While the European Commission this week goes through the final steps to conclude its five-year case against Microsoft, the company’s legal problems in Europe are far from over and appear to be accelerating, antitrust lawyers and officials said.
More troubles await Microsoft in Europe
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In its ruling, the commission is expected to order Microsoft to offer PC manufacturers in Europe two versions of its Windows operating system: one with Media Player bundled in as it is now, and another version without it.
LOL I bet MS finds a way out of this. Maybe when the user starts up IE for the first time, they’ll be offered to download WMP.
Plus isnt WMP basically the standard right now for streaming video/audio?
This is just stupid.
whoops sorry, I screwed up my bold tag 🙂
Please let no Linux distros be delivered with any media player neither and hopefully not any webbrowser.
When will people bash Microsoft for the right reasons? Everyone deliver systems today with a bunch of apps preinstalled etc…
What’s next? MS not allowed to include Notepad because it competes with Abiword?
Please let no Linux distros be delivered with any media player neither and hopefully not any webbrowser.
When will people bash Microsoft for the right reasons? Everyone deliver systems today with a bunch of apps preinstalled etc…
What’s next? MS not allowed to include Notepad because it competes with Abiword?
But I can choose not to install Abiword and the reason I won’t use KDE is because I can’t get rid of their stupid web browser that Conquers nothing IMHO!
When a hardware manufacturer of computers has the right to decide what software is added to their systems at purchase time, a company such as M$ cannot leverage their dominance to force everyone’s hand, therefore the best wins and not necessarily the richest!
Till
Define standard. WMP; MS claims that its an intergral part of their OS and cannot be unbundled. If it cant be unbundled, then why is MS putting out WMP on Linux?
Same thing happened with browsers, email. Keep in mind now MS is going to do virus protection software. I know I will see statements to the effect, “why should we punish a company for making software better”?
Because they keep putting other companies out of business. Dependance on any 1 company is not a good thing. Please no comparisons to the utilitiy companies in the US. I have no desire to get into de-regulation statements.
It’s a matter of formats rather programs included or inorporated in an OS. MS, with their closed format politics, forces users away from their competition.
They might give you the choice of getting windows without media player – but you will have no other choice to purchase the version with media player bundled ……
So, what has changed? Nothing, really. A good example is Ofiice.
Plus isnt WMP basically the standard right now for streaming video/audio?
It probably is, for exactly the same reason that IE is the standard web browser. Having been convicted of abusing it’s monopoly power (a monopoly which is what makes it different from Netscape, AOL, Apple, or Real) and getting away with it with no real action being taken Microsoft appears to have decided it was above the law (as it now knew these what it did was illegal) and used exactly the same tactics again, twice against Real with streaming video, and AOL with instant messaging.
Hopefully this time there will be a real punishment imposed to show that corporations, all of them not just Microsoft, really do have to obey the law.
no you can not. It is so integrated with OS so is IE. It’s not the case with XMMS or other players in Linux. YOu can install them, choose not to and even unistall them. Do you get such options with Windows? No you don’t. I think they should do same with IE and Windows messenger too also with movie maker MSN Messenger. Take these applications out and ask user at the time of install whether to install them or not
>Please let no Linux distros be delivered with any media
>player neither and hopefully not any webbrowser.
Why not? there are not intergated with the OS you can have there source, delete them and even use them.
I also find the there is no reason to stip out IE and WMP from Windows i see no point in there but what i do think is that the should support standard and if they have a standard(or believe they have) the should open its source.
Standards only are valid when everybody can use them.
Same goes to Adobe and their PDF format.
>What’s next? MS not allowed to include Notepad because it
>competes with Abiword?
No Notepad is here to stay, next is for MS to open its source code so we can all sue them for using other peoples code. The shared code myth has tried to undermine this but as we all know shared code is something like: here ill give you a piece of code that i find ok to give to you and you may only lokk at it. All stuff illegal is stripped out and you signed a contract to not mention it..
I can hardly wait..in the maintime MS is rewriting/changing its code alla Longhorn and hopes the will sing it out until BullHorn gets released. Then they can open the source and say he look we did not steal anything! Before you know it the are going to scream: Microsoft the Open Company! and We invented Open-source, Open-Source is good for Business. etc. etc.
I think one of the more serious problems with WMP is that it looks like Microsoft are going to use it to leverage their Windows dominance in order to gain control over the online music selling and portable media player business.
