Windows 7 To Be "Thoroughly" Tested For Antitrust Compliance 364
CWmike writes "Technical advisers to the antitrust regulators who monitor Microsoft's compliance with the 2002 antitrust settlement will test Windows 7 'more thoroughly' than earlier versions of the operating system were tested, according to a new status report filed with the federal judge watching over the company. Microsoft is also facing renewed scrutiny from the EU, which two weeks ago filed preliminary charges against the company over bundling IE with Windows, and said more recently that Microsoft 'shields' IE from competition."
Virii (Score:2, Funny)
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If we keep using it, it will eventually become accepted.
Yeah, but who wants virii?
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Grammar Nazii?
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I am skeptical (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft's compliance with the 2002 antitrust settlement will test Windows 7 'more thoroughly' than earlier versions of the operating system were tested, according to a new status report filed with the federal judge watching over the company.
Wasn't this done for XP? If I cannot remove IE or Windows Media Player, then these folks will not have done their job.
But the better move would be to force Microsoft to use open formats for all their applications. That way, we all can be sure that alternative apps have the opportunity to work as required. The only hindrance here would be for programmers to "deliver."
Re:I am skeptical (Score:5, Insightful)
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But the better move would be to force Microsoft to use open formats for all their applications
"But the better move would be to force Everyone to use Microsoft products for all their work"
"But the better move would be to force Everyone to eat Wheaties products for all their lives"
"But the better move would be to force Everyone to do what Uncle Sam wants for all their lives"
See the problem with forcing people/companies to do things? Regulation is important, but there needs to be a time where you gotta say "hold on this is overstepping". Put it this way - if you created a product (think time a
Re:I am skeptical (Score:5, Interesting)
Put it this way - if you created a product (think time and money) for sale so you cuold make profit - how would you feel if someone came up to you and said "No sorry, you need to invest more time and money and configure your product the way *I* want it, not how you want it.
We have this thing called "rule by law" where we write laws that all companies and people are expected to obey. That way, companies are not surprised. They know the laws in advance and can reasonably expect those laws will be enforced. The problem here is not that the government is suddenly changing the rules. antitrust laws have been on the books for a hundred years.
No, the surprising thing here is that one company broke the law to drive other companies out of business, and that law was not effectively enforced. A good analogy would be a law that says you can't go rob liquor stores with a gun and if you do you go to prison and can't own a gun (the means of your crime) for the rest of your life. So some guy goes and robs a liquor store, and when he's dragged into court he donates half the money to the judge and sheriff's re-election fund. Then they decide to waive the jail time and let him keep his gun. He then goes on a robbery spree, and continues his donations. He gets sued and loses, but the settlement is less money than he's making as a robber. He gets arrested in Germany, but they give him a warning and ship him back to the states. The robber shopkeepers complain, but he takes out ads in the paper calling them whiners and says they are suing him about a wage dispute, when he really just robber them. He pays a few people to spread word of mouth and write editorials about how people are unfairly picking on him, saying he shouldn't be able to own a gun, when other people own guns.
MS broke the law and they knew the law before they did it. They're still breaking the law. It's hurting legitimate businesses, costing us money, and slowing innovation so we have worse products and services. There was no surprise for MS, just for legitimate businesses who stupidly though our courts were not so easily bribed and that the law might be enforced effectively.
Re:I am skeptical (Score:5, Insightful)
You are wrong. Forcing them to "open their formats" is exactly the wrong approach. OOXML is the kind of thing you can expect to see in all of their published documentation and there is no liklihood that anyone would be able to faithfully implement anything they have published. But if there are known standards for, let's say, browsing the web, they should be prevented from writing apps that use the internet protocols in ways that are not standards compliant and they should be prevented from supporting only MSIE under such circumstances.
On the other hand, opening their formats is also important for immediate relief. I am thinking long term and future uses.
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Microsoft itself still hasn't been able to produce a faithful OOXML implementation that adheres to their ill-gotten standard, and they wrote the format spec!
As it stands, Microsoft Office is on track to support ODF long before it will support the (MS)ISO OOXML spec, if it ever does.
