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EU Says MS Must Offer Other Browsers; Now What?
Glyn Moody writes "So the European Commission is going to require Microsoft to offer competitors' browsers with Windows. '...Microsoft will be obliged to design Windows in a way that allows users "to choose which competing web browser(s) instead of, or in addition to, Internet Explorer they want to install and which one they want to have as default..." [Microsoft] now has until mid-March to respond to the Commission, and might also ask for a hearing. Brussels will not adopt a final decision until it has received Microsoft's official reply.' But having the option to install Firefox, say, is useless unless people know what it is. The implication is that we need some kind of campaign to ensure that people understand the choices they will have. How can open source best exploit this latest EU decision?"
At least, not by me. I imagine that most users will be confused by the presence of more than one "internet" on their machines, and one browser or another still has to be the default. Does MS have to make Firefox the default browser, too?
I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel
Microsoft being forced to design Windows in a way that allows users "to choose which competing operating system(s) instead of, or in addition to, Windows they want to install and which one they want to have as default..."
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
Now you DIE, Mr. Bond!
[...]
Or you just offer weak support for bundling other browsers. If I'm not mistaken, many viewers will probably see Google Chrome ads on this page. Which is definitely a good start for getting out the word about alternative browsers. Even better is to apply peer pressure to your friends, neighbors, and relatives. Peer pressure can be an excellent tool for getting people to conform to non-conformity. (Bizarre idea, eh?) Especially when the non-conformity is actually the direction that conformity is going.
Let's just make sure we do the RIGHT thing and don't get too focused on a particular browser. As long as it's not IE, the world will be a better place. ;-)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
with the integration between Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer.
So... I really hope Microsoft says "sure" and bundles 10-20 really crappy and outdated browsers, with firefox and opera nowhere in sight. The EU deserves a clusterfuck like that for coming out with this stupid decision.
I am not a *blank*, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
Hasn't Mozilla said that they do not want to be bundled with Windows.
Which browsers make the cut and which don't??
It's not difficult to install a new browser. Someone who doesn't know about other browsers or how to install them isn't going to be installing Windows out of the box anyways. They're going to be installing a pre-packaged image from some company... or they got their computer built by some technically knowledgeable person who knows about other browsers.
IE is integrated pretty heavily into Windows as well.
I dunno, I'm all for people having choices and having knowledge... but this seems stupid. I mean, what's next, make them include iTunes with the default windows package?
As an IT professional and engineer, I'm not even sure that I would WANT them to have other browsers installed, by default, on a system... I want it to be as clean as possible by default.
Utter confusion is the first thing. Few average users are going to be able to handle the idea that there is any point to multiple browsers on one computer. Either one works and the other one does not, or there is no point. If one is broken, then it shouldn't be there.
Next, if MS, Dell or any other large OEM is going to be including FireFox, Opera, Safari and others on a computer they are going to require some pretty stringent requirements on release planning and QA. If these aren't present in the organization supporting them the OEM will introduce these. This means there will be a "official" release and a Dell release. That is going to help, isn't it?
Since the HTML rendering engine and a good part of the browser is used for displaying lots of other stuff besides web pages, this is going to make for some interesting times. Some HTML that displays differently between the "source" and the actual rendering.
Certainly going to be interesting.
How about this:
Bill Nigh kicks Chuck Norris' ass before breakfast
Now, just start one about FireFox
Firefox is so badass that it doesn't care what OS it runs over .....
Firefox invented the Internet
Firefox killed the blue screen of death
your turn
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Somehow I can picture this.
Ballmer: ARG. Foiled yet again, find me a chair!
Underling: Can't we just offer the most unstable version of the competitors browser?
Ballmer: Brilliant! Where's that chair.
~
Not only would we have to make sure people understand the choices, but we should let them know why they should actually CARE.
I can imagine someone who simply doesn't care... setting up their computer. They are prompted.. and all they will see is:
Choose one:
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Choose this to install the Internet
Firefox
Choose this to also install the Internet
This is an important choice. Both will allow you to do email and porn.
Of non technical people making technical decisions.
"Microsoft will be obliged to design Windows in a way that allows users "to choose which competing web browser(s) instead of, or in addition to, Internet Explorer they want to install and which one they want to have as default..." What part of Windows doesn't allow users to choose a competing web browser? They even include a web browser so you can go and download the competing web browsers. How nice is that.
Mozilla doesn't want to be automatically packaged and there's nothing in this sort of result preventing Microsoft from packaging out of date crappy browsers. Moreover, the real issues are that 1) IE is in many ways interconnected with the Windows operating system and other Microsoft products and 2) IE is set as the default browser. If microsoft keeps a check box that you need to check when installing to make IE not the default browser then it will not get checked by the normal users. It is probably a better idea to just let the free market continue its slow progress. Firefox and others will win out. And that will occur long before the Year of Linux.
If people were only given one choice of browser up until now, why would they need to be educated about the choices of browsers that they can install? Most average computer users that I talk to think that Internet Explorer IS "the internet" and when they're shown Firefox, they seem to like it better just because they've only had once choice.
...How can open source best exploit this latest EU decision?"...
By learning to eat its own dog food. Heck, Open Source zealots still use IE to post to Slashdot. Why? They still edit their documents using MS Office. They still create video files using Flash and cannot agree (read implement) a "standard" for file locations on Linux and versions.
Here comes the worst...OpenOffice file formats are 100% open for years now, i.e., free to implement but there is not a single open source office suite that implements them with 100% fidelity!
Same story on browsers and so on.
These are folks that talk "vendor lock-in"..."open formats" and all the similar rant. Please give us a break!
The EU should make them put up a bunch of their patents and copyrights into the public domain. Crippling their software is stupid. And in corporate settings where there is a in house IT staff, Linux is more than ready to replace Microsoft.
What?
Whatever browser they're forced to install, it DEFINITELY won't be Chrome. That very thought _alone_ would probably have poor Ballmer whipping office chairs around like trailers in a tornado.
It would, however, be incredibly funny.
Microsoft is going to fight this decision tooth and nail. They will appeal it and appeal it and appeal it. Microsoft has no good faith intention of complying with this order, any more than they comply with any other order. Look at what they did with the US anti-trust case. They stalled until W became the unelected US head of state, and then Bush promptly caved in and gave Microsoft everything it asked for.
Everyone here seems to be acting as if consumers don't understand how to download, install or use some alternative program. Yet, everyone has been buying programs for video game consoles for almost 30 years, and has been buying software for PCs for nearly as long. Yet, somehow consumers are to notice that there is a choice in browsers.
For the EU, if they are looking to protect their way into developing a domestic desktop industry, the problem is that the ideology that permeates the continent, utterly precludes that from happening. Why would a European pay for Opera, when FireFox and Chrome are both open and free. Even though on some level I'm a bit bothered by the idea of the EU trying to protect themselves against the one industry Americans are actually good it, by the same token, I will never in my life buy a German car, simply because it is not American, so I can't say that I blame them for it.
This is my sig.
Just put a link that opens a Live.com search for "web browser"! Not only is Live.com completely unbiased, but the link will open in the default system web browser!
Yay! Hopefully more people will keep Lynx in mind while updating their web sites. After all, it's going to bundled with Windows!
Freedom of the people to choose a different browser is great. Somewhere, however, the line has to be drawn. Microsoft is clearly not limiting the ability of other browsers to work with Windows, and is not stopping anyone from downloading and installing a different browser. What happened to the freedom of a company to sell their own product without interference? Why should they advertise for a competing product in their own? Even more, why should they be required to bundle a competitor's product in their own? Should the Adobe Flash installer also include Silverlight? Should RedHat include a Slackware install disk? Really, where does the madness end? I think the appropriate response from Microsoft would be to stop selling Windows in the EU. The EU wants people to see alternatives, so great. Stop making Windows available until there's a public outcry and reversal of these insane rulings.
I don't know how effective a 'spread the word about alternative browsers' campaign would be.
To you and I, doing a quick google search about web browsers to learn the pros and cons of each is no big deal. but to non-techie people, they would not even think about doing this.
we could have a massive online campaign running, radio ads, TV spots, and beat people over the head with the idea that 'web browser x' is better than IE, and it won't mean anything to them because they don't know what a web browser is. To them, it is just a button you click to get the internet.
word of mouth doesn't always work either, people are reluctant to change if they don't see a problem with what they have now.
what can we do" do in, install firefox secretly and change the icon so they wont notice?
I would be interested to see how MS would impliment this.the user is presented with a dialogue screen:
please select your browser:
IE: allows you to have easy access to the internet, and allows viruses, adware, and spyware to have easy access to your computer. slow, kinda crashy.
FIREFOX: used to be very small and quick.
CHROME: looks great with vista's interface
LYNX: if you love everything about the 80's, you will love the look of this browser
-I only code in BASIC.-
Oh yay kdawson is back meaning you'll get nothing but anti MS FUD constantly for the next 12 hours. cya.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Not to worry - this will end up just like the "N" version of Windows.
MS will doubtless issue a special version of Windows which offers the option to install Firefox or whatever during first run, but I wouldn't mind betting that the "normal" version of Windows will come with IE (and only IE) just as at present.
We've seen all this before with the aforementioned "N" version of Windows, which comes with no media player. You'd have to bust a gut to find a copy of that, as all retail versions in stores are the regular version, OEMs use the regular version (customised for their PCs), small OEMs use a generic OEM copy etc. The sole reason for the "N" version was that it let Microsoft fulfil their obligations to the EU to offer a version of Windows without a media player - the deal didn't say it had to be the only version of Windows on offer! Needless to say the Great British Public at least don't want crippled Windows, I can only imagine the hue and cry from the man on the street if their new version of Windows couldn't play MP3s out of the box.
Anyway, if MS have any sense they'll do the same again this time. That way none of us will have to bother faffing around on less-techy friends / family members' PCs and those of us that are techy can just carry on using Firefox etc as we presently do.
I honestly hope it works out with Apple getting its ass kicked for only offering Safari. Seriously, where's the justice?
If the geek had an once of sense he'd put more distance between himself and the EU bureaucrat.
There is precedent now for government to add or subtract - mandate anything it wants from any OS distribution - depending on which way the political winds are blowing.
TFA has a great point here. Why not just let each browser's designer make their own campaign in an attempt to "sell" potential customers? There'd be practically no point in making MS do it, and who's to say they won't do some half-assed job just to satisfy the requirement? In any case, is there really much of a point to this? Again, TFA makes a good point. Average users aren't going to know the difference between browsers. They just want to be able to double-click an icon on their desktop that has the word "Internet" in it, and couldn't care less about "enhancements", "features", or "security". It just sounds like some stupid monopoly argument, without a whole lot of revenue involved.
Maybe what Microsoft will do is to build an Operating System into their browser... creating havoc for all the other vendors of browsers.
Oh Wait... http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/22/1724244
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
...and no longer timely, even for EU regulators.
Seriously, if they demand microsoft provide alternative choices up-front in the windows software, how the hell can it be always neutral in what choices it provides? I mean really, they include a choice for Firefox and Opera, ok thats great, what about chrome, safari, or say anything else that strolls into the picture?
Can they also demand that its unfair that they dont have the same benefit? This is absolute madness.
And so help me if the EU demands microsoft remove IE entirely I will scream. How else are we to download Firefox?
Again theres no way in hell this can be done in a completely neutral manner
nice to see the European government is just as inefficient as the US's. First of all, the Trident engine behind IE is used in a heck of a lot of Windows components and software. Are they going to demand that Trident be replaceable with Gecko or WebKit? Cause otherwise it's still going to be darn important to Windows.
Second of all, this decision is so 2003... Has the EU not noticed the success of Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and even Opera hanging around? The browser market is fine. Let Grandma and Great Aunt Sue keep using IE6 and being happy and let the market take care of itself...
They could offer Lynx as an alternative. When phone become a prevalent Internet device, then are manufacturers supposed to offer more than one browser on each phone?
And so many people in the USA want to be more like Europe! "They are so hip over there. They really know how to run a country."
Oh well, it's where we are apparently headed, down the tubes!
Should be up to the OEMs...
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
If MS is forced to bundle others browsers, they cannot be expected to support them. When regular mostly computer illiterate users have a problem with software they phone support, MS will be more than happy to redirect the calls to opera, (is there even phone support for FF?), and tell them they will have to pay extra thanks to the EU. It is one thing to tell MS to bundle competing browsers, it is another to force them to offer technical support for them for free.
