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Seven States Extend Microsoft Antitrust Judgment
Technical Writing Geek writes "A number of states have moved to extend antitrust judgments against Microsoft until the year 2012. California, Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia are all contributing to the decision, and have released a report on the factors that lead to the extension. 'The report laments the state of OEM web browser bundling, saying that no major OEM currently distributes a browser other than Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE). This is important due to the rise of new middleware platforms (such as Adobe's AIR and Microsoft's own Silverlight) that can create rich, OS-independent, web-based applications.' The report is slightly self-contradictory, but raises some valid points."
For the record, between IE, Firefox, and Everything Else, just because OEM's ship the default browser doesn't mean that there isn't anything else available - it means more often that people are far too lazy to look.
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
DC = !a state
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
I've always thought it was strange that the focus of a lot of the anti-trust case was the "bundling" of Internet Explorer.
Who gives a shit? The only other browsers worth using, Firefox and Opera, are both FREE. How is bundling IE with Windows hurting them? They don't make any money from their browsers anyway!
Plus, the REAL problem with the MS/Windows monopoly (and I don't think it is a monopoly, really, but that's a different argument) is that they don't document the Windows API completely.
The fact though isn't that they included the web browser but rather that the browser is irremovable from the OS, and when its filled with security flaws its a risk for offices and businesses with the employees knowing nothing other then Word and Outlook go on IE when Firefox is installed and end up getting the computer infested with spyware. It is the same thing with the Media Player in the EU, theres no problem with them including it, but when it can't be removed, its a problem.
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
The reason corporations don't care about laws is that there are no consequences for the people running it. Bring back the consequences and you'll bring back respect for the law. The idea was never to give the people running corporations complete immunity- it was to give investors limited immunity, so people who weren't running the show could invest in minority positions and not take on huge legal risks. In other words, to protect the small-medium investors, not to protect the CEOs. The major owners and controllers of a company *have* to be personally liable if you want any accountability from the company.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I can think of at least one OEM that bundles a browser other than Internet Explorer.
"Fascism is an authoritarian political ideology (generally tied to a mass movement) that considers individual and other societal interests subordinate to the interests of the state"
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with extreme right wing fundamentalist talking points:
- Don't criticize the administration or you are "supporting terrorism."
- Broad wiretap spying programs on citizens is important for nationalist security.
- Torture and indefinite imprisonment of the accused, with suspended Habeas Corpus, is critical to nationalist security.
- Limiting the right to travel around and to/from the country and imposing a Nationalist biometric ID program.
Centrist Americans in both the Democratic and Republican parties have historically found all those ideas repugnant. You are right to say those ideas have historically been associated with extremist socialist states such as Stalin's Russia, but they are also associated with with the Axis fascist countries and fundamentalist religious states. Authoritarian political ideology is not unique to a particular extreme end of political spectrum.
The US isn't in danger of falling to a communist revolution. It is, however, already knee deep in a cesspool of a fascist torture/spy/police state that considers individual rights and societal interests (freedom of expression, access to health care and education) subordinate to the needs of corrupt corporations that largely run the country. Corporate welfare, a government run media (Fox), and wartime profiteering are not American ideals.
The American right and conservatives in general are not represented by the NeoCon minority. Small and effective government and free markets have little to do with the torture/spy/police state fascism being advanced by NeoCons in their efforts to set up a fundamentalist religious state and declare war on other fundamentalist religious states throughout the world, partnered with welfare-state corporations like Haliburton and Blackwater.
What You Expected, What You Got
Such a solution does not go far enough. For it to work all browser makers that wanted their browser pre-installed on Windows would have to be allowed to have theirs included. Of course bundling IE and Windows is only one of the dozens of abuses of MS's monopoly.
Inefficiently and slowly addressing the abuses one at a time is simply not going to work. The only solution I have confidence in is removing the monopoly so that MS has no ability to abuse it. Break MS into at least two companies with full rights to all the patents and code in Windows. Forbid those two companies from any collusion or even private communication. When both of them are fighting for market share with one another, they will give consumers versions of Windows that finally do what consumers want, instead of what will gouge the most money from them. Restore competition and the industry will recover. Barring that, government corruption and a glacial legal system will never fix this market and technology will continue to improve slowly and in a broken direction.