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EU Fines for Microsoft Approved, Off the Record
mattaw writes "The Register is carrying a report that all 25 member states of the EU have found Microsoft guilty of non-compliance, off the record. Microsoft is in line for a fine of $2.51 million per day backdated to December 15th 2004 for failing to meet the terms of the EU commission's ruling."
If they were really afraid of being noncompliant, they could probably just release the source for the various implementations in lieu of specifications, and I'm sure lots of other people would be happy to comb through the source and do the "impossible" work for them.
Microsoft has only set it self an impossible task because its business model requires it to ride a razor's edge between giving out too much information (and giving up the home-court advantage that Microsoft's internal developers enjoy) and not enough (and facing the ire of the regulators).
As other people have pointed out, they have working implementations of everything they're trying to document -- if writing the specs is proving too hard, I'm sure the E.U. would be satisfied with the actual source.
Too bad that's even less palatable to them than the fines are.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
eh... Italy should not be proud of the way they won through... especially the match against the Aussies :(
You skipped billiard for 10^15. Some speak about trilliards, but as far as I remember it's not really used, it's (in Polish) milion-miliard-bilion-biliard-trylion-kwadrylion.. .
;-)
And put a stress on the word _most_ (of Europe) - the Brits are going to flame you to hell.
The european (incl. polish) system is actually worse - it would be just as good if it was coherent (quintilliard, etc.), but - as it is - it only introduces confusion. Especially now, that not-quite-well-educated journalists translate US news, constantly making that sort of mistakes, so we learn about e.g. (true story, a few years ago, the $$$ might be a bit off though) the B2 stealth bomber costing "okolo 2 biliony dolarow za sztuke" - that would be "about 2 trillion dollars per plane" (!), a bit much... The US could probably afford about one every 2 years, if they seized funding anything else with their current military budget.
I would definitely vote for switching to the simple american system (EU could probably force that), but it would take many years of serious confusion. Not that it's something we didn't see before - just look at the "fun" the USA is having with the metric system, and how well the change is going...
US Government announces Operation Europe Freedom which will liberate the country of Europe led by an evil terrorist regime.
But Italy were excellent against Germany...by far the best game of this World Cup I have seen.
Drifting even further off-topic, vive la France! As an Englishman I want to see you (sportingly) destroy the Portugese.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Hey, up in the sky, its a bird, its a plane, its Tim O'Reilly!
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