Good it is about time MS loses its browser %.
IE is so crappy you are probably better off using Netscape navigator...
There is no reason firefox and chrome shouldn't be installed in new windows devices.
More to the point, how is Microsoft going to exploit it? I'm not an anti-MS zealot, but I can completely see them bundling some third-rate thing that still uses the IE rendering engine or something like Safari that's nowhere near usable on Win32.
That said, if IE is still the default option (or from the user's perspective appears to be), then this judgement really amounts to zilch no matter which side of the debate you're on.
Safari is good! IE is bad! Get with the program.
I wouldn't mind IE dominating if it were standards complaint and had competitive HTML and JavaScript performance, but it doesn't and thus it is holding back the web.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
I think the most significant line in the slashdot article is this:
"But having the option to install Firefox, say, is useless unless people know what it is."
But Glyn then goes on to suggest some kind of publicity campaign, which misses the point of this entire inane EU process. Because if a publicity campaign were useful, it should be done regardless of this ruling.
The average user does not, and continues to not, care. For those of us who do care, we know how to install Firefox and don't need Microsoft or the European governments to hand-hold us through the process. This EU process been one big, fat waste of time.
Even if Microsoft offers a version of Windows that lets users choose explicitly to install IE or Firefox (and I guess, what, Opera as well? Safari? Chrome?), I bet you good money that most users will choose "Microsoft Internet Explorer" because it has Microsoft in the title. As in, faced with this bogus non-option, an ignorant user will choose the program that was written by the operating system vendor.
And I mean this bet literally, because when I write web browser plugins I make sure they support IE first. It's the browser most people have because most people don't care. Until and unless the EU makes Microsoft bundle Firefox to the exclusion of IE---a move that hardly seems fair by any rational metric---most users will still use the most convenient option, because most users simply don't care. End of story.
An advertising campaign that would sell Firefox needs to begin by making people care about their web browser as an application, then explain why Firefox is a better application for browsing the web. History suggests it's an uphill battle.
Incidentally, the fortune file entry at the bottom of my article listing right now is "bureaucracy, n: A method for transforming energy into solid waste." How appropriate.
Take care,
Mark
There is a solution...
No more malware
Shouldn't Mac OS also have come with other browsers then?
What about the iPhone, which does not even allow other browsers to be used in its OS?
I'm not in favor of Microsoft, but Apple is not that much different.
In other news, the European Commission said it "would intend to impose remedies that enabled users and manufacturers to make an unbiased choice between Internet Explorer and competing third party web browsers", by requiring the bundling of Internet Explorer with OS X and Linux distribution.
Firefox adoption in accelerating without help from the application of coercive force from big government. I see this in the data from running my own website. The free market place of ideas is working. Why do they need to step in now?
The problem isn't bundling. The problem is using an OS monopoly as leverage to foist an inferior Web browser on consumers. This is all to stop development of the Web because it threatens to replace the Win32 API for most applications.
As a Web developer who's wasted hundreds of hours on that inferior browser, I welcome this decision.
Just so you know that I'm not a hypocrite: if Apple were in the same position, of having an OS monopoly and using it for nefarious purposes, I would equally support an EU decision against them.
Remember: the problem isn't bundling, it's leveraging a monopoly in one market to gain one in another. This is particularly important in the case of IE, as it's holding back the an important part in the development of the Web and computing as a whole. It's also still relevant, due to the release of Silverlight and that Microsoft has and will continue to hold back support for competing, open technologies like Javascript and SVG.
What's wrong with the people opposing this, do they want Microsoft to tie-up the Web with their shitty, proprietary cruft al la Silverlight?
Mozilla should release a "Windows EU Compliance Edition".
This thing should absolutely suck. Terribly slow page load times, grossly unstable.
But totally standards compliant and able to pass acid3 with flying colors.
Yeah, it'll take some creative coding to do. (if website = acid3.acidtests.org......)
But when the rotten reviews come in, just respond, "Well, if Microsoft ever released those standards documents, and got compliant with what modern OSs do, this would have worked fine, like it does on Linux on this demonstrator".
Then the EU will continue to spend its time trying to bend Microsoft over a table while ignoring copyright law reform, international banking panics, and anything else that could actually use attention.
Maybe this made sense in 1997, back when the internet was fledgling. It makes no sense whatsoever to demand MS include other browsers. The choice of browsers they make will be equally as unfair an influence as only including their own.
Every major operating system, distribution of linux, phone, netbook, or whatever comes with a default browser often even specific to the device or brand.
The particular browser that is in use is not what is important anyway. What matters is that the company in question, Microsoft, is able to skew the idiot lazy web designers and corporations away from proper standards because their browser is so prominent.
So, I think a far more logical demand would be to enforce IE pass some kind of standards test like the acid test or similar, and eliminate proprietary javascript calls as much as is practical (set a baseline, like... a fuzzy venn diagram of what the top 5 browsers other than IE are already supporting, and allow them to include any open board ratified standard API set as well).
So to sum up, it's a decade late for this action. What's done is done. Choosing a browser besides what comes with your OS/Computer/Phone is like getting new furniture for your house. Demanding an OS maker to include other browsers is like demanding any realtor selling furnished homes include 7 types of furniture post-sale. Let's focus on what matters, web standards and real life web development influence. Require Microsoft obey web standards compliance with their browser so that they aren't damaging the ability for other browsers, on both Windows and other platforms, to enjoy compatibility with the same sites.
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
So will Ford have to make available its vehicles with available Chevrolet engines also?
If I were Microsoft, I'd just rip out IE. Ship it on a separate install disk. "Windows Extras" or something. Then they can't be faulted for unfairly promoting IE anymore. But forcing them to bundle Firefox is just silly.
I'm curious, will they force Apple to ship Firefox instead of just Safari?
Last time I checked Apple had a monopoly on nothing computer related.
European Commission - "Bashing Microsoft since Windows Media Player 10!"
$god = null;
if($god) echo 'I believe!';
That's actually the realm of the OEM's, but I could imagine the EU trying to pull that kind of shit out of sheer ignorance....
Oh well. Anything to confuse the users more in the name of "fair trade" sounds good to me!
Since MS, it seems, will be writing the Pros and Cons for their competitors, I'm sure some marketing research company is just salivating thinking about the money MS will pay them to find texts which pass MS's legal department's vetting, yet cause the vast majority of users to choose IE.
Amen brother. Without kidding, I would like to point out that there are quite a significant number of MS zealots with mod points. My comments pointing out problems with Linux are almost always modded insightful. When I point out problems with MS -1 troll. Yet these same folks are always the first to whine about how slanted Slashdot is. Oh the irony.
At first when I read this, I thought, "How could the EU possibly come to this conclusion? Firefox has over 20% market share and is still climbing. Are they dumb?" But then I sat down and thought about it. Who prompted this investigation? Opera. Opera has not had the success that Firefox has enjoyed. Now, most of use don't see this as a problem, but to the EU, it is a problem because Opera is a European company. The way the EU sees this, it's not a question of alternative browsers being able to take root, (Firefox already shows that is possible) it is a question of alternative EUROPEAN browsers being able to take root which has not happened. Think about the consequences of this decision. Considering that Mozilla has already stated that they would not bundle their browser with Windows, what other "major" browsers are really left? Just Chrome, Safari, and Opera, and I have trouble seeing Apple and Google forcing themselves upon MS. Really, Opera is the only browser that would really benefit from this. The way I see it, it's all politics, they want to help Opera, the poor European browser, fend off those terrible Americans who can build better products.
Look. You don't like Windows, don't use it. At All. Shoot yourselves in your own feet. Leave the rest of us alone. We don't care about your stupidity problems with your people. We have enough of that for ourselves, Thank You Very Much (tm).
Let me preface this by saying, I hate Microsoft--I'm a Linux guy all the way. But, the EU has made Microsoft their whipping boy. They fine them enormous sums of money frequently, and then tell them how to package their product. If Microsoft had any balls at all they would take this decision lying down and just not include a browser at all. Include a screen during the install that says, "Due to an EU ruling a web browser is not included with Windows anymore." and let the "Commission" deal with all the complaints.
They might as well do that, since the EU is making it perfectly clear that Microsoft's future revenues in the EU will be limited at best. Why waste extra effort that yields nothing but contempt in return?
What's to stop Microsoft from offering a crappy version of Firefox? They've got engineers to spare; they could download the code (ah, open source) and tell their engineers to muck it up so it crashes or mis-renders and so forth. Then install it so IE7/8 looks shiny compared to a rotten turd that they put in because they had to.
I don't think they'd even have problems releasing their Firefox CE (Crippled Edition) source code to comply with the GPL. ("Here, you guys can have this back!")
In other news, Microsoft Windows users are now covered under the Americans with Disabilties Act...
they offer Lynx.
I don't need all this fuss. Just give me the option to uninstall Internet Explorer like any other application. Make this the case for Paint, Word Pad, Calculator too. I know you can do it now, but it's hidden away. All these programs should be in the "Add/Remove Programs" dialog box.
Pre install IE though, because without it I can't download Firefox.
We should dream about the EU being concerned that Canonical is leveraging Ubuntu's overpowering monopoly on the desktop to stifle competition among browsers.
You have big dreams. Me, I only dream about the "Year of the Linux Desktop".
(Oh, and this also answers your question about Apple. The EU would (presumably) only be concerned if suddenly Apple found itself in a monopolistic position on the Desktop.)
Hello Mosiac. It's been a LONG time, old friend. We've missed you.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
The Windows and Linux versions of Opera have been free for several years. They even stopped the inline ads, also several years ago.
There are a LOT of comments along the lines of: What is this needed for, I can already install other browsers and set them as default.
This is true, to a certain extent as at least XP still has a tendency to occasionally open IE regardless of preferred browser.
BUT, WHY is this so?
It wasn't always the case, could it be that the often laughed at US slapdown of Microsoft STOPPED Microsoft from going further? That the fact you CAN install other browsers that can function and can be selected as default happened ONLY because the law said that MS had to?
Consider if you like traffic law in a place like Amsterdam. It is chaos and you might very well wonder why you need traffic laws at all if nobody follows them. Yet what would the chaos be like if there were no traffic laws at all? Sometimes laws are NOT to make things right but to stop them from getting worse. This is hard to understand if you are still 12 years old, but a sign of growing up is that the world is never going to be perfect. The best you can hope for is to limit the worsed excesses. So while cars in amsterdam happily drive over the sidewalk if there is a tram in the way, there are no speed races through pedetrian areas and while pedestrains cross whenever they feel like it they don't actually use the hood of your car to do it if they can help it.
Same with MS, the MS we have now is the MS we got because of the US and EU law suits. Imagine the parallel universe where this cases did NOT happen, where MS was NOT halted in its tracks. Where things like getting ACPI to be windows only, trusted computing and other such MS stunts have been succesful. Mozilla went bankrupt ages ago and there is no opensource because how are you going to run it on your trusted computer? Opera has a tiny marketshare on Nokia phones only. Google never happened because they couldn't afford the license fee for MS servers or the performance of these "cheapest" servers (after all the unixes never were affordable for small startups and with no linux they had no reason to compete). Neither did MS ever have a reason to improve its servers versions because it had no competition in its price range.
The average slashdot reader has a very short attention span. Kiddies who grown-up with firefox being just a download away don't remember the times when getting a browser was a case of using the one your ISP had put on its install disk and downloading a new version meant watching your modem glow red hot for hours on end, in europe with the phone company charging you for every minute.
Nor the browser wars, incomptibilty nightmares and the pressure from IE that simply destroyed netscape with all kinds of underhanded tactics. Not just netscape but countless others at the same time. Wordperfect anyone?
Goverment rarely moves fast (this is a good thing, fast moving goverments usually ain't up to much good) but it does move and it does have effect. Bundling other browsers with windows by default MIGHT not be the best solution, but doing nothing would be worse. It has been worse as MS has shown it has no morals. Imagine again that parallel universe where MS only restrictions would have been the morals of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.
I take silly EU laws anyday over unrestricted company power.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I don't know why people always do this comparison.
Apple is not a convicted monopolist. Microsoft is. There's a big difference.
Sturgeon was an optimist.
The EC is demanding that Microsoft "redesign" its OS to allow equal competition of browsers on the desktop. This is sort of like the FTC ordering GM to allow a free choice of stereos in its cars, rather than ship cars with only its (former) in-house brand of Delco.
