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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."
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.
If we allow this sort of behavior to continue, it could hurt Linux adoption. MOD DOWN.
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
Open Formats: Designed so anyone can use them, and is encouraged. Usually fairly easy to implement and can save a lot of time in development costs.
Opened Formats: Designed to be hard for other people to copy. Trying to implement them can be rather difficult as it was tightly integrated with their applications that use it. So the cost of implementing the Opened Format is almost as much as it would be to purchase the software or the library to use it from the original vender.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
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.
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