wanted seemed to be the point. Personally I can't see anything wrong with Media Player, now Internet Explorer, that's a different can of worms........
Hey, you think your house is cool?
Of course no one wants the stripped down version because it costs the same as the full-blown version .
This isn't vindication for MS - it is just proof of the stupidity of the EU bureaucrats who did a half-assed job of imposing the punishment on MS. If they weren't so incompetent, they would have mandated that not only must MS make a stripped down version, they also gotta sell it for proportionally less too where "lots" is equal to some value of proportional...
reference: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22283
Let's take on some competitors, shall we?
Real Player: latest incarnation will not uninstall from Windows, will not install correctly, will not run correctly. Will not work on Fedora Core 3 either. On BOTH machines is dies as soon as it attempts to run a REAL MEDIA file. If a media player cannot play its own proprietary format never mind work at all, how is it being hurt by another player that works being installed? This is like saying that kids who drop out of high school are injured by those who stayed and graduated because they look bad by comparison.
WinAmp: It (blanks) the llama's (blank). The last incarnations, everything after 2.something, were wonky, played video with a weird tinge no matter what, tended to kill themselves spontaneously, unless you looked at the process list where you'd see them running in circles eating resources. Similar note to above. Yes, they were once hotness. They didn't bother trying to maintain that. Of course the RIAA assault on Internet radio didn't help them any. But Microsoft's bundling did not impact them. There was a time when WinAmp was mandatory among the Internet public. Sort of the way Real Player was pretty much openly hyped by Netscape while WMP was still an ineffective afterthought widget. Oh how the mighty have shot themselves in the foot.
VLC: absolutely necessary if you want to preview incomplete files on eMule (or aMule on Linux) and works very well. However, that being said, it is very poorly documented for something so powerful. How many users even know it streams video and audio? For free? And tends to actually (heavens) work right? Nevertheless, you can't hurt a free open source app by bundling a closed source app if the open source app fulfills many functions the closed source app cannot and will not ever (most likely). It is hardly Microsoft's fault that the VLC developers and users don't boost this thing more. (oddly, it runs better on Windows than on Linux where Xine kicks the arse of everything and should be bundled with all Linux installs of whatever flavor; it just needs its seeming inability to see hidden folders fixed)
Quicktime: Another player with its own proprietary formats but since it comes from Apple and really cool movie trailers are published with it, we let that go. Well, we shouldn't. Not when up until the iteration before last it had a very high incidence of installation failure and if the installation was successful, usage failure on Windows. I didn't hear the same thing from Mac desktop supporters. Nor did I hear tinfoil hat paranoia that Apple did this on purpose. I still found it unacceptable that Apple didn't do a better job of preventing it from crashing. They're Apple. They have money to pay the programmers to code correctly or withhold pay until they do. If not, they should shut up about Redmond's coding practices. In any case, they aren't hurt. You don't see the vast majority of movie trailers on WMV despite the MPAA being so DRM gung-ho. Getting a copy of a Quicktime clip to save to your machine is very easy to do without needing to hunt down StreamboxVCR (as you would with WMV or Real Media).
Yes, you're absolutely right that "They just know that when they double-click something, they expect it to play.". So shouldn't Real Media actually play at least its own format and not force someone to hunt down a copy of Media Player Classic? Shouldn't Quicktime be capable of reading all the formats that WMP can even if you have to add codecs specifically to it? Shouldn't someone be screaming the virtues of VLC from the rooftops? Shouldn't we just put WinAmp in the Internet's past where it belongs like Napster and portal mania?
If alternatives to WMP are so great and so deserving of usage, let their users speak out. I don't see that except maybe with Apple people who use Adobe Premiere and Quicktime but they are hardly evangelists or even boosters. If WMP is missing and replaced with things that don't work right and they eventually come around to WMP, does that not aid Microsoft's rep? Will they not think, "you know, that Microsoft may be a big monopoly they say but that Media Player actually plays my porn right"?
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
we see any Micrsoft ad campaign promoting "XP N" ?
A couple of media stories and some hype by sychophant 'analysts' and 'journalists'.
No wonder it died.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
When MS was entered into the anti-trust suit, this was not the case. We're all talking about that legacy.
However, I might note that if you remove IE, many legacy apps do break, because they try and launch IE explicitly (and erroneously, but that's not the point).
Obviously, they can do it now. XP N is proof that it is no longer that way. But the impression is still there. Honestly, I have no idea why the EU ordered things they way they did. To me the ruling didn't seem to help much of anything, and seems very dated.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
Download Firefox, burn it on a CD, buy the new computer, install Firefox.
Most people don't start from a cold start when they buy a new computer, there's plenty of stuff you need to move from your old computer to your new one.
The real solution IMHO would be to remove all the bundled apps and include an "extra" CD with Windows that would hold all those, plus the latest (at the time of shipping) blessed binaries (plus source for OSS apps) of all the competitors. That way, you would put the CD in and have a choice. It would have an autostart, be easy to install and the description of each app would be written by the vendor.
They should also be requiered to put a link to the latest version of their competitor on the download page of the latest version of their products.
Slashdot anagrams to "Sad Sloth"
Even if you run firefox, you are running IE. The IE code is what you use to brouse your file-system, and it does a GREAT job.
You don't know what you are talking about.
The code that pervades Windows, that is used for the file browser, help, etc, is not Internet Explorer. It is Trident. Trident is an HTML/CSS rendering engine.
Internet Explorer is built upon Trident. It is not the same thing as Trident. Other browsers, like Maxthon, are also built upon Trident.
I don't use it if I don't want to, and it isn't bothering me sitting there
Isn't it?
How do you know that a better browser wouldn't have been developed had Microsoft not killed the web browser market with their illegal bundling?
Ever buy anything online? I'm a web developer. It takes me significantly more time to build a website because of Internet Explorer's shortcomings. The extra time means extra cost. I pass that cost onto my clients. My clients pass that cost onto you.
contrary to what everyone is saying, Firefox is competing rahter well, even with IE bundled.
So how much money has Firefox made?