Yet, knowledgeable users are not restricted from installing their own choice of browser, e.g. Firefox, and just ignoring IE completely. So, the main thrust of the EC's argument is that ignorant users need to have a choice put right in front of them, to force them to not be sheep.
This decision by the EC comes at a time when Microsoft's stock price has dipped under $18, which is where it was in the late 1990s. Bill Gates, the founder of the company and chief executive throughout MSFT's monopolistic phase, has left the company and is busily donating his great wealth to charities all over the world. Microsoft's revenue is down, and its grip on the browser market is slipping in the face of natural and normal competition by products like Firefox, Safari, and--soon, perhaps--Chrome. Increasingly, mobile devices are incorporating browsers and IE is not number one in this market; Opera for example has focused strongly on the handheld market, and Apple, Google, and Palm are attempting to dominate this niche with their new non-Microsoft products.
All in all, it seems like a silly time to implement a monopoly-busting decision that had its roots in a bygone era when Microsoft was truly dominant. Today Microsoft is increasingly looking like a dinosaur, like GM, its products coasting along on past momentum with some slick non-Windows OS's coming up fast on some of these new netbooks and handhelds. It's a new era and the stodgy bureaucrats of the European Commission need to get a brain transplant to keep up. I wouldn't bet on Microsoft going away any time soon, but they are no longer the threat they once appeared to be, just as that previous behemoth IBM was swamped by the competition in the 1980s and 1990s with no need for government intervention.
In researching this situation a bit, I came across an interesting proposal for unbundling future versions of IE from Windows for the sake of better security. This is a far more intelligent thing to do than the stupid, simple minded idea of adding extra icons to the desktop.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Um, try installing OS X or using any computer with it preinstalled. You have Safari (default), FF, Opera.
Now I don't care if they bundle them or not. As long as MS never changes to disallow any other browsers then the EU should leave them alone.
... you make it sound like it's the freaking elections or something. Campaigning for products is called advertising. Forcing a company to offer its competitors' products to their customers is called heresy (look that up, I'm sure you'll find that definition somewhere). I understand why competition is important, but if you ask me, they're regulating this to death. I mean, they're complaining that Microsoft is bundling Windows (an OS designed to be easy-to-use) with its own web browser? Of course they have to put some browser in there (otherwise how would Joe the Internet user check his email?), but offering other browsers to Windows users is just plain retarded from Microsoft's point of view, and they should never be forced to do anything so self-destructive. It's like telling a professional wrestler, "you're too strong, so you have to offer this knife to all of your opponents in case they want to cut off a few of your muscles". Get real.
weinersmith
Shouldn't Mac OS also have come [sic] with other browsers then?
Microsoft is legally a monopoly - having sufficient presence in a marketplace that it has the ability to manipulate the marketplace in an "un-natural" manner contrary to the needs of an open marketplace.
And there's nothing illegal about being a monopoly. But there is something illegal about abusing your monopoly to prevent competition - and that's what Microsoft was found guilty of.
See, a free marketplace requires competition. In a competitive marketplace, competitors prevent any single company from operating against the interests of the people. If any company gets complacent or provides poor service, a competitor moves in and takes their marketshare, while the poor-performing company either cleans up its act or disappears.
But when a single company gets a monopoly, it can become abusive. It can use its commanding marketshare to threaten customers with a denial of service if they aren't loyal, further preserving the marketshare despite providing poor service.
See Standard Oil company in the late 1800s, or AT&T in the 1960s and 1970s for supreme examples of this.
But why am I writing what's been oft written before? Do some reading for yourself!
true. These rules should apply to all. Otherwise its a bit hypocritical.
I'm sorry, but requiring that someone not *BLOCK* choice is one thing; but to actively INSIST that they provide a competitor's add-on is something else altogether.
I go to my local Ford dealership. That Ford Focus is made in such a way that any standard stereo can fit in there, no problem. Yet, at the dealership, I can only order it with a Ford stereo system. The government doesn't force Ford to offer you a Sony, Kenwood, or Aiwa stereo system.
Now, yes, the *DEALERSHIP* could choose to offer that to you; but Dell and Sony and HP can all *CHOOSE* to offer you Firefox, Opera, Chrome, etc, as well. So if I really want a Ford Focus with a Sony stereo, I can go to a different dealership that will do that for me. Likewise, if I really want Chrome, I can choose an OEM that will do that for me. (Like Dell.)
I'm all for the original EU order that told them to not contractually require OEMs to put IE, and only IE, on. But this order is, in my mind, going too far.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
How dare GNOME bundle nautilus instead of firefox!!
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Let's be honest. This is about money. They need pocket grease. And although your intentions are good in that you'd support a decision against any other company in the same position, let's again be honest - that isn't going to happen, the parameters of a monopoly will be redefined to suit their needs.
Always proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
A more pertinent question is when iPods are going to ship with an eMusic client.
On first start of IE, the system will present a window with a message:
Microsoft Internet Explorer is installed as your default web browser, would you prefer another?
- I want to keep IE as default
I'd like to try another browser:
- Opera
- Firefox
- Safari
I doubt they have to *bundle* the other browsers, just provide an option to install them.
Directing the user to the website of the another browser is enough to make this an "hassle" and is enough of a deterrant not to click anything else than 'default'.
Further, a message like above seems more like an advertisement for extra features and users are quick to say no.
Safari is good!
You obviously haven't used it.
FYI: go to Program Files\Internet Explorer and right click on 'iexplorer.exe' -> properties, then go to the compatibility tab and see what it says ;) "it is a part of Windows XP" this isn't just a web browser but a part of the operating system itself. Now Microsoft have been very good recently with splitting off all the Windows Live stuff because my Windows Live Messenger actually uses my default web browser now instead of IE.
And i agree that if Microsoft are forced to do this then Apple should be too
My god, people. I see a thousand comments saying how they don't understand the decision and feel that it's not in the best interest for any particular group blablabla.
It's really simple. Microsoft has an OS monopoly. Previously browsers were not considered a specific market. Now they are. We have laws that prevent those who hold a monopoly in one market to leverage that monopoly to gain foothold in another market. Microsoft does this with their browser, ergo they are breaking the law. All they have to do to comply is add choice, and their problem is solved.
Sheesh.
The real problem is that this decision should have been handed down ten years ago. It's irrelevant now. And who gets to decide what browsers come installed?
I think Microsoft should say no. If you don't like our product we will pull it from your market. BWUHAHAHA!!!
what the hell is fun about this? Obviously some old amish guys made this decision. First of all, they meet the requirements now. They offer the Set Program Access and Defaults control panel where you can choose which browser is the default. And if you want a competing browser, Microsoft lets you use IE to go download it. Other than that, let's take a look at the options. You can include all the installers that exist right now for Firefox and Opera and Safari and all that on the windows CD and 5 years from now, people will be reinstalling outdated crap that's like 3 versions behind and full of security holes. Or you can have a super simple retriever browser/app that's only programmed to download installers for browsers but that'd have to be hard wired into the CD too. What if the server for one of the browsers moves after a year? Uh oh! If the makers include their browser installers in windows update, every time they make a new version there's a mountain of paperwork and testing before Microsoft approves it and by then, you're done with the next updated installer for it. The best they could possible do is write a retreiver browser that routes to a microsoft website that they can update to always point to a valid download link for any browser. But there's no such thing as a simple website loading retriever browser. It'd have to have fulls security and then what if it has a security hole that a virus can take advantage of that lets someone re-route the retriever to a different website permanently. Or maybe just a hosts file edit. Well then you're screwed because you can't download an antivirus program with no browser. This whole thing is completely stupid. Having a basic internet browser preinstalled on Windows is more important than Paint and Sound Editor and Movie Maker and they aren't complaining nearly as much about them for some reason.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
The UI on Windows is crap, on OS X it is much better but still spartan. That's though not what I meant by good. I was mainly referring to Safari's rendering engine (WebKit) being much more better than Trident.
The 2nd line should have made it more obvious.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Microsoft had found ways to make Java under-perform while promoting their own proprietary and non-compliant Java VM. Microsoft did similar things against DR-DOS. I expect to see the same of any co-bundled browser.
Any implementation of a browser alternative should be written as a drop-in replacement for the trident rendering engine, not merely the inclusion of some alternative browser package in the add/remove programs list. Part of what is wrong is that too many applications become vulnerabilities by virtue of trident's own vulnerabilities. But if those same API handles were linked over to webkit or something else, then people would have a true alternative that fixes problems not only with the browsers, but within applications that use the rendering of them.
Microsoft is a convicted monopolist. Apple is not.
A company found to be guilty of abuse of its monopoly position has to abide to stricter rules.
The justice is here.
Hence they should be able to do anything they want with it: ship it wit one browser, with 10 or with none. You don't like it? You think the KKKapitalist pigs at Microsoft are raping their customers at a gunpoint with their IE, then be honest, say: "I am a socialist" and natinalize Microsoft. Then instead of voting woth our money for the best product we'll have elections for the people's browser or national mail client. This will only be fair.
Now we have to convince the audience that FreeBSD, GNU/Linux etc are just browsers!
Well it sure does render javascript more smoothly than Firefox and IE...
That's brilliant! While at it, let's make Google add a "Search with different search engine" next to their own search field. Hmm, Apple really should have a "Choose OS to use with your new Macintosh - Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 7, Sun Solaris, RedHat Linux... OSX", and iPhone should have a "Choose which OS and browser to use: Windows Mobile, Android...., IE8, Sleipnir, FireFox, Safari". Honestly, I'd say MS should simply refuse and say "Don't want Windows in the EU? Fine."
I imagine a small program in Windows to choose from a online list of available browser. Or a simple browser that is like Wordpad compared to Word. For emergency downloading and not for common use.
Why does Windows still lack of a software package management system, as most free operating systems have? That would be a benefit for the user!
Sure, lets give Apple and Adobe complete dominance. It's not like they would falsely claim to adhere to a standard while using their own custom addons... oh wait.
Bollocks. Some people want to hurt Microsoft, and are using the same weak excuse they always use to justify it. I have no issue with the idea that windows shouldn't be distributed with a browser, as long as all operating systems have to play by the same rules.
As you say you're not a hypocrite, why do you think Apple shouldn't be forced to unbundle safari? Surely it will encourage competition.
It's not like there aren't any alternatives; it's just that Microsoft blocks the alternative by forcing OEM's hands.
Face it, if Microsoft stopped selling in Europe, they'd be dead, because there'd be an instant market for a cheaper, better alternative, and in a few years it would lose in its other markets.
Anyway, you're missing the point, IE is a blight on the Internet, and Microsoft is a convicted monopoly abuser. I'm not sure what's described here is the best solution, but there's no question Microsoft has to be stopped from continually abusing competition rules.
Exactly. There are two sets of rules, those for Microsoft, and those for Apple.
Apple can force Quicktime on you in their OS, Safari, Itunes, and many other bundled applications... but Microsoft cant. This is just getting tired and old.
Lay off microsoft. The OS's features are stripped to shit as it is because of these stupid laws.
MS may like having IE intergrated into the OS, where as Firefox doesnt like that approach. Why cant MS intergrate the browser the way they want and leave Firefox to develope how they want?
What browsers CANT you run on windows? Opera, Safari, Firefox... they all run on windows. Where is the problem?
Perhaps the EU should also force MS to include other operating systems such as OSX and Linux on their install disks for Windows 7. That would be FAIR. (rolls eyes)
...the one's that nobody wants (i.e sans media player).
That way Microsoft can say they've complied, nobody will want it as it's not in Microsoft's best interest to push it, and the whole thing will be a shocking waste of money over nothing.
*sigh*
throw new NoSignatureException();
You still have the Webkit framework installed in /System that other applications use to display content even if you trash Safari. Removing this would also be a bad thing that'd break things, similar to what would happen if you fully removed IE and applications couldn't call it. Both Windows and OS X use their respective rendering engines for Help menus, for example.
So actually, yes removing the IE shortcut is pretty much equiv to throwing out Safari.app. You're still going to be using it for parts of the OS and for 3rd party applications.
Arguing how much tighter one is buried than the other really isn't that relevant since they are both blessed, provided methods of embedding web content in whatever and are entrenched in their respective platforms. You really can't have the best support without either.
Really, like it or not, Microsoft at least had some sort of braindamaged idea of what was coming, likely mixed with poor motives. However, no major desktop OS comes without a browser, most have some sort of concept of 'browser' and a set of libraries to call its rendering engine in other applications. I don't particularly see the concept as a bad thing. I do think that this reactionary knee-jerk response to IE because it's IE might be rather detrimental.
