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Microsoft have been condemned heftily for anti-competitive practices. Do you approve of the Euro 497M fine?
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45The fine is just right0%3Not enough0%17Too much0%1Not justified, at all0%12Sitting on the fence0%11I don't use MS software, anyway0%1Brian (the devil incarnate)
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Not enough. Them suckers need to bleed.Join MURCs Distributed Computing effort for Rosetta@Home and help fight Alzheimers, Cancer, Mad Cow disease and rising oil prices.
[...]the pervading principle and abiding test of good breeding is the requirement of a substantial and patent waste of time. - Veblen -
not justified at all.
A audio/video player should be a basic component of Windows, just like there should be some virusscanning functionality in the next version of Windows.Comment
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I just knew you would come in........ROFLJoin MURCs Distributed Computing effort for Rosetta@Home and help fight Alzheimers, Cancer, Mad Cow disease and rising oil prices.
[...]the pervading principle and abiding test of good breeding is the requirement of a substantial and patent waste of time. - VeblenComment
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same to you
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is that according to Reuters as well?Originally posted by dZeus
not justified at all.
A audio/video player should be a basic component of Windows, just like there should be some virusscanning functionality in the next version of Windows.
Better to let one think you are a fool, than speak and prove it
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Actually I agree with dZeus, the fine for WMP is stoopid.
forceing them to open up the interfaces for interoperability on the other hand is a good thingJuu nin to iro
English doesn't borrow from other languages. It follows them down dark alleys, knocks them over, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.Comment
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I agree opening up interfaces is a good thing. I submit however that MS has indeed been guilty of "tying", i.e., using it's market power in the OS market to gain an advantage over competitors in the content market. Such usage of ones market power is forbidden by law, and it is good that it is. As, IMO, they broke the law, they must be punished.
It really is besides the point whether WMP is the better product or not. If it is, then it would acquire dominance on its own. The law is not against obtaining monopolies but rather against ontaining them by using another.Join MURCs Distributed Computing effort for Rosetta@Home and help fight Alzheimers, Cancer, Mad Cow disease and rising oil prices.
[...]the pervading principle and abiding test of good breeding is the requirement of a substantial and patent waste of time. - VeblenComment
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Sorry, I can't agree with you there. An operating system should be an operating system and not a software suite containing browsers, e-mail clients, word processors, media players, or ANYTHING that is not directly required to operate it.Originally posted by dZeus
not justified at all.
A audio/video player should be a basic component of Windows, just like there should be some virusscanning functionality in the next version of Windows.
Put it this way: one can buy all sorts of accessories that turn an electric drill into a grinder, a saw, a polisher, a wood lathe and goodness knows what other things it was never designed to do. None of these work as well as proper tools designed to do that job. So it is with Windows. When Gates & Co. saw that Netscape was cornering the market on browsers and e-mail clients, what did they do? They added a poor imitation of them into Windows, then pretended that they were an essential part of the O/S. When they saw Real was cornering the media player market (albeit with a horrible software), they started to offer WMP as part of Windows (with which it has no relationship). The sad thing is that the MS stuff is never as good as the purpose-built software (just look at Outlook/Outlook Express, if you don't believe me). So, they are adding accessories to Windows which do not work as well as the purpose-built tools but, by so doing, they are reducing the revenue of the real innovators and thereby stifling innovation.
MS is not a company of innovators; they are just plagiarists of what other people are better at, starting with Windows (the original thinking came from Xerox Corp.) and even DOS, which was an extension of an earlier system whose name has slipped my memory. Their apps are the same: Word was born out of the success of WordPerfect, which lost out when they couldn't integrate it into Windows, through MS not communicating to them some essential O/S data). If they can't copy, they buy the innovators out (cf. FrontPage).Brian (the devil incarnate)
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I like what Brian said.
I couldn't ever understand how software companies were coaxed into making product versions for DOS,OS/2 and windows (and Mac, but I can understand this one), when an operating system should be just that an operating system. I've lost some very functional programs due to windows not running them or not allowing them to run in later releases. And I always wondered if windows was the windows it should have been, would we have all these stoopid hardware errors, conflicts etc etc when we install new hardware? It's always a "lets see how this goes" I always felt sorry for our IT guys who have to answer the call when a user installs stuff on his work computer that messes things up.
Sorry my little uniformed rant. I woke up a little cranky..NEED COFFEE.Comment
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While the fine seems huge to average person, it's really a change for Microsoft. Think about 1% of what you have in the bank.
As for media player: Media player came with Windows since version 3.1. The only problem is that untill version 6 it had too little features to be used by anyone.
Bitching about Media player is like Adobe would say that there should be no image editor (Paint) in Microsoft. Only difference is the MS Paint is not a viable image editor, while MS Media player is more viable than Real player.
It's similar with browsers - IE5 was good browser compared to Netscape and another problem was that at that time people were still on dialup and as long as the one in Windows worked, no one would download another 25MB browser. Now that Netscape is gone, MS has ceased developing browser and Mozilla and Opera have overtaken it. I currently know little tech savy people who use IE as main browser.Comment
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It is not just the fine: Microsoft has been given 90 days to release a Windowsversion that does not have a mediaplayer...Originally posted by UtwigMU
While the fine seems huge to average person, it's really a change for Microsoft. Think about 1% of what you have in the bank.
I'm not sure... In a sense, a movie-player should be part of an OS, but on the other hand the behaviour of the movie-player is quite arrogant (the way it keeps linking itself to avi-files, the fact that you cannot remove it, ...)
JörgComment
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I don't mind...money for EU! Wheee!!!
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I think MS should definately sell a version of Windows without multi media support.
Let the third party providers write the drivers, mm interface control, and front end.
Most third party MM player/recorder programs sit atop a mountain of Microsoft programed infrastructure.
Virtually NONE of them would work anymore.
Then this silly idea would die real quick.
chuckChuck
秋音的爸爸
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I'm a fan of MS software...it may crash (so do poorly coded *Nix apps) , it may plagiarise other companies' work (cough-so does KDE-cough), but it is precisely because of this lovely integration among everything that I won't give it up.
As for the fine...just another line in a long Redmond balance sheet, why sh/would we ever care?All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.Comment
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