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EC Considering Removing Internet Explorer From Windows
Itsabouttime writes "In a preliminary ruling, the European Commission told Microsoft that linking Internet Explorer to its dominant Windows operating system violates EC rules. The EC's ruling was triggered by a complaint from IE rival Opera. Microsoft could seek to offer a Windows version without IE, as it did in the EC's 2004 ruling on Windows Media Player."
Most likely it will just ship with a second or third browser installed. Then when you go to do anything involving a web browser for the first time, it will ask you which you would like to make your default.
As far as I know, that's how the modified version of XP works for Europe, though I have yet to hear of anyone actually using it.
a) it had the same price
That's because Windows Media Player is free.
b) they not only removed the Windows Media Player, but also Windows Media Codecs
Good grief. They get forced to remove WMP and then people get mad when then they go and remove WMP. When you uninstall Quicktime are you shocked to learn the MP4 and other Apple codecs are also removed? Besides, they're free too.
The whole point was to give consumers "choice" by making them install WMP themselves. Don't ask for something and then cry when you get it.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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I really, really hope Windows never, ever loads what it wants onto its operating system. If you thought users loading viruses and trojans was common but stupid (and easily blocked), can you imagine what would happen if the OS kernel decides that it damn well wants some malware and that you've no business telling it not ro?
Oh, you meant Microsoft! Actually, legally, no they can't. They may not use a monopoly in one environment to impose a de-facto monopoly in another market. That is a crime, and rightfully so. Monopolies that try to seize other markets are damn dangerous because you rapidly lack these supposed alternatives. Netscape discovered that one, when Microsoft "knifed the baby" (in Microsoft's own words). Alternative browsers ONLY exist today in meaningful numbers because IE6 was a mess and IE7 took too long to come to market, due to Microsoft having no browser team, having dismembered it. (If you see any suspicious-looking concrete structures with arms sticking out near the Redmond campus, that's probably them.) If Microsoft had kept with IE, then IE would be all that existed. Microsoft would long-since have fixed IIS to never serve a competing browser, and IE would have long-since been fixed to be so non-compliant with standards that IE-capable pages won't work anywhere else. (Actually, that last one is almost the case today.)
No, Microsoft has no business distorting the markets like that, creating monocultures of their choice, exterminating competitors (I suspect at least one MS exec is actually a dalek) and forcing people to only buy what it sells. You're seeing this with the anti-virus market today. MS got information under the false pretenses of working with anti-virus vendors on how the products worked and the data used, then used that information to create a version that it provided ready-installed. Nobody is going to buy software for a few hundred dollars that is not that different from the software that is provided already, which means those vendors are being squeezed out of existance. I expect that, by the time Windows 7 is fully released, very few if any of the current AV suppliers will still exist. Microsoft will have crushed the bones of their business and squeezed the life-blood out of the remains until nothing identifiable without a scanning electron microscope remained.
Now, I would agree with those who say Microsoft is not technically evil, just very very good at what it does. In the same way Nyarlothotep is. Indeed, they're probably related. Bill Gates probably has an actual copy of the Necronomican and his palace, err, home, is suspiciously close to where you might expect Cthulhu to hang out. Not evil, just very very powerful and very very insane.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The problem is not the browser per se, but the fact that it is on virtually every computer out there. For many people IE _is_ the internet. If you removed IE from their computer and installed Firefox, Opera or any other browser they would be lost, and wouldn't know they could still access internet. Since people don't have to choose to get IE, Microsoft has an unfair advantage over the competitors. It would probably be enough if you needed to install it from CD once you've unpacked your computer: it would require people to _do_ something to get IE, and that would expose them to the possibility of choice.
And this applies only to a monopoly: Apple's share of the home or office computer market is small enough that they can get away with bundling a browser. And with any version of Linux you can remove the browser and the OS still works fine (although using KDE without Konqueror could be just a bit frustrating...).
As for the browser being a necessary part of the OS, I don't agree. The way I see things the browser is just another application, just like a game, word processor, database handler or what have you. Granted, the browser will be using the OS to communicate with the outside world, but it isn't (or at least shouldn't be) an integral part of the OS.
they want their antitrust claim back.
Seriously, Firefox is up to more than 20% marketshare. IE doesn't have a monopoly.
I am the maverick of Slashdot
If Opera thinks that unbundling IE in the European market is going to make the web more standards compliant, they are dreaming. The only thing that'd make the web standards compliant is if somebody policed it and brought punishment to sites that didn't fall in line. Good luck with that, btw.
I don't think anyone is under that illusion although frankly, anything that reduces IE's market share will make the Web more standards compliant since more developers will have incentive to code to the standards. I think they're hoping more for a standards body or group of Web bowser developers to be appointed to making sure IE meets standards and any complaints about standards noncompliance in IE are addressed in a timely manner. Who knows if this will be part of the IE's remedy or not.
While running under Wine, Steam can use Gecko as its rendering engine and it works fairly well. (getting the games to work will is a whole different situation)
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
It's our responsibility as people educated in dealing with technology to help the less skilled make better tech decisions. It benefits all of us in the long run.
"Not making people care" is why there are still a lot of people out there running IE6 on Win98 sucking up a lot of available bandwidth because they are part of a spam botnet. This affects me.
So yes, I will attempt to make them care.
It's called doing the right thing. Not socialism. Caring about your fellow man (especially when it benefits you) does not make you a commie pinko. Grow the fuck up.