Bundling extra browsers is not the appropriate way to deal with this. Having the ability to choose which browser to install from an internet repository on (or after - depending on net card availability) installation would make more sense.
At least then you're getting the latest version of the browser, the list can be modified at any time and you're not installing IE initially to download Firefox which is my personal MASSIVE gripe. I don't want that crap on my PC any longer than necessary.
Of course, that leaves the problem of certain web developers being unable to comprehend that I want to use my business reporting tools on a browser OTHER than IE, but only by tearing away the reliance on it will they change their ways.
instead of the winviros? Hmmm...some how I don't see this happening....
Would you like to install an alternate browser? YES!
Please Select?
Konqueror,YES
Your choice requires the install process to restart and install Linux with KDE V3.5.10, is that your choice? YES! ! ! !
No, I am not interested in KDE 4.x port to winviros, I can't stand KDE 4.x.
I only see this benefiting one browser which I don't care,for and strangely enough doesn't want to be bundled. Hmmm...
1311393600 - Back to Black
You're right - these rules should apply to all the companies found abusing monopolies.
Oh, wait a minute, that's just Microsoft, isn't it?
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
The right way to go would be to require them to allow people to remove IE from the system and require them to provide plugins (or an SDK) for re-creating the unique things about IE.
Until you can rid yourself entirely of IE and have as nice an integration with other browsers, the market is indeed unfair.
And, no, this is not the same as Apples "Our own products automatically integrate with each other", Apple lets ju delete them and lose those functions, and you can still integrate their alternate products as closely as most two sets of apps can be integrated.
So, require windows update to be run without Explorer, require the integration between explorer and iexplore be terminated and instead made so that the window closes and a new one opens with your preferred browser, actually force them to see that when a browser is standard that it is the ONLY browser which pop-ups automatically.
Currently, they aren't tackling the issue, they are just annoyed with microsoft and trying to kick them in the nuts.
Safari is awful. Please try other web browsers before you spread more misinformation
that ONLY work on internet explorer for some stupid reason
Once enough Jim Bobs send pissed off e-mails places that require Internet Explorer, maybe they'll finally allow the rest of us to use ONLY something else
Question 1: Is IE standards compliant (Y/N)
Question 2: Does this mean more work for web designers (Y/N)
Question 3: Is IE a competent browser (Y/N)
Just curious to hear what you think
The problem is that when I design a website, I have to account for all the fucks still running IE because they are too noobish to install a new browser. When Microsoft wants to pay my invoices I'll support their shitty ass included browser.
Any chance of the EU forcing MS to give a choice of operating systems as well?
How about EU forcing websites creating only standard html code, so browsers following standards would render pages properly, and browsers not following standards (i.e. IE) would break everything. Then MS would be in deep shit automagically.
But does the Windows Calculator use it's own proprietary math that is incompatible with other calculators?
This decision might not help. I was on holiday recently with 12 non-nerds. The computer in the holiday villa had both firefox and IE. Everyone bar me choice IE every time. It was because of it's name, "Internet Explorer". Imagine you know nothing about computers, and want to explorer the internet, what do you click on? Having other browsers won't help unless they are grouped under internet browsers or something. If it's icons in the desktop, people are going to read the names and use the one that fits best. For true competition, you need people to know what does what, or they don't know they have options.
Are you basing that on the Windows or Mac OS X implementation?
It is pretty bad on Windows (although preferable to IE, which I guess is the point of the story), but it does have an excellent renderer. In terms of an OS-provided UI element WebKit is a much nicer possibility than IE's renderer. The only problem is the interface, which doesn't work nicely on Windows, but is okay on Mac OS X. Hopefully this will become 'good' with Snow Leopard. It might become irrelevant if Mac OS X Chrome is solid.
And what does this ruling mean with regards to UI elements? Should there be a clear, documented API that any browser can write an interface to so that they can replace that component? What about centralising bookmarks, history, cache, cookies, etc?
You obviously think the only correct opinion is yours.
Simple solution, easily put in place. Somewhere early in the installation process, a screen pops up, ASKING "Which is your favorite web browser?" and several boxes appear. You check one or more of those boxes, and Windows prepares a script to run on first start. That script downloads all the browsers that YOU CHOSE to install, while the rest of those idiotic scripts run, introducing you to Windows. It has been demonstrated many times that IE is not essential to downloading anything from the internet. Telnet and FTP are the most obvious, of course, but even Notepad and Calculator can connect to the internet. Windows has multiple means to connect to www.mozilla.org downloads section, and any other site that harbors a browser. I can only say "DUHH" to all those who find any difficulty with Windows "bundling" other browsers.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
"here are two sets of rules, those for Microsoft, and those for Apple."
No, there is the set of rules for the convicted monopolist Microsoft, and then no rules for anybody else, including Apple, Linux (distributions thereof), BSD (distributions thereof), Sun, ...
They're not "foisting" anything. It'd be monopolistic if they didn't let any other browser install or run, which isn't the case.
>What's wrong with the people opposing this, do they want Microsoft to tie-up the Web with their shitty, proprietary cruft al la Silverlight?
Silverlight is both less shitty and proprietary than Flash, last time I checked.
Call us back when IE even attempts to be standards compliant.
Also, you forget Apple's track history - it used to bundle IE (yes, IE) with Mac OS X before it launched Safari.
It may only ship OS X with Safari now, but it's not always been the case, nor is bundling Safari with deliberately cripped standards compliance and deliberately broken javascript holding back the web for the rest of us who aren't in the bronze age of computing any more.
What hattig said below me. Safari is excellent on OS X, but the UI on Windows just feels a bit clunky and forced, like iTunes for Windows. I know why they look the same, but they might have been better designing them slightly differently.
Webkit is first class though, and is preferable for me over Gecko and FF3 (although I use both FF and Safari on OS X and like them both).
The world cannot follow your example, and pretend that Microsoft hasn't used unfair leverage to put competition out of business. Microsoft INTENTIONALLY obstructs standards to prevent other browsers from working with such things as Microsoft Update, ActiveX, and others important functions. Microsoft needs to observe existing standards, and make their locked down features (like Acivex) work with other vendor's products. Forcing Microsoft to include a tutorial with their operating system about other operating systems might not be a bad idea, though. I'm glad you thought of it. :)
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Apple is not a convicted monopolist, Microsoft is. Different rules apply.
Repeat that 100 times or until you've got it, whatever comes first.
Really, is that so difficult? Next you know, you'll complain that convicted criminals are locked up in jails and can't go wherever they like to. It's the same, except that it's hard to lock up a corporation.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
1. OF COURSE NOT 2. OF COURSE IT MEANS MORE WORK FOR EVERYONE 3. IE is competently designed - not to browse - but to stifle competition.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Why is microsoft the only vendor being forced to include competitors software? Why not require apple to include a browswer other than safari?
Opera
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The rabbit might have said, "You can force me to tear up contracts preventing other operating systems and office suites on computers sold to the public, but please don't make me remove my web browser."
It'll take years for the EU to sort this one out and they still will not have addressed the core issue of Microsoft forcing computer manufacturers to include Windows as part of the deal to the exclusion of other OS.
Quick! Look over there...
And who gets to decide what browsers come installed?
Me of course. Who else?
That's right, the EU directive 31-337 states that user Cerberusss on the internet board "Slashdot" will have full discretionary power to decide which browsers will be installed.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
What's next? Are they going to tell Ford they have to offer engines from every other manufacturer as an option?
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
I will make this clear. Safari, on a Mac, current and old versions, SUCKS. Firefox on the Mac is more stable, faster, includes the cmd-enter trick, and is just overall better. Firefox is of course also better than IE on a Windows PC.
I use multiple Macs and Windows systems, of all ages, in the course of my life and job. Firefox wins hands down on all of these systems. I do admit, after my experience with Safari on a Mac, I have refused to even let it install on a Windows System. So, AFIK, Safari on a PC is heaven.
I'm just "this guy", you know?
Well they could simply force any browser on the market to respect standards. A bit like the Euro safety standard: Euro NCAP for cars.
If the new browser do not respect the current standard like HTML 5 in 2009, it can't be bundled with an operating system.
Prolem solved. IMHO.
As a web developer I couldn't care less about browser brand. It can be named Safari, Internet Explorer,Opera or Firefox. Open source or not. I don't care. What matters is the compatibility with standards. Then people could choose their browser for their performance, UI, whatever.
Apple taken to court for not allowing any competing browser to even see the iphone/ipod touch!
I dont understand why Microsoft should be forced to install or even give the option of alternative browsers. If people are not happy with IE they simply have to type in IE alternatives or IE Sucks into a search engine(obviously I would say google, but again its "Google It", not "search for it using your favourite Search enigne"), and they will get loads of options, but your assuming that people realise the internet is more than that little blue E on the desktop...
But to take this further its like a chef making a burger who makes his own tomato sauce, its the bestest burger in the world and then other manufactures of tomato sauce Heniz and Chef take them to court! Come on...
Yes, but this is the same argument as saying "it's okay to commit a crime, just don't get caught".
So Apple, Firefox, whoever, can leverage THEIR market share at the detriment of MS, until they are in a position of 49% dominance, and MS is on 51% dominance ?
It's okay to leverage and foist your product using bundling No matter how shitty / proprietary ala iTunes, Adobe etc), provided you don't step over the magic line, is that it ?
You have a strange world view my friend.
1. That is a trick question, and it's loaded of course. IE is compliant with many standards, but not all. Then again, there is not a single browser out there that is 100% compliant with all the web standards either.
2. Actually, there was a LOT less work involved for web designers when firefox/chrome/opera were irrelevant. Sadly, even if IE were removed from the face of the earth instantly, it'd still be difficult to write complex web applications for the remaining browsers because even firefox, chrome, opera aren't 100% compatible with the standards and have differing behaviors. If you think otherwise, you haven't done much web design.
3. Depends on what you consider competent of course. In *my* daily usage, it's more stable than firefox 3, so does that make it more competant? There have been fewer critical bugs for IE 7 than firefox as well, does that make it competant? Of the browsers that have an engine that can be used inside another application as a renderer via activex, it is the most competant. It does a lot worse on the acid tests, and it isn't as far along with implementing the more advanced CSS features. IE has it's strengths and weaknesses, but all the current browsers do.
Cool, this would give the users the ultimate freedom! The question is, does the average usre wants it?
Oddly enough, but all this sounds like we already have it and it's called GNU/Linux!
It takes no more than a couple of minutes to explain what a browser is to any person of normal intelligence.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
and make their locked down features (like Acivex) (sic) work with other vendor's products
Well there is I believe an ActiveX wrapper addon for Firefox, though I can't imagine why anyone would want it.
But really, how deep does this need to go ? How is ActiveX gonna work with Mac or Linux anyway ? Cannot find win32.dll ? Well no shit Sherlock.
Or is it only limited to things that you can run "inside a browser", as if the whole spectrum of other applications that have dependencies to the Trident engine are somehow exempt, but Internet Explorer is evil.
Turning this on it's head, is there any form of slot in replacement for mshtml.dll that uses the Mozilla rendering engine ? Maybe, if you want to stop all these exploits and security issues, it should be Mozilla themselves to push this out ?
Without some solution like this, there's gonna be a whole lot more broken apps out there than just Internet Explorer.
If you consider the Windows juggernaut a complete commercial strategy, then forcing hardware manufacturers to buy Windows in bulk for any machine they produce, under the penalty of not being able to buy windows at all otherwise, is part of how windows is designed to "work".
Some companies have shyly introduced non MS OSes (Dell, HP, Asus) because they sense a shift in the market, and also because more likely MS no longer has the same power to "compel" companies to avoid other OSes (if OSX was available for Intel machines then MS would have a problem on their hands, shame Apple does not want to play ball).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
He is one of those developers developers developers developers developers developers that monkey boy was screaming about.
Then you can ejaculate as much as you wish
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Is the history of browsers and how Microsoft killed the ones before it.. not by making a better one (actually they did at the beginning), but by first of all Including it with the OS, and secondly tightly integrating it into the OS.. When IE was started, it was a separate but free download.. if they had kept it that way, much trouble would have been avoided.