Sure but what happens if the company that sells you your pc wants to include Mozilla instead of IE (as a service to their customers), with Linux no problemo. Under windows however you run the risk of becoming persona non grata is Redmont, something most companies can’t afford. (And of course IE will still be there and will be put back on the desktop by every installation of an ms software)
The problem is not that MS bundles Mediaplayer, Messenger, and Internet Explorer with MS Windows. Part of the problem is that they do it in a way that makes these applications glare as the unremovable default software for their purpose.
I cannot choose to ditch MS’s frontend to their HTML-render engine. IE pops up in webbrowsing unrelated situations. It is pervasively advertising itself. Same goes for mediaplayer. And same goes for Messenger. Why does messenger start, when I open Outlook Express? If I want to read email with OE and have messaging with AIM, why I am forced to see MSN Messenger pop up? All in all though, these are just obnoxious offences against good taste.
The real problem lies as always in their proprietary formats, which they can force upon a market through their sheer size. Those formats don’t have to excel (pun not intended) on their technical merrit. They just have to be bundled with Windows or Office and be advertised by their obnoxious frontends and voila they are the defacto standard, just because they happen to be in Windows of Office.
In a truly competitive market, the format with the most technical merrit and advantages would win, but right now this simply is not happening. The regulatory bodies are on to something, but as usual they don’t see the source of the problem. Removing the face (Mediaplayer frontend) of the lockin tool (file formats) is not going to remedy the problem.
The EU should have restored competition by regulating the formats. This could be done in two ways. One, MS opens up their file formats and makes them royalty free. Two, MS de-emphasizes their formats and starts using accessible industry standards, like (real) XHTML, MPG4, OASIS Office file formats. Unfortunately the EU is clipping of the leaves and ignores the root. This will not remedy the problem.
Please remember that the EU is the SECOND body to find MS a monopoly illegally abusing their power. The American DOJ came to the same conclusion earlier and they did sanction MS! This is not a EU thing and it is not a quick money grab. It will hurt things in the EU on short terms too. If MS is heavily fined it most likely will mean loss of jobs and guess in what continent the knife will cut. It will only bring long term benifits, if the market can/will return to competitive conditions.
Ronald, you hit the nail on the head. If remains baffling to me that in those instances where Microsoft has been brought before the court that those deciding have failed over and voer again to understand the nature of the monopoly and how it can bet be resolved(ie.ended).
If a court were to force microsoft to use standard, open, royalty and patent-free formats for all of their applications the whole issue of monopoly would become mute. As far as implementing such I wish the courts would a) mandate that Microsoft change their file formats for their applications to default to pre-existing standard, open formats which are patent and royalty free and 2) mandate that all existing undocumented protocols used in networking/printing/data exchange (ie. all of those protocols which are involved in networked environments necessitating interoperability and exchange between mulitple different OS’s) be opened and submitted to standards committes to become patent and royalty free, open standards.
This would be a challenge for Microsoft and would require them to re-engineer many of their technologies-forcing them to a) confront patent issues andforce them to either provide clean-room implementations of certain technologies or purchase said ip outright and b) this would leave their products, at least temporarily, in a state where the advanatges of their products coud not be measured in terms of their propietary formats/protocols.
Then in the next stage Microsoft should be given the oppurtunity to differentiate itself, once again, from it’s competitors through new features in their formats and protocols- with one major caveat- any changes to the their formats and protocols must be submitted to standards committees and subject to restrictions that they remain patent and royalty free with full public disclosure. For the issue is not merely the file formats. It is also the protocols used in networked multi-OS networks-regarding interoperability and exchange. And most importantly it is the ip licensing which is the root of the propietary formats and protocols.
Ip licesncing is used to hedge the value of their products-by virtue of the size of Microsoft and their monopoly they can prevent/curb smaller companies which produce said IP from licensing this same technology to Microsoft’s competitors. If Microsof wish to uses third-party propietary IP in their products they should be forced to purchase said IP outright-ie. the IP would then no longer be licensable.
This would clarify all of the patent and royalty issues and level the playing field. If Microsoft cannot purchase said IP- for whatever reason- then they should not be allowed to ship it with their operating system and Office applications. The fact is that Microsoft OS and Office have become parts of the public infrastructure- every buisness and every government is dependent upon this infrastrucutre to varying degrees. Where the government comes into this is clear and obvious- there are legal mandates in most countries which regulate the accessibility of publicly available data and regulations regarding the archiving and storing of such data.
