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The History of Microsoft's Anti-Competitive Behavior
jabjoe writes "Groklaw is highlighting a new document from the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (PDF) about the history of Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior. Quoting: 'ECIS has written it in support of the EU Commission's recent preliminary findings, on January 15, 2009, that Microsoft violated antitrust law by tying IE to Windows. It is, to the best of my knowledge, the first time that the issue of Microsoft's patent threats against Linux have been framed in a context of anti-competitive conduct.' The report itself contains interesting quotes, like this one from Microsoft's Thomas Reardon: '[W]e should just quietly grow j++ share and assume that people will take more advantage of our classes without ever realizing they are building win32-only java apps.' It also has the Gates 1998 Deposition."
OK, Microsoft bundles a browser with the OS.
Bundles-schmundles.
Get over it. All GNU/Linux distributions bundle a browser, an office suite, a photo editing program and a bunch of compilers with an OS, nobody says that it's anti-competitive and it doesn't help GNU/Linux to gain market share.
Microsoft bundles with their OS a crappy browser that breaks web interoperability and locks people on Windows, 'cuz they think they need those crappy nonstandard sites - yes, those still exist in 2009; now that's a problem.
I don't want to hear about the bundling anymore.
I really don't understand why people would prefer Windows, all other things being equal.
The first time I set up a network laser printer, it went like this.
1) Click on Printers in the Start Menu.
2) Click "Add Printer"
3) Click Next.
4) Type in IP Address.
5) Click "Have Disk" and point to drivers, which are sitting on the desktop.
6) Done.
Total time taken - almost 3 minutes.
Downloading the drivers went like this:
1) Open Firefox
2) Type in [printer name] drivers in the address bar. (this is an automatic google search)
3) Click download and wait.
Total time taken - around 45-60 seconds.
I assure you that it was not this painless in Linux. In terms of GUIs, I would rate Windows as #1, OSX as #2 (putting priority on stuff relevant to new users), and Linux as #3/#4/#5/etc. (depending on the distro and desktop environment)
Have you ever fired up a modern distro, like Ubuntu? It is possible to use it without once opening up the commandline, except perhaps to copy and paste some commands -- and I think even people paranoid of the commandline know how to copy and paste.
I have. I wrote a post just above, which I'm sure will be modded as flamebait. After all, I slandered Ubuntu's GUI shortfalls, and this is /.
My biggest beef with linux is it doesn't prompt to elevate privs like OSX does. This is an incredible time sink if you're doing something for the first time.
A very frustrating GUI flaw.