The docx, etc. format currently used in Office 2007 is a proto-OOXML format that may not be completely compatible with the ISO "standard" OOXML.
Re:I am skeptical (Score:5, Insightful)
Open Formats: Designed so anyone can use them, and is encouraged. Usually fairly easy to implement and can save a lot of time in development costs.
Opened Formats: Designed to be hard for other people to copy. Trying to implement them can be rather difficult as it was tightly integrated with their applications that use it. So the cost of implementing the Opened Format is almost as much as it would be to purchase the software or the library to use it from the original vender.
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Personally I don't believe you can have a closed reference implementation control by one company who controls the standard. It just can't work.
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Re:I am skeptical (Score:5, Funny)
I agree interially with your argument, beside's how can I install Firefox without a default browser?
sudo apt-get install firefox
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I had assumed that between bit torrent clients, other peer-to-peer software, instant messages, email, and ftp sites that most people would understand that there is more than one protocol to transfer data over the internet. And that list excludes some protocols more common under *NIX.
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apt-get is designed to install for the system. it's perfectly possible to run most software (firefox, etc) in your home directory, e.g. local to a user.
Realistically, this isn't an issue. If I download PaintShit Photo Editor v1337 from sexyshareware.com, I'm going to be reeealy suspicious if it needs to run as root. If it runs as a user, then (theoretically) the worst it can do is hose that user. Running programs as a different user (nobody) fixes that, and is still easy.
If I get my PaintShit from my packag
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Certainly my parents couldn't work that out and they aren't techno-phobes.
They install their own OSes, and they can't figure out not-http file transport?
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Second.
I don't like/use IE or care for WMP (most media gets winamp'ed, only videos go for WMP, although I'll usually just put them on my BSD box and watch them in Noatun or Mplayer.
As for IE? It has it's uses... As the sibling posted - If lets you go and download Firefox (or other browser of choice) on a fresh system.
Having these on a system doesn't prevent you from using other software, they simply don't encourage you to do so. Preventing people from using other software should validly fall under anti-comp
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However, not encouraging people to use another's product is not anti-competitive, that's just rational practice.
Exactly. When Microsoft told OEMs that if they bundled another browser (let alone made it default) they'd lose their privileged pricing on Windows OEM, that was illegal (and wrong.) But when Microsoft put IE into Windows, they were (attempting) to improve Windows' functionality. When Microsoft made IE super non-compliant to standards and created their own new closed "standard" ActiveX to attempt to tie people to Internet Explorer, they were doing something fucked up, but not necessarily illegal - but that i
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Wasn't microsoft not allowed to include those things from the antitrust lawsuits? A free PDF add in for office is there but not included. I wish it worked for any program not just office, but that is what cute PDF and a slew of other programs are for. If PDF is an open standard and companies are free to implement it if they want too, why is all but microsoft allowed? The trend is that Apple and Linux are gaining ground, so if microsoft drops to 50% or less will the antitrust rules go away?
Here is the long a
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By being born early the child is still actually born. The only difference is the child's birthday.
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A human being is a human being. It does not matter if that human is an adult, teen, child, infant, or fetus.
Re:More EU "justice" (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is not so much bundling, as the impossibility to unbundle e.g. WMP and IE.
I do think, even as a Good European, that the EU would not be doing this if MS were French. Maybe if they were British.
Mods: Offtopic? Really?
Re:More EU "justice" (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is not so much bundling, as the impossibility to unbundle e.g. WMP and IE.
Legally speaking, that isn't true.
I do think, even as a Good European, that the EU would not be doing this if MS were French.
They convicted Telfonica of illegal bundling in violation of antitrust laws, and Telfonica is Spanish.
Is MSIE still in there? (Score:2)
Yup! It's non-compliant. Actually, what are the compliance conditions precisely? I recall that part of the problem was the bundling of MSIE but I can't say if the exclusion of MSIE was ever a requirement.
One possible solution.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft should follow the Linux lead here... the core OS should just be the bare necessities and there should be a user friendly GUI to connect to and download features and software that is supported on the Windows platform. This could be done for both free software (IE, Firefox, etc.) and software they currently charge for or that may be going to a subscription based system (Office).