Your calculator and notepad examples are relevant.. IF Microsoft had not been suppling these apps since the 3.0 days and there where people selling them as separate apps, you can bet your ass they would be pissed when all of a sudden MS included them in the OS for free. What do you think would happen if the next version of Windows suddenly included a photo editor that was on par or better than Photoshop ?
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
... which gives you access to the most important network the world has ever seen.
Still I would say that people who had a market releasing certain applications for which MS has released free alternatives would have a point to make regarding unfair competition.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
We don't know how exactly this is going to be enforced.
As long as a relatively recent alternative browser is provided, then the browser's installer can manage updates to newer versions automatically.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The EU can offer to MS to do the copyright patent stuff instead of fines in the range of billions (funny how people where saying EU fines were nothing, now that MS has "only" 18billion in cash, the EU fines are not that small now).
That is called a settlement and has nothing to do with Socialism.
To think so would be stupid, naive, or an unfortunate combination of both.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Good morning!
I think you have a bit of a backlog of financial news in your in tray.
No, the guy that kissed you really was a Prince, that nap of yours was a bit longer than everybody expected ...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If Microsoft does comply with the ruling the alternative will be Safari. Why? Well despite Apple & Microsoft being competitors they are both in the same game and understand each other. So Microsoft wants Silverlight to gain a foothold in the market. Easy agree with Apple that Safari will be installed on Windows as long as Apple includes the Silverlight plug-in with both Mac and Windows versions of Safari as standard. Now Microsoft can legitimately claim that all Windows 7 PC's and All MacOS 10.7 systems have silverlight installed. Making the two main platforms on the desktop silverlight enabled.
I see a lot of nonsense about the "free market" here on Slashdot. The EU is trying to create or sustain a free market with this action.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure
The "free market" isn't magic. I don't know why a lot of Slashdotters seem to believe that...
Every OS in the market probes this, with the glaring exception of MS OSes.
You can remove the browser in any other kind of machine and your computer will sit there, happily doing anything else you asking it to do, because the browser is an *user level* application.
If the brilliant Software Engineers at MS do not understand this (ha! As if...) it is not the market's fall.
Also some people here are way too young to remember how MS *abused* their monopoly in order to obliterate the competition, who were selling a product that threatened to make the Windows platform irrelevant. The threat was so real that now Google may bring that promise to fruition in spite of MS's interference.
That is what monopolies do, which is illegal, and why governments need to intervene, otherwise such companies would continue to stifle progress and innovation.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Personnally I distrust MS enough not to use it since they could prefectly recompile it with added MS stuff.
I prefer installing it myself, but I agree on the anti-trust thing...
No ! It absolutely isn't the same argument.
Because Microsoft are a convicted monopolist they have to live by different rules, rules which govern monopolists and their behaviour.
These rules do not apply to companies who are not monopolists, Apple is not a monopolist so these rules do not apply to Apple.
Yes ! Obviously, duh, because Apple & Firefox are not monopolists.
Do you understand now ? It's really not that hard.
Oh ! Whine, whine ... moan, moan ... cry, cry. Poor little cruelly victimised US.
Absolute bollocks, the EU fines far more European companies than it does US ones.
Stop wimpering like a girl and stand up for yourself for goodness sake you whinging loser.
Another problem is that in IT classes people are taught microsoft, not the critical thinking required to seek their ideal solution. Microsoft will retain their monopoly until IT education becomes education and stops being indoctrination.
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
Are you by any chance this Tubal Cain? http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=TubalCain
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
"Install Google Chrome" Not that Adwords is a monopoly too. No, that's silly.
I think the US government needs to show support for Microsoft, being a US company. It's completely stupid to require a company to offer other peoples products when selling their own products. The US government can't let the EU bully it's companies.
A decade ago, OOo wasn't the same basic experience as MS Word, but that is no longer the case: OOo has caught up and maybe even exceeded MS Word.
F the EU commission and their obvious jealousy of a hugely successful AMERICAN business. WHY doesn't MS have the right to include its browser? I use and prefer firefox, so I downloaded it and installed it, without any problems, I didn't have to jump through any hoops. This is the EU simply being bitter because an American company created the OS the world uses. Or maybe they're just emulating our overly and pathetically litigious society. They learned it by watching us?
Rip the doors off that bitch and ride it like you stole it!
In everyone's hast to bash Microsoft I think many have not taken a step back to realize that this is bad. This sets a dangerous precedent. NOT just for Microsoft. What OS is next? What program is next? How long before we have companies suing because they want their versions of....
....offered in the OS. The list could go on forever and you never know it could even include file management. If you think things are bloated now wait until all these OS manufacturers have to offer 9 different versions of everything.
Paint
Calculator
Image Viewer
Notepad
ETC!!!
I do not think this is a good thing at all.
I'll try anything once. Twice if it tastes good
They did not specify which 'other' browser. You might think FireFox, Opera or Safari. But atlas they all might not meet the requirements set forth by MS.... the optional competing web browsers included will have to be clearly deficient to make the clear choice MS.
I suspect a list of about 2 or 3 web browsers that we have never heard of to select from.
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
2. Vendors like Dell are then free to sell an alternative browser if they wish.
Perhaps at first manufacturers will just stick with IE, but once they realise the potential of others (e.g. Firefox has more features, Safarai is faster on netbooks etc.), they'll sell machines with alternatives. Then it's all about market forces.
As one commenter on here put it, if you try and make people choose, then you are trying to force people to not be sheep! This will never work!
investigate their promotional schemes, investigate their bribes, investigate the records of people they have dealt with and deals they have struck.
Those are provable crimes and will benefit any Govt's image that is contesting for upcoming elections.
Welcome to the internet traveller!
Would you like to install;
O Microsoft Internet explorer 7.0
O Microsoft Internet explorer 8.0
O Microsoft Web browser by another name 1.1 (Beta!)
A strange place to draw the line. HTML 5 is a draft recommendation not a standard, and some parts of it are more mature than others.
Even CSS 2.1 is a 'Candidate Recommendation' and if I haven't missed anything, no browsers are 100% compliant.
So where do you draw the line? HTML 4.01 and CSS 1 are w3c recommendations, but most web developers wouldn't be happy with that.
CSS Snapshot 2007 (http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-css-beijing-20080516/) seems like a good place to start, but it's just a working draft too.
I think there should be a law against non-techinical people making technical decisions. And there certainly should be a law forbidding the EU to force companies to fight out a turf war on my computer.
When I buy a CD-ROM from Microsoft, I want to be sure that someone at Microsoft signed of on it, all of it. Hopefully, Microsoft will still produce 'just MS' Windows for non-EU markets so we can import those.
And then there is the bad legal precedent it sets. Either this should be forced on all OS suppliers, which would kill open source as we know it, or it would mean that, no, not everone is equal to the law which would be even worse.
I think the EU was a nice idea in principle, but we shouldn't have embarked on this quest before we teach government when to leave us alone.
MS's monopoly in the OS market is rapidly crumbling. I suppose that depends on how you define monopoly, but Linux distros are gaining traction.
And MS is not the open holding back support for newer tech. Most people using Windows/IE are non-technical people who just aren't interested in upgrading to the latest tech. Witness how many IE users are still on IE6. Even Microsoft would like them to switch browsers so they can discontinue support for ye olde sixe. But these are not people who are clamoring for the latest and greatest...
thx for the info. HTML 5 is under work for...6 years (IMHO it all started in 2003?) and all they can provide is a "draft".
Then we bitch companies like Microsoft because they don't respect standards but if they did all you would have is HTML 4.01 and CSS 1.
How could you possibly respect standards when there is none or only obsolete ones are available?
No one is claiming IE shouldn't be the only browser bundled because it's crap, they are using the same lame monopoly argument they always pull out and mod down people who disagree.
Try asking yourself one question: If IE was currently the best browser by your definition would that make it ok for Microsoft to bundle it? If the answer is no then your three questions don't matter.
Did they not used to have netscape bundled in with previous windows. Could they not just re include the oldest version, so that anyone knowing browsers would know not to use it. Would that not
solve this problem and basically tell them to f*ck off? Please, they are so technologically challenged that when they make these supposed "balanced" decisions, they don't even realize they are becoming the laughing stock of the IT world. I guess its inevitable now....M$ will rule the world.
Hmm..thats a tough one...maybe they can provide Internet Explorer 7 as default and Internet Explorer 8 as a competing web browser. What do you think?
it may be that way on a PC. it's not that way on a mac.
The UI on Windows, as of today, isn't supposed to be crap anymore.
See: Safari 4 Beta for Windows.
You know... M$ could just not pre-load explorer on every machine. They could have a nice little app that launches and asks the user to check off which browsers they wish to install from a bunch of checkboxes. Then, the app could go out and download them all. But M$ would never make anything that easy...
It would solve all of their anti-trust problems though... and they could even say something like "for the average user, leaving the default 'Internet Explorer' checked will work." That should make the marketing department there happy, right? All the low-end users still on explorer will just click the 'next' button anyway and still be stuck with the same old crappy explorer. The rest of us can free ourselves from M$ bulls*** browsers forever.
First, they were convicted in the US not the EU, and this decision only affects their OS distributions in the EU, therefore your "excuse" is flawed. Also, the majority of the case against them was dropped they were never declared a monopoly and broken up, they were merely-declared anti-competitive. The final ruling stated that all they had to do was release APIs for third party use. Explain how you extend that decision to the current topic.
Second, every single business strives to be a monopoly, at which point they are then taken down by a government; pending local national laws. You only hate them because you don't recognize their right to do the same exact thing that every other business is trying to do. Now if the means to do so are illegal that's one thing, but unfair to bundle your own product with your own product? Come on.
Third, just because they were convicted of something (relatively minor concerning weight used) does not mean that everything you make them do is "fair". In what other industry could you seriously, with a straight face, require a company to bundle it's major competitor's products with their own by law . Say that last sentence over and over again until the absurdity of it finally hits you.
Oh, and I detest IE and all the curses it brings upon us in the software development community. Just because I hate them for philosophical reasons does not mean I cannot defend their basic rights as a business.
You want to blame someone, blame the companies that sell all their computers pre-loaded with Windows.
"Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!"
offered you by microsoft (none)
or the "freedom" of choice offered you by a eu bureaucrat (none)
the only freedom is that which the individual freely chooses. as such, there is no campaign that can "educate" people (ie, indoctrinate), as this is just another imposition of a "freedom" from an outside entity with a its own agenda
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
if the EC wants to solve the root cause they should
(i) force MS to follow standards (ii) abrogate OEM contracts
(iii) may be expose some recent MS cheap tricks such as
the office pseudo open formats.
Before any solution can be enacted, IE needs to be separated from the Windows internals. Then the problem of choice can be addressed with a package manager similar to Synaptic that comes with each Windows installation. As part of the install process the user would be asked to select which programs from each category to be installed. However, this complicates the installation process, and the average user won't care about the choice, or understand the differences. So there should also be an option check by default that says "Let Microsoft choose for me." The only problem left to solve is determining who controls the repositories.
Laziness is a virtue, anyone who bothers to tell you otherwise, is clearly lacking it.
While I understand many of the hate and anger the people of the 80s and 90s carry and cannot seem to get ride of for MS. I think it's misplaced. Instead of attacking for choice attack all the companies that still do not support alternate browsers. No one will choose a different browser if say there School, Bank or whatever does not code for any browser but IE. They will immediately go back to IE because it works. Seeing past your noses works well in this kind of situation. The Eu jsut wants something like Opera to be placed there but no one understands that the population chooses and most people will not change there bank or whatever just because there browser doesnt work, they will change browsers back to IE if that has always worked for them.
Microsoft will "fight" this and reluctantly agree in the end. Then in a year or so will run a HUGE ad campaign declaring, truthfully, that "Given the choice, 98% of European computer owners independently chose Internet Explorer as their personal Web browser."
If the car dealer offers me a genuine manufacturer's doohickey, or this aftermarket alternative, I'm going for the real deal, right?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It does not matter about monopoly type control. If you pass a law (which this basically is) for one company on an instance you must require it to be applied across the board.
Personally I think the internet is just shit and needs to be re-implemented, and all browsers finally after a decade of work have somewhat got to the same functionality I had on old BBS systems. I'm still trying to figure out why you all don't have some kind of pluggable architecture in the browsers.
Basically I'm opposed because no matter what good a politicians intent may be in the end decades down the road this leverage into a free enterprise gets manipulated and used for other intents and purposes. Now if you want to say because of monopoly then you need clear definitions on what that is. Is it X% control of pure market share, or maybe it is having X amount of an installed base. I really don't understand because for me monopoly means absolutely no choice. How come other countries never really developed their own OS, and mostly used American technology? There was some instances, but few and definitely far between.
