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Hungary Officials Raid Microsoft Office
Steve writes "Hungarian government officers raided the offices of a Microsoft subsidiary this week, as part of a probe into the company's relationship with large software distributors. From the article: 'According to the statement, Microsoft used sales conditions and offered software distributors incentives - described as loyalty discounts - so they wouldn't offer clients anything but Microsoft Office products. Such behavior could lead to the exclusion of competitive products from the market and violate European Union rules, according to the authority known as the GVH.'"
How does it feel when you didn't do anything illegal and suddenly your office is raided, productivity grinds to a halt and all because someone somehow felt that you might have done something illegal?
Think 'bout that next time your BSA guys believe a disgruntled ex-employee who just wants to give his ex-company a piece of mind as a revenge bit. Unlike some other companies, you'll brush this loss of productivity off. Other companies ain't so lucky, and a day of ZERO productivity (lacking any other offices abroad that could compensate) is quite hard on companies that have to meet tight deadlines.
(sorry for the venting, but it really, really felt good)
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
And to think that the headline writer could have prevented all of this off-topic banter by writing "Hungarian Officials..." instead of "Hungary Officials..."
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
But without the off-topic banter why would we visit slashdot?
Developers: We can use your help.
and don't forget MPlayer :)
(yes this can be compared with sex)
That unfortunately doesn't stand for the Hungarian government. They keep giving Microsoft millions of dollars for the so called "Campus" contract, which supplies the whole of hungarian education and universities with "free" Microsoft software, so that the students and professors can use them. Too bad that this is the case, as in my opinion Microsoft should pay for the priviledge instead, since basically they are getting mindshare from young developers etc.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Whether MS has a monopoly or not is irrelevent. It has without a doubt a dominant position on the word processing/office software market (wich is the subject of this investigation). Now the competition authorities have to determine whether the practices of MS in hungary constitute an abuse of said dominant position. You need to have a dominant position in order to abuse it, thus practices that may be regarded as legit for most companies, may very well constitute an abuse of a dominant position (see article 82 EC).
It's ignorant bullshit? Am I wrong about Microsoft stealing code verbatim from Stacker to use as their on-the-fly disk compression routine? Am I wrong about Microsoft actually scanning to see if a user was running Word Perfect and having the system slow it to a crawl or have it fault out? Am I wrong about how when Microsoft was being investigated for anti-competitive behaviors with their bundling of IE that they quickly - and crudely - swapped out pieces of code from Windows into IE and from IE into Windows? To the point that anyone that uninstalled IE completely hosed their operating system and had to reinstall?
But I did leave out a few things - like when Microsoft on numerous occasions threatened computer vendors - as they are now. How they refused to honor their own shrinkwrap about how if people don't agree to the EULA, they can have their money refunded (see the Australian case where one user had to fight them in court to get them to honor their own EULA). You know, stuff like that.
I stand by my assertion - Microsoft plays dirty. Please provide any rebuttal you wish. I'd love to see it. I will stick with OSX and Linux.
What part of 'fiduciary duty' do you not understand?
Until you change the system, it will continue to be garbage-in garbage-out.