They could kill two birds with one stone here, they'd just be packaging the OS so it is slimmed down and performs better A
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No! I don't want of officesuite, because I don't need one.
Why waste precious RAM loading a bunch of hooks & other junk for spreadsheets, powerpoints, and other programs I never use? Jeez. I remember when a multitasking OS could fit inside just 256K (Amiga OS). Although those days are passed, I don't see why it's necessary to have 2,000,000 K of RAM either. Eliminate all the optional shit (officesuites), and only load those components off the HDD as needed.
If they did that, they could probably p
Possible solution for whom? (Score:3, Insightful)
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damn good product? ha ha you are hilarious,
I tip my hat to you sir:)
If they'd broken up the OS and office suite into separate entities I believe everyone would have gained in the long run (inc MS)
I'd suggest splitting up the console side too... but you wouldn't want the xbox to go bankrupt now would you?
But if they don't include IE... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well first, I think the big idea is that Microsoft allows OEMs and customers to uninstall IE and install Firefox.
Second, I don't think it would be all that difficult for Microsoft to develop a wizard-based application that allows end users to choose which browser to install from a set list, and even fetch the chosen browser from the Internet if need be. I bet Google and Mozilla would even be willing to cooperate with Microsoft by providing them a static link that always leads the the most recent version o
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2. Configure the bundled Outlook Express with your POP3 settings.
3. Install Firefox.
Easy!!!
(sorry, no need for my coat, I'll brave the cold)
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That is simple.
You get all most used web browsers on the CD/DVD disk what your internet operator gaved to you.
Or are you saying that you use Internet without Internet connection?
When Microsoft and Netscape were fighting browser wars, internet operators included Netscape and Internet Explorer browsers to same disk where was applications to set your system settings correctly for operator.
Netscape was winning then because they both were competitors, even both added nonstandard features. Microsoft was loosing b
Re:But if they don't include IE... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Windows 95 came with a primitive web browser it was good enough to download Netscape.
For Windows 3.1 if you talented enough to get Winsock working then figuring out FTP was no big deal. Besides most of the stuff on the internet was via, Telnet, FTP and Gopher the Web only had academic papers and some cheesy corporate websites that were nothing more then a bunch of fliers done in HTML.
Re:But if they don't include IE... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But if they don't include IE... (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps because we actually RT 2nd page of the FA [computerworld.com], which suggests obliging MS to ship Windows with other browsers installed and presented to the user in addition to IE?
Wait... I'm on Slashdot, aren't I? Sorry, silly response.
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which is stupid. Nobody should dictate what Microsoft is or is not allowed (of their own creation) to include. The problem, however, is closed formats, APIs, and deals with OEMs. Those are the things that this stupid focus on bundling fails to address. Proper enforcement would focus on making sure you can interchange components at will. Let microsoft include whatever of their own creation they care to, so long as it can be removed and replaced.
Re:But if they don't include IE... (Score:4, Informative)
I think these lawsuits are just getting over the top.
This isn't a lawsuit. It's a criminal case.
Microsoft in this case is interested in enhancing the user experience by integrating the web browser into the OS. I think that's fine.
The laws around the world disagree. Would it be fine with you if the power distribution monopoly in your area decided to enhance your electricity using experience and ship you a new TV every year and roll the cost into your bill?
And this has somehow given Europe access to suing them for as much money as they like? don't you think that's stupid?
Well, it might be if it was true, but it isn't. Europe is charging them with a crime and working on punishing them for it while forcing them to stop, all without upsetting the US too much, since MS is a huge campaign contributor to both parties.
This is a clear-case of a company being attacked for being successful, this is just extra tax/bribes which is being conjured out of them, at least in asia the politicians call the bribes what it is: a bribe.
You mean like the large contributions MS made just before the US changed their mind about splitting them up for their crimes and instead decided to do nothing at all? This is a fine for a crime. That was a bribe, even if such bribery is stupidly legal in the US. The difference is the people in the EU making the decisions don't benefit, whereas the politicians in the US were re-elected using ads paid for by MS.
The fact they add IE to the OS, I don't find anything wrong with that...
