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Windows 7 To Be "Thoroughly" Tested For Antitrust Compliance
CWmike writes "Technical advisers to the antitrust regulators who monitor Microsoft's compliance with the 2002 antitrust settlement will test Windows 7 'more thoroughly' than earlier versions of the operating system were tested, according to a new status report filed with the federal judge watching over the company. Microsoft is also facing renewed scrutiny from the EU, which two weeks ago filed preliminary charges against the company over bundling IE with Windows, and said more recently that Microsoft 'shields' IE from competition."
First we got antivirus software, then they invented antispyware software. Yeah, Antitrust software is obviously exactly what we need.
Microsoft's compliance with the 2002 antitrust settlement will test Windows 7 'more thoroughly' than earlier versions of the operating system were tested, according to a new status report filed with the federal judge watching over the company.
Wasn't this done for XP? If I cannot remove IE or Windows Media Player, then these folks will not have done their job.
But the better move would be to force Microsoft to use open formats for all their applications. That way, we all can be sure that alternative apps have the opportunity to work as required. The only hindrance here would be for programmers to "deliver."
Microsoft should follow the Linux lead here... the core OS should just be the bare necessities and there should be a user friendly GUI to connect to and download features and software that is supported on the Windows platform. This could be done for both free software (IE, Firefox, etc.) and software they currently charge for or that may be going to a subscription based system (Office).
They could kill two birds with one stone here, they'd just be packaging the OS so it is slimmed down and performs better AND they wouldn't be facing this legal crap every release.
Granted, I still don't see what the big deal is. Yes, IE can't be removed and it is annoying and so the law indicates it is a monopoly. I guess I've always viewed a monopoly as a system where you can't access, obtain, use, etc any competing product. This, of course, isn't the case with Windows as I'm typing this up in Chrome at the moment. I do understand though, this isn't the way the law sees it and I'm sure there are good reasons for this that I'd understand if I fully dived into the required reading.
Actually, by making sure other browsers are not [fully] supported by their web service applications, they are locking out competing, STANDARDS BASED, browsers and client machines including those running Firefox and Mac OS X. It is not merely an issue of web designers not making things compatible, but whole applications and applications interfaces are closed to anything other than MSIE.
I'm thoroughly testing it, and thoroughly pleased. This is the first time in years I that I did not replace IE immediately. I've been using it for a couple weeks, now. One problem I eventually found is that Google Chrome won't install. IE has frozen several times (it's beta.) I hated Vista with a passion, but so far I am really happy with Windows 7.
what am I going to use to download firefox? Do they really expect end users to learn to use FTP? I'm not sure the DOJ has thought this through.
http://www.getfirefox.com/
"I was in love with a beautiful blonde once, dear. She drove me to drink. It's the one thing I am indebted to her for."
like I said in the last thread, Is IE that big of an issue when it's losing market share to competitors? IE8 isn't going to save it because it still has abymissial JScript performance and as more sites everyday are using AJAX, IE gets slower and appears to lock up more.
Over the last 2 years, it lost market share, and According to these guys IE dropped from 79.9 down to 68.1. Now Google chrome is in the mix and already eclipsed Opera's share of .7% within 4 months and stands at 1% market share, and it only going up from there.
This isn't 2000, When all you had was a reliable and fast IE, a buggy Mozilla, a decripid and virtually useless Netscape, and a "HTML compliant" Opera that can't render any site correctly. Now, there's a slow and locking up IE, a reliable and fast rendering Firefox, a solid preforming Safari, a super fast and easy to install Chrome and a better, but still renders funny sometimes Opera.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Microsoft, you have made the eeeooo very angry! And if you don't comply, we will write many angry letters to you, informing you of how angry we are!
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I feel part of the reason Microsoft have got away with a lot of their bad practices is because no one with any power to do anything about it cared.
Now these people of power are waking up. It's not just the wining of nerds and does matter. Computers are like anything else competition is required or things become expensive and broken.
Closed source is broken anyway, but to have a company to make closed software on a closed platform, how can that ever be a level playing field?
