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Microsoft Windows XP N Flops
ChocLinux writes "Dell, Lenovo and Fujitsu Siemens have announced they have no plans to pre-install Windows XP N, the version of Windows without a bundled media player that Microsoft released to comply with the European Commission antitrust ruling. It is now almost six months since Microsoft released Windows XP N, and the fact that no-one wants to sell it suggests that this antitrust case may be going the way of the US one. Also, the article raises the question - now that RealNetworks has settled with Microsoft, will anyone bother to complain about this? Of course there's a chance that the EC might bring a new antitrust case against Microsoft, but how much more effective is that likely to be?"
The EC verdict had several points:
1. A fine of ~500 Million Euro
2. Windows without media player
3. Making available documentation for interfaces.
Microsoft is appealing the verdict and dragging its feet with respect to point 3. We'll need to keep up the pressure on Microsoft, the EU and others to have Microsoft open its interfaces.
extern warranty;
main()
{
(void)warranty;
}
> Every modern OS has one built in.
That's not true.
Mac & Windows have them built in, but they are a minority.
Which, pray, is the built in Web Browser for OpenBSD 3.8 ?
How about Solaris 10 ?
What Media Player does FreeBSD ship with ?
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
If Microsoft is such a monopoly, why does my (NL) government only provide for a Windows application to fill in my tax forms? 2 years down the lane and they are finally building an Apple version as well. Why have I (and the company I work for) received many documents that can only be viewed by Microsoft software. Thank god most information folders are formatted using Adobe. To get back to the Media Player issue; you would have to install it anyway, since almost all the broadcasts of the (public) TV network are either Real or MS formatted, and Real is not a real option.
OK, so that's understandable from a support perspective. The Microsoft support desk wouldn't want to deal with any random crap loaded up by the manufacturer, particularly if some of that random crap made the system unstable.
That doesn't make it right, though.
Incorrect.
The situations is exactly identical on Mac and on Windows. On Mac OS X, the web browser (HTML redering) functionality is WebKit and Safari is just a thin GUI shell around it. In the same way, IE is just a thin GUI shell around the web browser (HTML rendering) functionality embedded into the OS.
If you remove the IE shell, nothing will break in Windows. However, if you remove the HTML rendering capability lots of things will break. In the same way, if you remove Safari nothing will break in OS X but if you remove WebKit, tons of things will break. There's a HUGE amount of applications that rely on WebKit!!
Of course Slashdot readers often overlook this fact because they think it's cool to bitch about Microsoft.
Unless you are using mplayer or Real that third party player you installed is probably a wrapper around the windows media framework, Want to use Premiere? You're going to need WM. Want to use Zoom player? It's wrapped around DirectShow - no Windows Media player, no directshow. No directshow most third party players won't work nor will many games.
Apparently you need to speak with the judges of the US DC circuit court, because they don't understand the term 'monopoly' either. After you clear it up with them, maybe they'll help you explain it to the European Commission.
The very fact that Apple exist and sell their own operating system means that Microsoft does not have a 'monopoly' on desktop operating systems.
The courts disagree. You'd better straighten them out.
Similarly, Microsoft were never convicted of being a 'monopoly', which in itself is not illegal, they were convicted of 'monopolistic practices'.
Of course they weren't "convicted" of being a monopoly. It's not a crime. But they were found to be a monopoly. A judical finding of fact like that is a big deal, because it's a prerequisite to being convicted of leveraging your monopoly in anti-competitive ways. Without that judicial finding, you have a simple, slam-dunk defense "We can't have abused our monopoly because we don't have one."
Of course, this being slashdot, this comment will simply be ignored, or even modded 'troll'.
Yep. Sometimes /. moderators *do* get it right.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
> MS got caught repeatedly doing this sort of stunt.
And the anti-trust settlement precludes all of this behavior now.
Seriously, if you know of an instance where MS prevented an OEM from shipping Firefox as the default browser, you and your fellow groklawers should bring it to the attention of the antitrust judge.
But MacOS has far more than a BIOS. It has OpenFirmware. It's like a BIOS except it doesn't require your machine to start up as if it were a processor made in 1982, and its programmable (scriptable)!
I'm a bit shocked you manged to make your Mini unbootable, even installing iffy software. I'm not completely up-to-date, but booting with command-option-N-V held down should have fixed you up. Or perhaps booting with command-option-O-F and typing "reset-nvram" at the prompt.
I take it inserting a CD and holding down C during boot (or just option and selecting the CD from the list) didn't work?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Apple has Safari/Webkit bundled with the OS, but as they only have single digit market share this bundled applications can not be used to twist anybodies arm. They can't make proprietary web extensions that fail to render on other peoples browsers, no developer would use them.
Microsoft, on the other hand, is the clear market leader. They can add some wonderful proprietary extension to Internet Explorer, tell developers that this new extension will function on 90% of the target clients browsers, and sit back and watch competitor's browsers get pushed out of the market.
Clear market leaders, like Microsoft, are legally expected to play by different rules, and for good reason.
started making some kind of strangely huge and complicated "communicator" that crashed every ten minutes.
I can't remember using Netscape 3.0, but I used 4.0 quite a bit on a Windows 98 machine, and Netscape was far more stable than Internet Explorer. I could literally use it for hours at a time, with multiple windows open. I tried using IE more than a few times, and multiple browser windows caused IE (really the entire OS) to choke after a while. If you compare the integrated components of IE, memory usage wasn't even that much more for the Netscape suite.
Anyways, if you look at the graph of usage you'll see that, while the Netscape suite was released in '96, Netscape share didn't really begin to plummet until '98, when Microsoft integrated IE 5.0 into Windows.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Windows without a media player and internet explorer solves nothing...hell, even Gnome comes with a built in media player and browser now. Just as the grandparent said, the real problem is the file formats. If WMP played all the open (ie...no charge to Microsoft besides implementing them) file formats right off the bat, and wasn't so obsessed with spreading WMA/V, then it wouldn't be as big a deal. The problem is that since so many Windows users never install new codecs or new players, all they can play besides windows media files are mpeg and other old standards. So now all the media providers encode everything in WMA/V so they don't have to explain to these people how to install codecs and such. But then non windows users, are screwed because they can not legaly play MS's proprietary formats. Quicktime/iTunes is no better either.... IE's the same thing, if they ditched ActiveX and fully supported real standards, then it wouldn't be as big a problem. The bottom line is that their little differences from the W3C standards and use of "windows media" files help them to lock people into their operating system, and that's the whole reason for the anti-trust cases.
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."