I have no doubt. Of course you probably don't understand what the law was they convicted of abusing or why that law was written either. Maybe you should find out.
It's also a tax/blackmail because other OS-companies don't have this problem. Apple doesn't have this problem, most linux distributions don't have this problem.
Yeah it's funny how only the people who break the laws are convicted of breaking the laws. That's pretty nuts.
Hopefully they will win if they get sued because it's just a bloody stupid lawsuit.
Well, this article is about the US courts investigating MS's criminal acts. The EU thing is the EU looking to convict them for the criminal act, and MS will lose that case because it is open and shut. After reading your post the phrase 'bloody stupid" did come to mind, but that is unfair. You're probably not stupid, just ignorant and loud about it.
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bit torrent clients
other peer-to-peer software
instant messages
email
ftp sites
or even scp
It is not like there aren't many common ways to transfer data.
How to really make it anti-trust proof... (Score:2)
Think of it as going to Subways - choose the boring brown roll of an OS, then add all your own yummy meats, juicy salads, hot peppers and sauces.
Sell it cheap and you
That is exactly what MS fears the most (Score:2)
That windows will become nothing more then a gateway to the net. A basic OS nothing more and everything else is supplied by others. Because a basic OS isn't that hard to write. Most Uni IT students do it as an assignment. You think Linus was the first guy to program an OS at home? Hardly.
The trick is that building a complete solution is what is hard to do AND is what MS has made a fortune out of doing. MS doesn't sell an OS, it sells ALL the tools you need to run a computer. This in itself is not enough, w
I user IE exactly once on a new computer (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.getfirefox.com/ [getfirefox.com]
Is it still an issue? (Score:3, Interesting)
like I said in the last thread, Is IE that big of an issue when it's losing market share to competitors? IE8 isn't going to save it because it still has abymissial JScript performance and as more sites everyday are using AJAX, IE gets slower and appears to lock up more.
Over the last 2 years, it lost market share, and According to these guys [hitslink.com] IE dropped from 79.9 down to 68.1. Now Google chrome is in the mix and already eclipsed Opera's share of .7% within 4 months and stands at 1% market share, and it only going up from there.
This isn't 2000, When all you had was a reliable and fast IE, a buggy Mozilla, a decripid and virtually useless Netscape, and a "HTML compliant" Opera that can't render any site correctly. Now, there's a slow and locking up IE, a reliable and fast rendering Firefox, a solid preforming Safari, a super fast and easy to install Chrome and a better, but still renders funny sometimes Opera.
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The problem with bundling IE isn't an issue with computer-savvy folk like us, but rather with Joe Sixpack who isn't going to go out of his way to get a new browser when he's already got one bundled with his computer.
This brings up an interesting point.
Lets say that they do get Microsoft to actually do some proper programming and separate out IE from Windows so that it can be uninstalled in such a way that the OS can go about it's business. Furthermore, lets say that they even get Microsoft to develop a wizard during installation that lets a Joe Sixpack choose from a list of browsers to install.
Is this going to make ANY difference to Joe Sixpack or is he still just going to install the first one on the list (which woul
is this a little one sided? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Safari is bundled with OS X, as are a lot of utility programs. However, you can easily download and install another browser and delete the safari.app file from your /Applications folder. Then you can run System Preferences and set your default browser, if the browser itself hasn't already done so. And anyway, Apple has not been found guilty of violating the Sherman Act. Microsoft has, therefore different rules apply to them.
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Safari is bundled with OS X, as are a lot of utility programs. However, you can easily download and install another browser and delete the safari.app file from your /Applications folder. Then you can run System Preferences and set your default browser, if the browser itself hasn't already done so.
None of this is important to antitrust abuse.
And anyway, Apple has not been found guilty of violating the Sherman Act. Microsoft has, therefore different rules apply to them.
No, the same laws apply to both companies. The case against MS, however is made simpler because most of the findings of fact are done and because MS is a repeat offender. Apple can bundle anything they want with OS X or Safari because that does not constitute antitrust abuse. You have to be leveraging monopoly influence through bundling, i.e. one of the bundled products has to constitute a monopoly. Neither Safari nor OS X is monopoly in the legal or economic se
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is this a little one sided?