Last time this shit came up (windows media player), MS was forced to offer a version of windows without WMP. Nobody wanted it.
There was a time when IE was the best browser.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
When has any software company EVER been liable for ANYTHING? If what you say is true, Microsoft would be sued weekly for all the holes in IE and Windows found constantly (yes, they are getting better about it). You may be assuming that what the EU is asking for is links to websites, but I read it as pre-loaded installables.
if a program comes bundled with Windows and it is discovered to have some problems, whose responsibility is it to issue a fix?
My buddy's Dell had all sorts of crapware on it straight from the factory. What's the difference between the AOL install they used to have, and a Firefox or Opera install?
Your grass smells like plastic.
Free Martian Whores!
I find it incredible for the EU to be dictating to a software company that they have to include competitor's software. This is -no different- than telling GM they have to use a Ford engine in their 2010 models. Or Mercedes brakes, or Honda transmissions... etc.
Couple this with the current push to censor the internet, and you've got a nice coercive set of controls on the computer industry. You've got to ask yourself, why would a government want something like that, and is it in your best interests for them to have it?
They already do this with the Live Search.
If you want to add another one you get directed to a webpage with the option to choose several engines.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/searchguide/en-uk/default.mspx?dcsref=http://runonce.msn.com/runonce2.aspx
I do not see how they can not do this for browsers and have an install script take care of the installation and an option somewhere inside MSIE or on the desktop to go to that website.
Due to the EU settlement, Microsoft is required to give users an opportunity to switch between IE8 and an open source browser. If you change your mind this dialog can be re-opened by choosing Start -> Control Panel.
Please choose a browser:
(*) IE8 (Microsoft)
( ) Lynx (Open Source)
-------
| OK |
-------
Perhaps Microsoft will find the most obscure buggy browsers to include as options if people don't want IE.
Microsoft, The EU has sapoken! give them what they want!
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/sa/benefits/fundamentals.mspx
No IE, No WMP, Hell, Not Even Notepad or EDLIN! After all, MS uses its windows Marketshare to crush all the other text editing apps. Vi and Emacs can finally have a chance to compete!
Just an OS! No Drivers, no backgrounds, No Nothing! Perfect for your average user that buys all of their software at retail! It will stimulate the economy! Think of all the Possibilities! Web and FTP browsers and calculator apps at retail stores! Solitare games making a comeback for 9.95! Competition running Wild!!
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
If I was going to buy a VW, it would be one of older Jetta twin turbos. It was simple and fast. My friend has one and when he's not working on it, its pretty good.
but works? Come one...that's a bit unrealistic.
I know a lot of people with 3 series BMWers, and they do last a long time, and are a fun drive, but man, they are in the shop a long time. Every time I talk to my friends with a BMW or a Porsche or a Jetta, they are in the shop for something. Fantastic cars when they work, for sure, but, they are as tempermental as the people that make them.
For easy to work on, nothing will ever top an early 1970s American car with a V8 engine. They were simple, roomy under the hood, and pretty easy to get to.
But, if I didn't care about nationality, and reliability was as a premium, and I was looking for a small car, I would buy a Japanese car. German cars have good engineering, but Japanese engineering is nearly as good and they are better built. Lexus is just hands down better than Mercedes, any day of the week.
As it is, on the reliability scale, the most reliable thing you can own is an American car or truck with a V8 engine. For safety, again we turn to early 1970s American cars with body on frame and heavier steel construction.
Today, Germans may well be kings of the 6, but Ford and GM are both making some good 6's these days, and the Japanese are the kings of the 4, and the USA is the king of the V8, although one could make an argument that Australians know how to use the American V8 pretty well. My 2004 GTO was a great car to drive so long as there was no snow on the roads.
This is my sig.
IE is non-compliant, and not very nice to develop for. Too late, the OS race was over by the early 90's, and the browser war v1 was over by the late 90's. I'm not particularly an MS fan, but I have to support it every day, which makes me a realist (as opposed to 'wouldn't it be cool if.....').
So let's assume MS have bundled FF with Windows 7, and that FF is the same version as is available now.
What happens when a users passwords get stolen because FF doesn't force a passworded-protected password list? Is it down to Mosaic, or MS for selling the bundle in the first place? My Ford may come with Pirelli tyres, but I'd take it back to Ford if there was a problem...
Next - what about Group Policy? I know FF offers it's own version, but how will it integrate into an MS Domain?
And - what about OWA? Doesn't work properly with FF...meaning (from a corporate point of view) the whole FF arguement is pointless for anyone running Exchange (= lots of sites) - and while it's MS's fault for forcing OWA to be IE-only, that's the *way things are*. How cool/ fast/ etc. your browser is is now irrelevant.
Finally - how is this going to help in the format war v2 that's already happening? I now *have* to run FF just to post on this site, and several others. Please don't give me the 'well, FF is compliant' excuse - compliant with what? The by-far dominant browser on the planet? For a start, end users aren't going to care, all they will know is that they have to run two sets of browsers, bookmarks and the like - and secondly you can't carry on refusing to even acknowledge MS + IE as THE O/S + Browser of choice - what works wonders in your bedroom isn't going to be quite so cool (or acceptable) in the office - just ask anyone that runs Linux. StarOffice, anyone? Mosaic should be making FF *more* IE compliant, if they wanted a seamless transition - but hey, we're all pretending that IE doesn't exist, right? And what do you think is going to happen with IE8, IE9 and so on? It isn't just going to go away...
Of course I could be wrong, and the whole world is actually running Linux/ FF/ Apple, and I just haven't noticed...
I personally don't blame MS. I blame Netscape, Commodore, Apple, Novell and the like for going for the money instead of developing their lead back when it would have made a difference - unlike now.
Wow ... you are spectacularly misinformed.
You remember the European Commission's antitrust case against Microsoft in 2004?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_v._Microsoft
All Opera did was point out that Microsoft's inclusion of Internet Explorer with Windows-based personal computers is a violation of the same laws that caused Microsoft to fail in that 2004 case, or to put it another way if Windows+Bundled MediaPlayer is a violation then Windows+Bundled Browser must also be a violation. Not a massive jump in logic, particularly when the US Department of Justice had previously come to the exact same conclusion (Windows+Bundled Browser is bad for inovation and compitition). I refer you to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft
Both of the above cases where initiated by US interests, so this is not really about some big conspiracy by the EU to protect its own. Also as others in this thread have pointed out to you, Norway is not even part of the EU.
Regarding Mozilla/Firefox. Saying a massive project like this is American is like saying Linux is Finnish. The roots may be from one country but any sufficiently large Open Source project is probably global. Also Mozilla have given out some pretty mixed statements recently regarding this case but on the topic of if bundling has harmed competition they seem to be in full agreement with Opera. Consider the following:
http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2009/02/06/the-european-commission-and-microsoft/
I suspect the slightly contradictory comments coming out of Mozilla are because they see how certain groups of people (such as yourself) have misunderstood Opera and rounded on them and the Mozilla PR team wants to avoid the same fate.
People aren't taking into account all the factors of Microsoft's market situation. And then they are trying to understand why to comparable things aren't both wrong.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Are you being intentionally dense? The reason for this situation is that the EC has determined that Microsoft gained it's monopoly market position illegally. The EC is doing now what the FTC should have done 10 years ago. It's unconscionable that the US has let Microsoft continue their extend/extinguish routine for so long, causing great harm to computing users worldwide.
As an aside, you have to realize also that Microsoft does have an alternative choice here. They can simply choose to cease doing business directly in EU member countries. MS products would remain available through resellers until the EU starts action against them. I wouldn't be surprised if MS chose this route. Given the damaged state of our economy, we need the EU more than they need they need us and the US doesn't have a lot to bargain with in pressuring the EU to drop the matter.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
But now the average user will at least know that there are alternatives. You make them care. Forcing several choices with Windows is a huge step to making more people care.
I find Safari to be snappier on my mac, probably due to webkit and the rest of the UI being native components.
I have my mac and my pc sitting side by side and I find the Windows version of firefox to be noticably nicer to use (faster, better UI integration) than the mac version.
Recently though, I've become a fan of chrome on windows. I'm curious to see if the Mac version is any good.
Hello Mosiac. It's been a LONG time, old friend. We've missed you.
Exactly. Who decides what browsers. I can see them saying: To comply we will offer the latest version of 3 compteting browsers. 1. Lynx 2. Mosaic 3. Netscape Navigator
The big problem for M$ is that windows explorer and IE are the same interface with different skins. I really don't see how they could easily 'untie' them. We all know that we can brows the file system using most any browser out there but you can't surf the web with anything other than IE when you type a web address into windows explorer or the my computer interfaces because they are essentially IE to begin with. This is the major issue for M$ and this is why they are being accused of trying to create a monopoly with IE in their operating system.
How compliant do they have to be with which standards? I don't think there's a single browser that is 100% compliant with any of the current standards, CSS2 comes to mind. Portions of all of the standards are implemented, but no browser is wholly standards compliant. Most just aren't as badly incompliant as IE.
Wrong !
Microsoft has been found guily of "[abusing] its dominant market position to crush rivals" in the EU by the EU Competition Comission. It has taken the appeals process against this judgment all the way to the top and it lost.
So once again, and it really really is not that hard. Microsoft have to abide by different rules because they have been convicted of abusing their monopolists position in the market. Companies who have not been convicted of this do not to abide by these restrictions.
Do you understand ?
A good argument doesn't become lame because it has been valid for a long time. You're just grousing becuase it's taken ten years to find a government entity with the balls to take Microsoft on.
After they crushed Netscape? Maybe you're too young to remember, but Netscape 4 was truly far superior to anything Microsoft had developed up to that point.
All technical factors considered, IE should have died a slow death, not Netscape. The only reason it continued to dominate was due to bundling with Windows, which attained monopoly status illegally. This is all well documented in the DOJ antitrust suit.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
A possible solution could be to present Windows users with a so-called "ballot screen" from which they would choose their browser.
Alternatively, it could be left up to computer or mobile phone manufacturers, such as Dell or Nokia, which support Microsoft Windows by default, to provide users with different browsers, in agreement with Microsoft.
Note the second paragraph. That sounds to me like a perfectly plausible outcome of the decision is that Microsoft is just forced to not pressure OEMs on what browser to offer. If the OEMs decide to keep offering IE as the default, that would be their decision. If Google or Opera wants to pay them to bundle their browser instead, they could do that.
Or in other words, pretty much the status quo.
MediaWiki developer, Total War Center sysadmin
where's the justice?
The rules change when you are a monopoly. Apple is far from a monopoly.
The reason for these laws is that it is easy for a monopoly to exploit it's position. Microsoft it in fact do this. There use to be real competition between browsers theat was before MS bundled IE with Windows.
Yes, I really do mean that. Stop caring so much about your country and start caring more about your WORLD and things will get better for everyone.
And so do I. I am proud to care more for my country than the rest of the world. The rest of the world has, over the last 50 years, only meant the ruin of American cities. We have done enough.
The vast majority of people in Europe will buy "what they think is best". Whether it's made here, there or somewhere else is totally irrelevant
I doubt it. I mean, I really don't believe that at all. It never has been true and never will be true.
I don't believe in free trade.
It hasn't worked for America. So screw it. I could care less about the "global" economy. I want Americans to have jobs at home.
This is my sig.
"The European Commission has concluded, after a five-year investigation, that Microsoft Corporation broke European Union competition law by leveraging its near monopoly in the market for PC operating systems (OS) onto the markets for work group server operating systems(1) and for media players(2). Because the illegal behaviour is still ongoing, the Commission has ordered Microsoft to disclose to competitors, within 120 days, the interfaces(3) required for their products to be able to 'talk' with the ubiquitous Windows OS. Microsoft is also required, within 90 days, to offer a version of its Windows OS without Windows Media Player to PC manufacturers (or when selling directly to end users). In addition, Microsoft is fined 497 million for abusing its market power in the EU. " from http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/04/382&format=HTML&aged=1&language=EN&guiLanguage=en
You mean that? How about the part at the bottom where they were fined and forced to release APIs? The rest of the release mentions they must also offer a version of Windows without WMP. That was the punishment. It appears the EU took it one step farther then the US did by including fines. This decision does not stretch to the current dilemma.