Just a simple example: the embedded FTP client in IE that integrates with Windows Explorer. It's a good idea, a sound implementation, but why should it be denied to other browser makers? It's not like I didn't pay for Windows Explorer.
Contrary to what you might think, I would like W7 to do a good job. I would also like to have it work properly in diverse networks, and be able to deploy applications and shares across those networks without regard to OS. I would prefer installing IE8 not to break some of my old .NET applications when it doesn't interfere with similarly ancient Java apps. If it takes Neelie Kroes to make Microsoft do this, I say bring on Neelie Kroes. She's now up there on my "great women in IT" pedestal along with Rear-Admiral Grace Hopper.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
For the time being it remains more profitable for Windows to purposefully limit their platform (by ensuring it isn't as flexible as you describe, limiting it's compatibility with other platforms, etc) and have to deal with the EU then to just make a damn good product for the end user.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
Actually, by making sure other browsers are not [fully] supported by their web service applications, they are locking out competing, STANDARDS BASED, browsers and client machines including those running Firefox and Mac OS X.
Actually I can say that I've begun seeing websites where, if you visit them with IE, they say, "Sorry, but the page cannot be viewed in Internet Explorer. Please use Firefox, Google Chrome, or Safari." It seems that, by not adhering to standards, Microsoft may be starting to locking themselves out of competition.
Karma. Wouldn't it be funny if Microsoft had to scramble to get their browser standards-compliant because websites weren't bothering to support them anymore?
Windows update doesn't use Internet Explorer anymore, it's been this way since Windows Vista. There's now a fat client that runs on your PC that takes care of updates. So one less reason to even have the Internet Explorer GUI/shortcuts by default.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
If we allow this sort of behavior to continue, it could hurt Linux adoption. MOD DOWN.
Because a lot of rich-text editors on Webmails and other web pages made heavy use of innerHTML to present pre-formatted output instead of just BBcode type output. I am guilty of writing such an editor for a website I made once, I cringed at every line of code when it wouldn't display properly in Mozilla.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Right now, according to MarketShare, IE6 and Firefox 2/3 are roughly tied for market share (about 20% to each). TheCounter says that IE6 has 34% of the market while Firefox has 17%, and even W3Schools says that IE6 still has about 20% of users.
The moral of this story is: lots of people don't upgrade. They don't even run Windows Update. They use the browser they got when they installed XP, and they probably don't even know anything else is out there.
This is why, whenever Microsoft ties an application to the operating system, the market suffers. It becomes really hard to compete in that space. Right now, nobody's making money selling a web browser that competes with the one that comes with Windows. This is the way it's been for more than a decade now. The antitrust action against Microsoft was nothing more than a slap on the wrist; it did nothing to restore competition.
If Microsoft is so interested in bundling high-quality apps with the operating system for the good of its users, then why haven't they bundled Microsoft Word?
Because supporting a property in JavaScript that returns the HTML string with in an element isn't going to break anything else. Just because something doesn't come from a standard doesn't mean it's not a good idea to adopt it. It's only when you adopt something that breaks a standard or is in conflict with a standard that it becomes a problem. Supporting extensions on top a standard that break nothing else isn't a problem.
Most of the problems around MSIE in terms of standards compliance have been fixed in IE 8. The other half of the problem, though, is ActiveX, which other browsers cannot implement on platform other than Windows. If ActiveX where implemented aa true open standard, without moving targets, without reliance on the underlying platform, then it would be possible to produce browsers on competing platforms that supported ActiveX.
Since Microsoft has deliberately chosen to keep certain details of ActiveX a complete an utter secret and tie it into Windows, there's no way for anyone to implement on a non-Windows platform.
This deliberate tie-in is an effort by Microsoft to create vendor lock-in. Microsoft can either compete fairly or they can fight dirty. They've consistently chosen to fight dirty and until they stop, they're always going to face criticism for it.
No Microsoft paycheck for you.
My blog
As much as I detest Windows in all forms, Windows 7 seems to be shaping up to be a half decent OS. Hate to have to admit it, but there it is.