No.
ive never had a mac so i wouldnt know for sure, but i would assume that OSX or leopard or whatever its called bundles something
They bundle lots of things. But bundling, in general, is not what MS is being charged with. They're being charged with undermining markets, bundling just happens to be the mechanism.
Analogy. Bob fires a gun into Tom and kills him. Bob is arrested for murder. Jake fires a gun into a target and wins the olympics. Jake is not arrested for murder. Is that one-sided, or is it that firing a gun is not illegal, while murder is?
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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Or, you know, grab a few million dollars a day again?
Has the world woken up? (Score:3, Insightful)
Now these people of power are waking up. It's not just the wining of nerds and does matter. Computers are like anything else competition is required or things become expensive and broken.
Closed source is broken anyway, but to have a company to make closed software on a closed platform, how can that ever be a level playing field?
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Closed source is not broken for custom or specialist software (it never has been) but for mass market software it is and always has been non ideal
Closed source is great if it is part of a "solution" package where you buy the hardware, installation, support, and maintenance, oh.. and a licence for the software, all from one company as a package
In mass market software you are so far removed from the developers and do not normally get support included so the support systems end up being the same as open source
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There is a very easy solution... (Score:2)
The only solution would be to enable the complete removal of Internet Explorer's GUI. The only reason I don't say to completely remove it is because it is crucial to Windows Update, among other aspects of that OS. However, to force the OS to tell the user, "You must install one of the above to get on the Internet," is ludicrous. The same people claiming that Microsoft's packaging are the ones who have no problem with Firefox being installed by default in Linux distributions. The only difference is that we h
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People don't upgrade from what they're given (Score:5, Insightful)
Right now, according to MarketShare [hitslink.com], IE6 and Firefox 2/3 are roughly tied for market share (about 20% to each). TheCounter [thecounter.com] says that IE6 has 34% of the market while Firefox has 17%, and even W3Schools [w3schools.com] says that IE6 still has about 20% of users.
The moral of this story is: lots of people don't upgrade. They don't even run Windows Update. They use the browser they got when they installed XP, and they probably don't even know anything else is out there.
This is why, whenever Microsoft ties an application to the operating system, the market suffers. It becomes really hard to compete in that space. Right now, nobody's making money selling a web browser that competes with the one that comes with Windows. This is the way it's been for more than a decade now. The antitrust action against Microsoft was nothing more than a slap on the wrist; it did nothing to restore competition.
If Microsoft is so interested in bundling high-quality apps with the operating system for the good of its users, then why haven't they bundled Microsoft Word?
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Additionally, a lot of people are running hand-me-down systems that are only powerful enough to run under Windows 98SE (which won't run Firefox).
Re:People don't upgrade from what they're given (Score:4, Insightful)
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Since you're relatively new here, I won't try anything really sarcastic. Just a hint. NEVER, EVER say anything nice about IE6 around here. You can get away with saying good things about Microsoft (in general, but only on Tuesdays and Thursdays). You can even diss Apple or Google occasionally.
But IE6? That's toxic. Like Plutonium. Or George Bush. Welcome to Slashdot.
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W3Schools lists the stats for their site only. It's not representative of world-wide market share at all.
Why not just... (Score:2)
Instead of having IE and WMP installed, they have just the link to the installer?
The user at their discretion should be able to decide if they want that bloat or not in their OS.
(either at runtime, or during the instalation)
Whats the problem? (Score:2, Interesting)
In 10 years when MS is gone due to their so called non competition (and lawsuits) we'll have the same issues with whoever is the BIG company at the time due to these laws not being enforced across the board. Either you can bundle whatever yo
*sigh* (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not necessarily what is bundled or not. It's their #!@$@ business practices and closed APIs. I really don't give a crap if an alternate browser is on the system or not. What they should care about is that it is easy to put it on, remove the one you don't like, etc. You should be able to mix and match as you see fit.