So, once more, how does this relate to the current topic? In fact, the wording specifically mentions "near monopoly" not an actual monopoly. What that means in the EU legal speak I do not know, but in the US that means you are not a monopoly and as such you will not be treated as one. (Which, usually means you are broken up into smaller companies or are under government control until you can be.)
And since when does legal = fair? Have you seen some of the garbage that gets passed into law?
"Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!"
Simple, they should use a "first launch" type applet that when Joe Sixpack clicks "Intarwebs" the applet comes up, displays a default list of browsers and a download link, or if possible, update from a central server list with the newest choices.
In practice, make it close to KDE's "Get Hot New Stuff" feature...
Stop caring so much about your country
You know what? It is high time the USA start caring about its country and less about the world. All we hear about is the world this and the world that and all the world does is drop stuff on our shores, reject any products we make, trash our culture, abandons us in war.
Screw the world. That's my motto.
I call on all Americans, of any political party, to purchase American products, to reject military alliances abroad, to bring our troops and our jobs with them. We have an entire section of a continent, with plenty of food and natural resources. There are 300 million of us. Let's make for ourselves, protect for ourselves, and rediscover ourselves. We can become a great producer of goods and wealth again, but for now, let's kick all the foreign goods out.
This is my sig.
Now that Bill is retiring...
What if MS just said, Screw This, we're not going to be MS anymore since Bill is leaving.
We're developing a new OS and ending support for all "Microsoft" branded products. Good luck, thanks for all the fish, yadda, yadda. Imagine the pure Chaos that would ensure. Lol.
Just include Lynx and be done with it.
Honestly, I'd just like to take this opportunity to thank the EU for one of those decisions that make software development just that much harder for all of us.
Maybe you're too young to remember, but Netscape 4 was truly far superior to anything Microsoft had developed up to that point.
Actually, one thing that annoyed me about "Navigator" (as it was referred to in my circle of friends back then) was that they integrated newsgroup, e-mail, web browsing, and web-authoring too tightly together.
This was back in the days of the "blink" tag, so I don't think anyone was really thinking about W3C compliance back then. While I certainly care now about HTML4 compliance (and probably will care about HTML5 compliance as soon as Firefox 3 comes out), I didn't really care about it back then, and can't say whether Navigator or Explorer was "more compliant". We just knew certain tags worked in one browser, and other tags worked in the other.
Back, then, as far as I remember, all the browsers seemed equally suited for web browsing (even Mosaic -- remember that one?), and IE was bundled with Windows, so it was the most convenient option. Plus, IE was free, where Navigator had a "Gold" edition which cost money, and a free edition which was implied to be inferior in some way (I guess to get you to go buy the gold edition).
"here are two sets of rules, those for Microsoft, and those for Apple."
No, there is the set of rules for the convicted monopolist Microsoft, and then no rules for anybody else, including Apple, Linux (distributions thereof), BSD (distributions thereof), Sun, ...
And I agree with the grand-parent-post that having one rule set of rules for Microsoft, and a different set of rules (call it the "null set", if you like) for "anybody else" kind of sucks. I fully understand the argument behind it, but I still think it's a bad idea.
I think the GPP's core arguments still apply and are left unaddressed:
Sure, Microsoft killed off Netscape in the past. But Netscape was a "for-profit" project. You had to actually pay money to run a copy of the "Netscape Navigator Gold" webbrowser. Firefox is open source, not-for-profit, and open source, so it cannot "go bankrupt". It's open source, and so whoever wants to keep working on it and keep working on it. Microsoft cannot kill FF. Isn't that protection enough? Doesn't this show that the current situation is not analogous to the past situation?
Fix Firefox so it doesn't crash, bog down the machine and etc. when too many windows are open. I've been waiting for this since 1994.
After 15 years, a couple of name changes and 2? (I think) complete re-writes this ought to be fixed.
OK, OK, I know you kids don't understand what I am talking about, so I will try to translate:
The 20th century called, they want their browser back!
Of course. Long live nano!
Is this what we want all of America to be? I don't think Americans should think so.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3086/2375928618_8f579450f2.jpg?v=0
http://www.wsws.org/images/n25-fire-480cap.jpg
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1011/1138545413_4870e4c2b2.jpg?v=1193596229
http://www.abandonedbutnotforgotten.com/Abandoned%20Factory,%20Luckey%20OH/IMG_2774.JPG
http://www.boatnerd.com/news/newpictures03/2003-11-d-03-mission.jpg
http://hadesarrow.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/cle_3.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v348/troubledxdreams/IMG_3244.jpg
http://flickr.com/photos/11135669@N07/1132803997
Yep, free trade is working great. The evidence is there for everyone to see!
Looks like you've got a winner of a plan there.
Retard.
Kick the foreign occupiers companies out.
This is my sig.
which is exactly why right now i'm enrolled in a Red Hat course @ ECU. i was previously taught c++ in msvs2008, but i know gcc and eclipse and others work just fine. yes, i will have to take a microsoft server course, but this school is alot more linux friendly than most places. vote with feet and $$. thats why i am here, one of few red hat certifying schools.
Who cares? If consumers know enough about alternative browsers to decide which one they want from a Windows Wizard then they are capable of downloading the browser of their choice. Confront most people with a choice of do you want IE, FF, Safari or Chrome and they are going to crap themselves if they have no idea of what that means. Choice is already available for whoever cares and choice is just plain confusing for my mum. IE will do her just fine.
Application writers *really* need to have: an API for showing richly formatted help text in a standard format, and more generally an API to embed HTTP/HTML into their applications without having to write it themselves or ship (a hundred different incompatible versions of) it with their product. There also has to be a way for the OS to update itself (either/both automatically and with user intervention via a reasonably easy to use UI) over the internet to respond to security problems.
Is anyone *really* going to argue that an OS can eschew these and not be a joke? I could go on with a bunch more API requirements, but those are entirely sufficient to make the point.
Yes, in theory, any or all of these functions could be provided in a different way, or from different vendors (possibly excepting the update mechanism). They could even all be different, but it would be for no particularly good reason. It was a real joy, let me tell you, writing .HLP files (not).
We are not really in EU but, very close to it. We enforced MS to change not only a browser but its logo too: http://www.microsoft.ba
Just create a EU version of Windows that doesn't come with anything (no browser, no calculator, no text edit - nothing, charge 400% more for it. That'l would learn em!
Yes. My apologies, I didn't state my point clearly.
The extra icons clutter up the desktop. While we think it's a good idea to include multiple icons, in reality users will be complaining, as evidently demonstrated for HP and Dell PCs.
A new user's reaction is to either ignore these icons, or think "why don't they simply help us choose the best one, then include only that one?"
A savvy user's reaction is to grumble, delete the extra icons, and download the latest official (unmodified) versions.
Either way, these extra icons will not really appeal to the users... in my humble opinion.
"Right now, it is near impossible to make Windows not pop up IEXPLORE.EXE in certain cases, where it should simply use the default browser"
Examples?
How many of those are Windows components?
How many of those are Microsoft products?
Genuine questions - thanks in advance
This ruling seems idiotic to me. I can already choose what browser i want to use. I install windows, open IE, downloaded firefox, and never see IE again (unless i run into the rare website that doesn't play nice with firefox, then i'm glad to have IE as the alternative). The process couldn't be easier. ALL i need is an internet connection. Microsoft (or manufactures) shouldn't be forced to advertise other browsers. A good alternative might to be force Microsoft to create a version of windows that cost X dollars less and comes without a browser. Force them to unbundled the products, but don't force them to bundle someone else's product.
IE8 - what number should I call to let you know?
It has incomplete (barely there) support for all the weirdness that goes into ACID3, but the XHTML and CSS2.1 support is very good now. I design for IE8 and completely ignore IE7, and I find that my pages work just fine in Firefox and Safari without a single modification now.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
There are already two bundled browsers:
- iexplore.exe
Slow, insecure, buggy rendering
- telnet.exe
Fast, secure, no rendering bugs
and yet somehow we managed just fine without the government doing shit.
Apple is not a convicted monopoly. There is a big difference. MS plays by a different set of rules now... though, sadly, in the US it is functionally still the same set of rules...
On a personal note: The interesting thing to me now is how we tech peoople were rejoicing when MS was legally convicted as a monopoly. We all wondered what would happen. Would MS be broken up into smaller companies? etc, etc.. But then nothing happened. Nothing. Barely a slap on the wrist with probably less effect than legal issues that aren't even newsworthy. Many seem to have forgotten those days, or perhaps were not yet tech people during those times. Remember that MS is still MS. Do a little research if you do not know what that means. Their monopoly conviction has only had a little more weight in the EU countries than is has in the US and so any enforcement of the "offence" they were convicted of is a step in the right direction for the sake of the societies for which our justice system is intented to benefit.
Like when they had to bundle an AOL installer.
No 'design' work needed really. All they have to do is drop installers for firefox/etc on the desktop. If you cant get online to download them, you most likely don't need a browser anyway.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
After they crushed Netscape? Maybe you're too young to remember, but Netscape 4 was truly far superior to anything Microsoft had developed up to that point.
I'm not too young to remember, and I do vividly remember IE5 (that's the one bundled with Win98 SE, in 1999) being far superior to NN4 back in the day; both in terms of speed, buggyness, "bloatness" (memory consumption etc), and - ironically, from today's perspective - W3C standards support - especially CSS. All while Netscape kept trying to push their own messy proprietary HTML extensions, such as layers.
People still remember that Microsoft was the one who invented the MARQUEE element, but forget that Netscape gave us BLINK. Of course, Microsoft is still around, so it makes sense... but it's still worth remembering both (as well as the fact that, on the other hand, Netscape gave us JS, and Microsoft gave us AJAX).
Well they could simply force any browser on the market to respect standards. A bit like the Euro safety standard: Euro NCAP for cars.
If the new browser do not respect the current standard like HTML 5 in 2009, it can't be bundled with an operating system.
Prolem solved. IMHO.
Well, I guess it would be "problem solved", in a sense that no browser would be allowed to be bundled with Windows at all. I don't know any browsers today that are 100% compliant with HTML and CSS specs. IE is obvious, but for Firefox, you can still dig out some obscure stuff in the bug tracker, and I'm sure Opera has its quirks, too.
Besides, who'd determine compliance? Some government agency? I can imagine that - "100% HTML4/CSS2.1/ECMAScript3 compliant - EU certified". Not for free, of course...
Adobe Acrobat. I clicked a link in a PDF and it opened IE when IE is not my browser. This happened yesterday.
Learn to love Alaska
The only problem with your argument is that Microsoft tried all of that already. And it didn't work.
So, you're kinda wrong.
Safari.app vs iexplore.exe is quite a difference.
Iexplore.exe has its own unique pseudo-shortcut on your desktop (no shortcut arrow!) that can be set from the Desktop control panel. Its options actually live under 'Internet Options' in the system-wide control panelâ"including all the various Network Security Zone management. And before XP SP2, you could type a URL into a Windows Explorer window and have it magically morph into a pseudo-Internet Explorer window and back.
This is Microsoft actively merging its browser into its OS.
Safari.app on the other hand is a regular application, it has its own regular preferences window and regular file associations. All the Safari UI is contained in the app bundle, and the browser adds quite a lot on top of the WebKit rendering engine (smart download handling, inline find, PDF viewing, RSS, dashboard widgets, form autofill, history, search, etc.).
Nowhere on Windows is there as clear a separation between Internet Explorer and MSHTML as there is with Safari.app and WebKit.framework. Internet Explorer consists of many parts spread all over your system, both files as well as UI controls. For proof: go download the stand-alone versions of IE6 and IE7, and see how many DLLs they have to replace to work.
>Exactly. There are two sets of rules, those for Microsoft, and those for Apple.
Your logic is asinine. If Apple is to be prosecuted then you first have to prosecute M$ because it is much bigger. If you instead want to set the precedent that M$ can get away with anything it wants because it is so big and has drawn this out for 10 years (to the point where it is almost moot) then go ahead.
Your logic is this: A and B are both unlawful monopolies that are getting away with it. B hasn't been punished yet so A should not be also. Neither A nor B should be punished.
Rational Logic: A and B are both unlawful monopolies. We can't punish both at exactly the same time. A is already started so we'll start with A.
Stupidity is its own reward.
Third, just because they were convicted of something (relatively minor concerning weight used) does not mean that everything you make them do is "fair".