Now all they need is a bash terminal, wget, vim, locate, grep, tail, touch, top, a package management system (emerge, apt, rpm - not really fussy), more text-based config files instead of a registry...
sudo mount --milk --sugar
Can you please explain why Firefox supports innerHTML, considering it is a Microsoft invention
Because (successful) software developers are pragmatic more than they are pedantic. One only has to look at the relative successes of Linus Torvalds versus Richard Stallman as a prime example.
Microsoft also invented Ajax (well, they were the first to implement the XMLHttpRequest). Just because the devil gives you a pony doesn't mean he still isn't evil. And it doesn't make the pony evil by proxy.
I think I should probably stick to car analogies.
Back when IE's competition cost money I could see why they would be in trouble for bundling a free program would cause people to think they were using their power as a monopoly. How many web browsers does OS X bundle? In KDE, isn't the web browser also the file manager?
In 10 years when MS is gone due to their so called non competition (and lawsuits) we'll have the same issues with whoever is the BIG company at the time due to these laws not being enforced across the board. Either you can bundle whatever you want or you shouldn't be able to bundle anything.
So... lets imagine a PC with every single web browser installed by default... which one do they put in their start menu? Do they put a program that says pick a web browser? What order to you put them in? Alphabetical? Well, who is at the top, they have a better chance of becoming the standard due to people being lazy and picking the first one. And you better hope it doesn't have anything selected by default or definitely that will be the monopoly version in no time at all. How about anytime a new browser comes out it should be a automatically installed as a critical windows update and so nobody is the majority, when you click Internet in your start menu it randomly picks a different one each time.
So what's next? I think freecell has a monopoly.
It's not necessarily what is bundled or not. It's their #!@$@ business practices and closed APIs. I really don't give a crap if an alternate browser is on the system or not. What they should care about is that it is easy to put it on, remove the one you don't like, etc. You should be able to mix and match as you see fit.
This focus on 'bundling' has always annoyed me. Why should we force microsoft to bundle anything that they themselves didn't create? that's stupid. We definitely should look into their dealings with OEMs though! That whole forcing OS/2 out of the market with their exclusive contracts were not cool. Educate yourself on the real criminal behavior: http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm
To test for antitrust, they need simply test how easy it is to mix and match different components. If the OS is getting in the way of that, fine the hell out of them.
I'd fire anyone who suggested that at my workpace, and I LOATHE IE, just not as much as I love our customers' money.
bash? No - Windows 7 comes with PowerShell. In many areas it is much more powerful than bash - and it is certainly a better "fit" for Windows than bash would be (PS is object-oriented and object-based and practically all of Windows API is now exposed as objects either through COM, WMI or .NET). Note, that is not saying that PS would be better for *nix than bash.
Windows is moving towards xml config files - not the line-based delimiter-of-the-day config files of *nix. Xml files are arguably better for describing many more complicated structures. They also are more bloated ;-) . PS has support for reading/writing/manipulating xml files
Incidently, PowerShell treats the registry, certificate store, the PW function list etc. just as a file system. It means that to manipulate the registry you access registry keys/values just like directories/files - using the same commands.
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
The problem is not so much bundling, as the impossibility to unbundle e.g. WMP and IE.
I do think, even as a Good European, that the EU would not be doing this if MS were French. Maybe if they were British.
Mods: Offtopic? Really?
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
. One only has to look at the relative successes of Linus Torvalds versus Richard Stallman as a prime example.
The GPL is more important than Linux. With out GPL there would be no Linux, it never would have taken off. The GPL makes open source projects sticky, making it easier to hit critical mass. It's why GNU/Linux is bigger than BSD. Sometimes pedantic is the long term pragmatic.
Having said that, I think Firefox is right to support innerHTML, and OpenOffice is right to read/write doc files.
Most of the problems around MSIE in terms of standards compliance have been fixed in IE 8. The other half of the problem, though, is ActiveX
They sure have good CSS 2.1 compliance with IE8. The other half of the problem is not ActiveX, though, it is EcmaScript (javascript) compliance and DOM binding compliance. It is not too much of a problem if you use one of the many good JavaScript libraries, but all of those have had to build provisions specifically for IE because of the poor compliance.