This focus on 'bundling' has always annoyed me. Why should we force microsoft to bundle anything that they themselves didn't create? that's stupid. We definitely should look into their dealings with OEMs though! That whole forcing OS/2 out of the market with their exclusive contracts were not cool. Educate yourself on the real criminal behavior: http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm [usdoj.gov]
To test for antitrust, they need simply test how easy it is to mix and match different components. If the OS is getting in the way of that, fine the hell out of them.
Ignorance (Score:5, Informative)
Look it's another antitrust story about Microsoft! Look it's already filled with dozens of comments by people who don't know what antitrust abuse is. Seriously people, you're making Slashdot look as ignorant as other Web forums. Don't people think it might be a good idea to know what they're talking about before telling us what they think about it?
Antitrust abuse is undermining free trade in a market using the large amount of influence a company or group has in a separate market. Antitrust laws were made because trusts discovered they could undermine capitalism by tying markets they controlled to markets they did not and then they did not have to work hard and spend money to make the best product in the second market; they could dominate it with an inferior product that did not cost them to produce. This also resulted in them having little or no motivation to please customers, improve that product, or reduce costs... undermining all the important benefits we were gaining from capitalism in the first place. Without antitrust laws, capitalism collapses into a series of competing monopolists, which is why pretty much every country around the world implemented very similar antitrust laws, which have stabilized economies and prevented the worst abuses.
Example: How to abuse a monopoly. Suppose I gain a monopoly or trust. It doesn't matter how. Say I contract with a city to lay the wires that distribute electricity. Fine, this is a common monopoly scenario in the US. Now suppose I decide I want to move into a new market, like selling bottled water. Legally, antitrust law says because water is a separate pre-existing market, I cannot tie those two markets together. The most common form of illegal tying is bundling. Suppose I start shipping every one of my electrical distribution customers a "free" case of bottled water every month. The vast majority of sellers of bottled water go out of business, because everyone already has bottled water. This is both unfair and destabilizes the market by driving good companies out of business without having a better product. Then, I slowly raise the price of electrical power distribution to cover my expense in purchasing and distributing bottled water. What if my water is not as good and tastes slightly off? What if the bottles are non-recyclable? What if it costs me more than it did previous companies and I'm passing on higher costs to you?
In capitalism all those problems are solved by the market. I'm motivated to solve them because it will make my bottled water more attractive and get me more sales. With monopoly abuse, I have no motivation to solve those problems. If people want electricity in their houses they will buy my bottled water, so who cares if it sucks and is overpriced? What can they do?
I'll tell you what they can do. They can pass criminal laws that make such bundling illegal. If you tie a product in a market where you have a huge amount of influence (either as a company or a cartel) to a separate pre-existing market, you are breaking the law. That law makes a lot of sense and has stabilized our economy an insured competition. A lot of people have proposed solutions other than antitrust law, that would let some currently illegal bundling continue and try to solve the problem in a different way, basically trying to solve a specific case by writing laws to cover that case instead of general laws that cover all cases. I think that is a myopic view and misguided.
So what did MS do? They took a product (Windows) where they had huge influence on the market and bundled numerous other products with it. These are products from separate pre-existing markets. When they did it, they knew it was breaking the law, but they figured they'd make enough money to buy their way out of trouble. They paid off companies with enough money to sue them successfully. They made huge campaign contributions to the people who were supposed to be enforcing the laws. They spent large amounts of money on misinformation campaigns to confuse people about the law and spread mi
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My problem with treating IE bundling as an antitrust issue is pretty simple -- I simply don't recognize browsers as being a separate market. They're more like an 'aftermarket accessory'.
Web applications are pretty pervasive these days. Social networking sites, online banking, web mail, Google docs, photo sharing sites, etc. are all examples thereof. In that context, a browser is merely another 'framework' on which applications run. An OS without this framework is an incomplete OS.
So I still contend that
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People did and do make money from creating and providing browsers without an OS attached. People sell browsers as payware directly. That's a separate market under the law. It's not even a question at this point.
You're misunderstanding my point. The browsers sold (for money) are aftermarket 'enhancements' to an OS. The reverse is not true -- nobody provides Desktop OSes without browsers.