No, but it means that there is a punishment associated with that conviction. In this case the punishment is quite appropriate because it redresses the problem they caused in the first place. This sentance is actually much more fair than most punishments like for theft where the person is put into jail. How does putting a person in jail redress a theft? It does not. On the other hand making someone stop doing something that has been determined to be a crime is exactly fair and appropiate.
Now you could argue that this ruling doesn't actually redress the crime in the first place but it certainly does more than letting them off the hook.
Stupidity is its own reward.
Well, IE5 came over 2 years after NN4 so its not exactly comparing apples to apples.
You're correct that in 1997 neither IE4 nor NN4 supported W3C standards correctly. It's not a bad time to mention that although NN4 gave us BLINK, IE4 brought JScript, Active Script, Active Desktop, ActiveX, and much much more in incompatibility.
At that point in time, NN4 has over 3 times the popularity and many felt at the time that it was a superior program. IE4 was also the first MS browser to have tie-ins with the OS and in fact was the first that may(or may not) be able to be uninstalled without borking the system. Within 2 years, NN was almost gone due to IE bundling with Win 95/98/98SE and no amount of polish or standards compliance was going to keep them competitive.
As a side note, MS may have given us XmlHttpRequest but AJAX wasn't coined until much later because Javascript/DOM standardization wasn't at a point yet where developers could sanely utilize the power of AJAX.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
I must admit I find myself vaguely bemused by the amount of moaning in the comments with regards to IE being necessary for Windows Update. Apparently some people need to get with the times (presumably not everyone has computers with enough power to get with the times, but surely this isn't everyone). Although at this point it may be worth just waiting for 7 anyway.
Being a convicted monopolist, Microsoft has certain obligations not to illegally tie software. This is the case here, it's violation.
As much as I like Apple, they are 1) not a convicted monopolist and 2) do not currently have the predominant market share.
The day that 99% of the places require you purchase a new computer with OS X we can complain about Apple's anticompetitive behavior.
Many would say that the loss of productivity caused by Microsoft forking so many standards has resulted in fragmentation of same standards.
If web developers didn't have to do the "if ie" code or adopt workarounds to do even simple CSS positioning and formatting for Internet Explorer (the predominant browser used for web browsing on all computers running Windows), or generate syntactically invalid code, there would be more time for everything else. Including pushing the envelope of new standards.
Yet another example of how the Microsoft monopoly hurts everyone.
Companies (and people) who make bad decisions must pay the consequences.
Microsoft is a convicted monopolist and has to play by different rules. They couldn't compete on a level playing field.
If it's easier for you to understand the phrase "they cheated" then by all means think of it that way.
Hope you're not programming for SharePoint 2007. The edit-in-place feature doesn't work although it works fine in IE6 and IE7.
Another example of why standards are important, here we have 2 major products released by the same company that don't play well together. This isn't some never-used functionality either, some fringe test case, this is a feature that all the people I know using SharePoint use daily.
Here's another for you, when one tab is busy refreshing data from SharePoint 2007, you usually can't open or switch to other tabs. With FireFox (which has limited SharePoint support) you can open and switch tabs when refreshing SharePoint 2007 pages with no problems.
Tested using IE 8 RC1.
A valid point, and deserves a higher score than 1.
I was thinking, reading this discussion, how can you make sure that people have up-to-date browsers? What if instead of forcing M$ to bundle other browsers (which ones?), they were forced to set up a "Welcome" page that opens up when IE is first started, that gives you links to downloading other browsers. These links would be on the M$ site, and they'd be required to keep them updated so that when new browsers come out, they'd be on the page, and people could just click and be shown how to do it.
Then, it would be up to Mozilla and others to make sure that the stuff behind those links is up to date, relevant and simple enough for Joe Blow.
A case in point, I was helping at a church library last night, and they still have an early Firefox 2 (and an unpatched XP Pro) despite me telling them to update their stuff when I last checked their system. Nothing protects people from their own stupidity!
Every problem has a solution that is simple, easy and wrong. Selling our Liberty for a little Security is a much too de
In fact, Windows, Fedora and Ubuntu in their latest incarnations are about equal as to the simplicity of the installation process. I have done all of them within last 3 weeks. All you need is to accept the defaults and set the time zone by clicking on a map in Fedora 10, for example.
A bigger problem is, that people buy these "bundled" PC's with crappy adware bundled with their OS (like a 30-day "trial" of Norton Antivirus - if you don't want to continue with it good luck getting rid of it without expert knowledge!).
Every problem has a solution that is simple, easy and wrong. Selling our Liberty for a little Security is a much too de
IE4 was also, IMHO, superior to NS4. Heck, I think IE3 was about on par. (I started with whichever Netscape had the throbbing giant blue N, in Windows 3.1 using Trumpet WinSock.) In fact, I believe we had specifically gotten a copy of IE4 on CD (separate from Windows 95) from some magazine or other to upgrade.
Seriously, causing the whole page to reload when you resize the window? WTF, Netscape?
I completely agree with Glyn. To show our support for this we have started an initiative over at OpenSource Release Feed, so please add you voice! http://www.opensourcereleasefeed.com/article/show/the-eu-microsoft-and-the-openweb
Which conviction are we talking about? In the case of the US and the original EU convictions several years back they were fined and punished. The end. You cannot say: "well you did something back in the day and were punished for it with no future stipulations put on the punishment, but we decided today it wasn't enough so we're gonna impose some craptastic restriction on you because the small companies are crying 'we want some of the pie tooooo'".
Now if there was a recent conviction I am not aware of that's another matter. But according to the articles being linked here there was no trial or convictions concerning the browser topic since it was brought up in January. It was a guideline/suggestion that if they do not do this they will then be tried and most likely found guilty of anti-competitive practices (again). And I'm saying that is bullshit. You want to attack them for distribution deals with hardware companies, go for it.
"Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!"
Please don't think of all Americans this way. I understand what you are saying, and I agree, but please don't hold it against all of us.
I realize far too many of us have this 'we're entitled!' complex going. Please don't hold that against as us a whole country. We're not all that way.
America didn't become what it once was by those people, they did do a lot to turn it into the mess it is now, but they aren't the ones who built America.
There are some of us (both young and old) that do know a little about history and why we got to where we are, and that getting here involved help and cooperation from the most world. Either by trade, or by taking in those from other countries who wanted a better life, and built one here.
I apologize for the image we now show to the rest of the world. It isn't the one I want you to see, any more than you want to see. I am a VERY PROUD American, I believe this is an absolutely great country to live in. I am not proud of the image we're showing the rest of the world these days however, and I will stand up and tell my fellow Americans this, right next to you.
I hope that you (and the rest of the world) will show us some consideration in this. We have contributed a lot to the rest of the world historically, and I hope we continue to do so. I'm certainly not asking you to not voice your opinion either, I would do the same if it was your country being stupid (regardless of what your country happens to be).
There is only one human race. We're all in this together, like it or not. But just like siblings we can't always agree, and sometimes, you may have to kick us in the teeth to get the point across, we are a stubborn, proud group of people, but we're not stupid, sometimes it just takes a good swift kick to make us realize we're being stupid.
And for the record, I hope the EU spanks them till they bleed. I don't think this is an intelligent solution to the problem, nor do I think it will actually accomplish what they are trying to do, but even in this case, doing something to get the point across is far better than doing what we did ourselves to MS, which was essentially nothing at all.
MS will probably pull something sneaky and use any loophole it can to continue its crappy practices. And when they do, I hope the EU jumps on them again, harder than before, until they get the point. But remember, bundling really isn't the problem, and should be perfectly allowable. Its the way Microsoft works with its vendors and OEMs based on its monopoly thats REALLY the problem, and THATS what needs to be stopped.
Make MS use a standard price chart for selling software, make it public, and make it apply to anyone who wants to sell MS software, and if MS doesn't like it, ban them from selling in the EU. If they try this bullshit of 'Only include IE or you can't sell our stuff', tell MS to shove it up their rear and find some other countries to rape instead of yours.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Oh yes, Sharepoint. I try to stay away from the functional side of that, it's my job to administer the application not its users.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
okay, so you're the only one replying, sadly... where's RedK at?
But I welcome and value your reply! :)
That said..
"Examples?"
1. Adobe Acrobat (Reader)
"How many of those are Windows components?"
Zero.
"How many of those are Microsoft products?"
Zero.
So this is where Microsoft is in no way to blame.
There's two situations to go from, from here..
A. You have IE as your standard browser.
In this case, it's doing exactly what it should be doing - opening IE.
B. You have a different browser as your standard browser.
In this case, Adobe Acrobat (Reader) has a coding error in that it has been hardcoded to open Internet Explorer. Write to Adobe telling them you do not appreciate their software ignoring your default browser.
I understand that Microsoft has used unfair leverage, but WHO HASNT? They all do it. This is corporate America folks... this is HOW we operate.
And I go back to my original point:
Why is it ok for Apple to use their unfair leverage?
Apple's OS comes with Safari, Itunes, Quicktime, Ichat, and many more. Hell when i install Itunes on windows, it basically forces you to install Safari through its automatic updates. By default "install safari" is on, and when Itunes goes to check for updates, it will install Safari. OH, but if you go to itunes's updates preferences you can turn off which "updates" you dont want.
Why by default does Apple, force you to DL Safari on windows, through itunes update?
The entire fucking Apple STORE is unfair leverage...
Everything Apple does is in the interest of APPLE. Microsoft has been trying to do the same thing, but with its balls cut off by some silly ruling.
Now i agree... MS was doing some unfair things with its API's etc, but come on...
Its time to let Microsoft do what they need to do. YES they shouldnt have some sneaky underhanded anti competitive API etc... but they shouldnt be forced to not include a web browser integrated into the OS how they see fit.
I want a better media player, without some EU or US judge saying "Well this media player is way too good... and the competition is complaining so... we find this unfair"
It cant work like this. Its been too unfair on MS... for too damn long.
The damage done by Microsoft's exclusivity agreements with OEM's won't be repaired in your lifetime, or mine. Simple as that. I have not heard of one single company that was put out of business by Mac. There certainly weren't DOZENS of companies either bankrupted or emasculated by Mac. And, there is the purpose of the court ruling - to make some attempt to right the wrongs of the past. If it could be demonstrated that Apple has bankrupted dozens of competitors, then THEY would be subject to similar court rulings. As for a "better media player", look to VLC, among others. Believe me, WMP is NOT "way to good", and that is NOT the reason it has sanctions against it. The only reason it is sanctioned, is that it locks out competitors with claims that windows won't work right without it, and/or that no other media player will work right without it's support. And, it's all nonsense. Run VLC for a month. Really, try it, you'll like it. Run it long enough to get used to it. If you genuinely don't like it, I'll owe you a coffee the next time we go to dinner together.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Bankrupting competitors? :P Thats the intent of any competing business isnt it? ;P
Apple is plenty evil. You know it :P
BTW, I wasnt saying WMP was "way to good". I was saying what if, WMP was "way to good". Right now it sucks. I'm just saying one day if MS could build the be all end all media player, wouldnt someone cry foul? Thats really my point. I'm almost certain MS is afraid to make a really good media player.
As for VLC... I run it all the time :) Great program.
i use Itunes for music though.
"Isn't that protection enough?" No, it isn't. Left to their own devices, Microsoft can put any sort of code into the operating system to check for a competitor's product, and kill it, with a warning to the user about malicious script, system instability, or any other FUD they desire. Check my sig. There is one, and ONLY ONE reason that Win3.1 will not install on DRDos, FreeDos, or any other Dos than MSDos. Functionally speaking, there is no difference between MSDos, IBMDos, or any of the others, but Win3.1 CHECKS FOR THE PRESENCE OF A FOREIGN DOS, and refuses to install. If Microsoft had managed to get away without discovery, in that case, they would STILL be doing similar things. "Warning: Microsoft cannot support the installation of WinAmp, Windows Installer will now exit and reverse any changes to the system!" Or, maybe even a BSOD without explanation when you try to install a competitor's product. Just code it into the kernel, no one is allowed to look at the kernel, remember?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
One PC at a time.
Here's my way - Turn the paradigm on its head.
When my son sits down to play Ben 10 or Bob the Builder games on the web, he knows he has to click on the FireFox icon to go on the internet. Which is the only icon on his desktop.
He doesn't even know IE exists.
I tell my Wife not to use IE because its not secure. Any time I have to reinstall a windows machine I install the latest FireFox then remove all IE icons from the desktop and start menus.