DoJ Finds Microsoft Antitrust Compliance 'On Track'

eldavojohn writes "Despite demand for more oversight from the states, the Department of Justice has found that Microsoft's antitrust compliance plan is right on track. These specific investigations centered around Vista's compliance with Google's concerns surrounding search tools for the desktop. From the article: 'Preliminary testing shows the new version, which will let Vista users set a competing search program as their default and see it in the Windows Start menu, works as expected. The changes will be available in Service Pack 1, a package of upgrades and fixes expected in the first quarter of 2008, the department said. The department also said in its report that it is looking into differences between original technical documentation and rewritten versions from Microsoft, and that it is testing fixes Microsoft made to some software.'"

Comments

gln4a

[Anonymous Coward]

alike to reap the nu8bers. The Are you GAY

Re:Antitrust

[Anonymous Coward]

I never quite understood the rationale

I think what you meant to say is that you don't understand the concept of monopoly or antitrust or why consumers should need or get relief from same. This information is widely available in economics classes and texts. If you wanted to know, you could find out.

A monopoly has a different role in the economy from what you call a "megacorporation" whatever that is. You sound like your only economics education is from Slashdot comments. You might want to crack a book on the topic.

In the past, DOJ has distinguished itself by providing relief from monopolies such as Standard Oil, with great effect. The problem now is that DOJ is toothless. This is in part due to voters with no better understanding of government's role than you have and who'll vote in a regime because it claims to stand tall and square jawed against terrists. Try to educate yourself. That's the best protection for all of us.

Re:Antitrust

[Teun]

The other thing that is in relation to what I just said is Microsoft is damned if they do and damned if they don't in many cases especially where security is concerned. Companies like Symantic and McAffee and the like have built a large business on the insecurities inherent in the Microsoft platform. When Microsoft announced Windows Defender these companies screamed "antitrust!" The same is happening for any features Microsoft adds be it media, search indexing, security, etc. These are things that Microsoft customers are screaming for but any attempt by Microsoft to address them gets a call for antitrust because they will always step on some provider's toes no matter what they do. Consider this, if Microsoft were to include into their OS all the things that a Linux distro does, the calls for antitrust would be so great you could hear it on Pluto without the need for a radio. Would you be on the MS payroll I could understand you.
But for non-MS people your writing is incomprehensible.

The big difference between MS and Linux distro's including such utilities is that MS is forcing competing commercial offerings out of the market by leveraging it's OS.

The one about Windows Defender is quite transparent, first they write software (OS and applications) that is suseptible to abuse and expect others to build a line of defence. By the time the defensive stuff starts making money off it's own, Microsoft (the originator of the weaknesses) comes up with an in-house 'solution'.
Had that solution been the hardening of the OS and applications no-one would have complained but with Defender they try to make money off their own failings.

Re:A real anti-trust ruling...

[Anonymous Coward]

That isn't fair. What would be fair is to force the closure of Micro$haft by the governments confiscating everything from them, including the little "non-profit" organization Bill & Melinda Gatu$ has on the side. What will the M$ employees do once they lose their jobs? Go find a fucking job. They should have realized what they were doing by applying for M$. Personally, I would love to see Bill and his fucktarded wife at the Seattle McPuke asking "Do you want fries with that?"

Once the governments confiscate everthing from them, open up all of the specs and code to the open source developers and the money could be used to repair the economies of both the EU and US which was caused mainly by M$ and Windoze.

laughable and criable.

[DragonTHC]

IE is still bundled with Windows Vista
If you call this "on-track" then you're not worried about the pesky laws.