You're making an arbitrary distinction, but it's a technological one. One could argue that an OS without BIOS to run on is incomplete and unusable and argue that on technological grounds. Antitrust law is about insuring the integrity of the free market and as such applies not technologies, but markets. It's not about what works with what, but about who buys what (or more specifically profits from what).
How is that arbitrary? I called out numerous, common, and specific consumer scenarios that depend on having a browser present, and concluded from them that an OS sans browser is incomplete. I can call out a specific case to invalidate your scenario as well -- if you get machines sans BIOS -- and bundle the BIOS with the OS -- how
Re:The EU is just bashing an American company (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, by making sure other browsers are not [fully] supported by their web service applications, they are locking out competing, STANDARDS BASED, browsers and client machines including those running Firefox and Mac OS X. It is not merely an issue of web designers not making things compatible, but whole applications and applications interfaces are closed to anything other than MSIE.
Re:The EU is just bashing an American company (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, by making sure other browsers are not [fully] supported by their web service applications, they are locking out competing, STANDARDS BASED, browsers and client machines including those running Firefox and Mac OS X.
Actually I can say that I've begun seeing websites where, if you visit them with IE, they say, "Sorry, but the page cannot be viewed in Internet Explorer. Please use Firefox, Google Chrome, or Safari." It seems that, by not adhering to standards, Microsoft may be starting to locking themselves out of competition.
Karma. Wouldn't it be funny if Microsoft had to scramble to get their browser standards-compliant because websites weren't bothering to support them anymore?
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That is not a bad idea ... and one, perhaps, I might attempt to sail at my own work place.
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I don't propose locking them out, but I do propose detecting the user agent and responding by putting up a message stating something along the lines of "Best when viewed with..."
My web people here spend time designing pages that work and then waste countless hours tweaking them to work with MSIE afterward. Best to let some things look "weird" in MSIE and post a message stating why.
Re:The EU is just bashing an American company (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The EU is just bashing an American company (Score:5, Informative)
Because supporting a property in JavaScript that returns the HTML string with in an element isn't going to break anything else. Just because something doesn't come from a standard doesn't mean it's not a good idea to adopt it. It's only when you adopt something that breaks a standard or is in conflict with a standard that it becomes a problem. Supporting extensions on top a standard that break nothing else isn't a problem.
Most of the problems around MSIE in terms of standards compliance have been fixed in IE 8. The other half of the problem, though, is ActiveX, which other browsers cannot implement on platform other than Windows. If ActiveX where implemented aa true open standard, without moving targets, without reliance on the underlying platform, then it would be possible to produce browsers on competing platforms that supported ActiveX.
Since Microsoft has deliberately chosen to keep certain details of ActiveX a complete an utter secret and tie it into Windows, there's no way for anyone to implement on a non-Windows platform.
This deliberate tie-in is an effort by Microsoft to create vendor lock-in. Microsoft can either compete fairly or they can fight dirty. They've consistently chosen to fight dirty and until they stop, they're always going to face criticism for it.
No Microsoft paycheck for you.
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Most of the problems around MSIE in terms of standards compliance have been fixed in IE 8. The other half of the problem, though, is ActiveX
They sure have good CSS 2.1 compliance with IE8. The other half of the problem is not ActiveX, though, it is EcmaScript (javascript) compliance and DOM binding compliance. It is not too much of a problem if you use one of the many good JavaScript libraries, but all of those have had to build provisions specifically for IE because of the poor compliance.
... ActiveX, which other browsers cannot implement on platform other than Windows. If ActiveX where implemented aa true open standard, without moving targets, without reliance on the underlying platform, then it would be possible to produce browsers on competing platforms that supported ActiveX.
Since Microsoft has deliberately chosen to keep certain details of ActiveX a complete an utter secret and tie it into Windows, there's no way for anyone to implement on a non-Windows platform.
This deliberate tie-in is an effort by Microsoft to create vendor lock-in. Microsoft can either compete fairly or they can fight dirty. They've consistently chosen to fight dirty and until they stop, they're always going to face criticism for it.
ActiveX is really COM objects. COM is a binary Windows standard for object oriented APIs. Incidently it inspired Gnome which uses a binary standard very much
Re:The EU is just bashing an American company (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you please explain why Firefox supports innerHTML, considering it is a Microsoft invention
Because (successful) software developers are pragmatic more than they are pedantic. One only has to look at the relative successes of Linus Torvalds versus Richard Stallman as a prime example.