... ActiveX, which other browsers cannot implement on platform other than Windows. If ActiveX where implemented aa true open standard, without moving targets, without reliance on the underlying platform, then it would be possible to produce browsers on competing platforms that supported ActiveX.
Since Microsoft has deliberately chosen to keep certain details of ActiveX a complete an utter secret and tie it into Windows, there's no way for anyone to implement on a non-Windows platform.
This deliberate tie-in is an effort by Microsoft to create vendor lock-in. Microsoft can either compete fairly or they can fight dirty. They've consistently chosen to fight dirty and until they stop, they're always going to face criticism for it.
ActiveX is really COM objects. COM is a binary Windows standard for object oriented APIs. Incidently it inspired Gnome which uses a binary standard very much like it. There is *nothing* secretive about ActiveX. There is tons of documentation. Anyone can implement ActiveX objects, anyone can implement ActiveX containers. The problem is that it is exactly a binary standard. With no virtual execution system involved objects are always tied to the platform. It is compiled code calling Windows APIs. That's why ActiveX does not exist on other platforms. It should be possible to implement through Wine, though. Wondering is somebody already did it...
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
Look it's another antitrust story about Microsoft! Look it's already filled with dozens of comments by people who don't know what antitrust abuse is. Seriously people, you're making Slashdot look as ignorant as other Web forums. Don't people think it might be a good idea to know what they're talking about before telling us what they think about it?
Antitrust abuse is undermining free trade in a market using the large amount of influence a company or group has in a separate market. Antitrust laws were made because trusts discovered they could undermine capitalism by tying markets they controlled to markets they did not and then they did not have to work hard and spend money to make the best product in the second market; they could dominate it with an inferior product that did not cost them to produce. This also resulted in them having little or no motivation to please customers, improve that product, or reduce costs... undermining all the important benefits we were gaining from capitalism in the first place. Without antitrust laws, capitalism collapses into a series of competing monopolists, which is why pretty much every country around the world implemented very similar antitrust laws, which have stabilized economies and prevented the worst abuses.
Example: How to abuse a monopoly. Suppose I gain a monopoly or trust. It doesn't matter how. Say I contract with a city to lay the wires that distribute electricity. Fine, this is a common monopoly scenario in the US. Now suppose I decide I want to move into a new market, like selling bottled water. Legally, antitrust law says because water is a separate pre-existing market, I cannot tie those two markets together. The most common form of illegal tying is bundling. Suppose I start shipping every one of my electrical distribution customers a "free" case of bottled water every month. The vast majority of sellers of bottled water go out of business, because everyone already has bottled water. This is both unfair and destabilizes the market by driving good companies out of business without having a better product. Then, I slowly raise the price of electrical power distribution to cover my expense in purchasing and distributing bottled water. What if my water is not as good and tastes slightly off? What if the bottles are non-recyclable? What if it costs me more than it did previous companies and I'm passing on higher costs to you?
In capitalism all those problems are solved by the market. I'm motivated to solve them because it will make my bottled water more attractive and get me more sales. With monopoly abuse, I have no motivation to solve those problems. If people want electricity in their houses they will buy my bottled water, so who cares if it sucks and is overpriced? What can they do?
I'll tell you what they can do. They can pass criminal laws that make such bundling illegal. If you tie a product in a market where you have a huge amount of influence (either as a company or a cartel) to a separate pre-existing market, you are breaking the law. That law makes a lot of sense and has stabilized our economy an insured competition. A lot of people have proposed solutions other than antitrust law, that would let some currently illegal bundling continue and try to solve the problem in a different way, basically trying to solve a specific case by writing laws to cover that case instead of general laws that cover all cases. I think that is a myopic view and misguided.
So what did MS do? They took a product (Windows) where they had huge influence on the market and bundled numerous other products with it. These are products from separate pre-existing markets. When they did it, they knew it was breaking the law, but they figured they'd make enough money to buy their way out of trouble. They paid off companies with enough money to sue them successfully. They made huge campaign contributions to the people who were supposed to be enforcing the laws. They spent large amounts of money on misinformation campaigns to confuse people about the law and spread mi
In many areas it is much more powerful than bash - and it is certainly a better "fit" for Windows than bash would be (PS is object-oriented and object-based and practically all of Windows API is now exposed as objects either through COM, WMI or .NET). Note, that is not saying that PS would be better for *nix than bash.