Microsoft also invented Ajax (well, they were the first to implement the XMLHttpRequest [wikipedia.org]). Just because the devil gives you a pony doesn't mean he still isn't evil. And it doesn't make the pony evil by proxy.
I think I should probably stick to car analogies.
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. One only has to look at the relative successes of Linus Torvalds versus Richard Stallman as a prime example.
The GPL is more important than Linux. With out GPL there would be no Linux, it never would have taken off. The GPL makes open source projects sticky, making it easier to hit critical mass. It's why GNU/Linux is bigger than BSD. Sometimes pedantic is the long term pragmatic.
Having said that, I think Firefox is right to support innerHTML, and OpenOffice is right to read/write doc files.
Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
Just a simple example: the embedded FTP client in IE that integrates with Windows Explorer. It's a good idea, a sound implementation, but why should it be denied to other browser makers? It's not like I didn't pay for Windows Explorer.
Contrary to what you might think, I would like W7 to do a good job. I would also like to have it work properly in diverse networks, and be able to deploy applications and shares across those networks without regard to OS. I would prefer installing IE8 not to break some of my old .NET applications when it doesn't interfere with similarly ancient Java apps. If it takes Neelie Kroes to make Microsoft do this, I say bring on Neelie Kroes. She's now up there on my "great women in IT" pedestal along with Rear-Admiral Grace Hopper.
Re:Oh yea, we'll test it really hard. (Score:4, Informative)
Mod down, positive review of Windows (Score:5, Funny)
If we allow this sort of behavior to continue, it could hurt Linux adoption. MOD DOWN.
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You're serious? Like windows? *head explodes*
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Woooosh...
Re:Oh yea, we'll test it really hard. (Score:5, Insightful)
As much as I detest Windows in all forms, Windows 7 seems to be shaping up to be a half decent OS. Hate to have to admit it, but there it is.
Now all they need is a bash terminal, wget, vim, locate, grep, tail, touch, top, a package management system (emerge, apt, rpm - not really fussy), more text-based config files instead of a registry...
Re:Oh yea, we'll test it really hard. (Score:5, Informative)
bash? No - Windows 7 comes with PowerShell. In many areas it is much more powerful than bash - and it is certainly a better "fit" for Windows than bash would be (PS is object-oriented and object-based and practically all of Windows API is now exposed as objects either through COM, WMI or .NET). Note, that is not saying that PS would be better for *nix than bash.
Windows is moving towards xml config files - not the line-based delimiter-of-the-day config files of *nix. Xml files are arguably better for describing many more complicated structures. They also are more bloated ;-) . PS has support for reading/writing/manipulating xml files
Incidently, PowerShell treats the registry, certificate store, the PW function list etc. just as a file system. It means that to manipulate the registry you access registry keys/values just like directories/files - using the same commands.
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In many areas it is much more powerful than bash - and it is certainly a better "fit" for Windows than bash would be (PS is object-oriented and object-based and practically all of Windows API is now exposed as objects either through COM, WMI or .NET). Note, that is not saying that PS would be better for *nix than bash.
Feel the power:
Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_PingStatus -Filter "Address='127.0.0.1'" -ComputerName . | Select-Object -Property Address,ResponseTime,StatusCode
PING 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1): 56 data
Re:Oh yea, we'll test it really hard. (Score:4, Insightful)
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First thing to realize about awk is that it was really only necessary because bash pipelines are text-only. You need awk, cut etc. to "find" the correct columns and emit something as a result.
Once you move to an object-based pipeline the need for something like awk disappears, at least for combining commands.
Example: The PS ls command is an alias for the Get-ChildItem cmdlet. Executed on a filesystem it will return a sequence of DirectoryInfo and FileInfo objects. Standard formatting rules (the ToString
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How is it for example possible for Microsoft do demand premium for XP on workstations while at the same time they sell it for spare change in the netbook market
I think YAATL (yet another anti-trust lawsuit) is coming on :)
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