Feel the power:
Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_PingStatus -Filter "Address='127.0.0.1'" -ComputerName . | Select-Object -Property Address,ResponseTime,StatusCode
PING 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=128 time=46 ms
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=128 time=0 ms
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=128 time=0 ms
^C
----127.0.0.1 PING Statistics----
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip (ms) min/avg/max/med = 0/15/46/0
No doubt PowerShell offers unheard of (til now) functionality, and to the degree that statement is more meaningful than saying "Best Windows version yet!", I'd say PowerShell is awkward, clumsy, and verbose and indicative of how Microsoft still doesn't "get it".
Who know? Maybe in Windows 8 they might even take the bold step of rewriting cmd.exe, the Notepad of terminals, and really impress everyone, leaving us waiting with baited breath for symlinks in Windows 9.
I agree that the name is lame. The technology is not, however.
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
Why don't you just do a regular ping? Jeez, anyone can come up with an artificially lame example in any language.
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
First thing to realize about awk is that it was really only necessary because bash pipelines are text-only. You need awk, cut etc. to "find" the correct columns and emit something as a result.
Once you move to an object-based pipeline the need for something like awk disappears, at least for combining commands.
Example: The PS ls command is an alias for the Get-ChildItem cmdlet. Executed on a filesystem it will return a sequence of DirectoryInfo and FileInfo objects. Standard formatting rules (the ToString method) of those objects ensures that if they are written to the console they will appear as (somewhat) familar ls lines. But you can also pipe then thorugh another cmdlet, e.g. filtering on size *without* needing to parse the "filesize column":
ls | ?{ $_.Length -gt 30kb }
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
NTFS has had Symbolic Links built into the file system for years.... it's just unsupported in the default installation of windows.
You can download junction.exe (the NTFS version of ln) from Microsoft's Technet.
Safari is bundled with OS X, as are a lot of utility programs. However, you can easily download and install another browser and delete the safari.app file from your /Applications folder. Then you can run System Preferences and set your default browser, if the browser itself hasn't already done so.
None of this is important to antitrust abuse.
And anyway, Apple has not been found guilty of violating the Sherman Act. Microsoft has, therefore different rules apply to them.
No, the same laws apply to both companies. The case against MS, however is made simpler because most of the findings of fact are done and because MS is a repeat offender. Apple can bundle anything they want with OS X or Safari because that does not constitute antitrust abuse. You have to be leveraging monopoly influence through bundling, i.e. one of the bundled products has to constitute a monopoly. Neither Safari nor OS X is monopoly in the legal or economic sense.
is this a little one sided?
No.
ive never had a mac so i wouldnt know for sure, but i would assume that OSX or leopard or whatever its called bundles something
They bundle lots of things. But bundling, in general, is not what MS is being charged with. They're being charged with undermining markets, bundling just happens to be the mechanism.
Analogy. Bob fires a gun into Tom and kills him. Bob is arrested for murder. Jake fires a gun into a target and wins the olympics. Jake is not arrested for murder. Is that one-sided, or is it that firing a gun is not illegal, while murder is?
The problem is not so much bundling, as the impossibility to unbundle e.g. WMP and IE.
Legally speaking, that isn't true.
I do think, even as a Good European, that the EU would not be doing this if MS were French.
They convicted Telfonica of illegal bundling in violation of antitrust laws, and Telfonica is Spanish.
>that the EU would not be doing this if MS were French.
Have you been paying attention to how many European companies have got their asses handed to them by Nelli Kroes?
She's the one in charge of all of this. See her most recent speech on this topic:
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/09/1&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en
Called "Avoiding the protectionist trap"
So, to answer your question, the EU would go much further if MS were European.
It is actually the fact that it is American, and they can't risk a trade war, that they are this soft on Microsoft compared to how strict european companies are regulated.