If the technology used by the governments is hampered by patents and royalty issues and is not open and standardized to the point that the data used by them is easily exchangable between the various different OS’s and cumputer architectures used in such agencies the governmennt is failing to fulfill it’s legally mandated requirements. Of course they are not merely failing in this regard- they are sponsoring and enabling, further concretizing this monoloply and this is what must change.
The insight to be gained here is this: once a product becomes ubiquitous and so in-grained in everday usage that the work patterns(what types of and how such is performed) become dependent upon this technology this technology can no longer be held as propietary technology-it is not in the interest of the state, not in the interest of it’s citizens and not in the interest of the competing market for alternatives.
Such steps as I have illustrated here should be the first step in developing new requirements for all software which is used by governments-from agencies to school desktops- ie. that any and or all software which is purchased through tax-payer dollars must be subject to rigid criteries as regards open exchangability and OS/architecture/platform independece. This would negatively impact some small companies-but it would employ many, many more programmers-as they would be needed to fulfill this mandate.
Such steps would hault this monoploy in it’s tracks and open the door to a future where ubiquitously available software is subject to the public domain-ie. becomes goods for the citizenry of the society.
You know what I really find funny. They want MS to take IE out of Windows, but then how are people suppose to go on the internet? Anybody see the Catch-22? Also that would violate the contract with AOL which currently uses IE.
I also do agree that WMP is pretty much the standard now, that is because MS is the only one “giving away” the streaming software. It comes standard with the Windows Servers. Plus RealPlayer is just spy-ware now of days, and Apple QuickTime has it’s own problems.
I used the novell lan workplace ftp client to get my first browser for windows. Not having a browser shoved in your face on boot up is not an obstacle for most semi computer literate people, can still buy a copy of Netscape or Opera off the shelf at Fry’s. Microsoft when behaving as an illegal monopoly doing business as usual needs to be stopped. You can poo-poo and make all the justifications you want right up until they crush your company and then maybe you’ll finally get the point. What browser AOL ships has absolutely nothing to do with if or what Microsoft forces on windows lusers.
>>Plus isnt WMP basically the standard right now for streaming video/audio?
> It probably is, for exactly the same reason that IE is the standard web browser.
Er… do you mean because at the time IE was the only decent browser out there, competing with an absolute load of crap, i.e., Netscape 4, which screw up just about every w3 standard it could and fill the web with nasty update-on-resize javascripts? IE was king of the hill long before Mozilla 1.0 released (which, still, was slow as hell).
Only now we have a decent (and far better IMHO) alternative to IE.
The Windows Media might be or might not be of the same breed, still I still wait for someone to clear up if what the EU comission understands by “WMP” (is it the whole video and audio framework service that just about every application showing video uses or just the Player application?), what does MS understands by it too, and if they are the same thing.
I know they were cheap shots that is why I reported myself for being off topic.
But I just hate when people like “Never Mind (IP: —.015-55-74686e1.nc.bredbandsbolaget.se)” make stupid comments, and don’t even give a node for the help. We don’t care we don’t hold any grudge with Europe so it is tough for us to understand why they hold a grudge against the US.
Call me neive but I still beleive in “do one to others as you would want them to do to you”.
>> Er… do you mean because at the time IE was the only decent browser out there, competing with an absolute load of crap, i.e., Netscape 4, which screw up just about every w3 standard it could and fill the web with nasty update-on-resize javascripts? IE was king of the hill long before Mozilla 1.0 released (which, still, was slow as hell). <<
Exactly, Microsoft decided to put out a good product and change the web browser industry. Mozilla people really have Microsoft to thank for it’s browser, because with out Microsoft putting Netscape out of business with a better product. Netscape would never have been opened up and you wouldn’t have Mozilla, FireBird, and all the other Mozilla derived products.
All you Linux guys would probably still be using Lynx.
If a court were to force microsoft to use standard, open, royalty and patent-free formats for all of their applications the whole issue of monopoly would become mute.
I’ll slip right back out of grammar-nazi mode in a moment, but the word you’re looking for at the end there is moot, not mute
. I agree with this except for one major caveat: in many of these areas none of the major competition is dealing with royalty- and patent-free formats, either, and in many cases is beating Microsoft in terms of actual use of the formats (as opposed to simply installed base of client front-ends, though the installed base is used to sell the formats). It would also mean that MPEG formats are right out the door for media software. Forcing Microsoft to forego MPEG formats is not the right way to go, so I’d ammend that statement to say that Microsoft could not develop or maintain formats which were not royalty- or patent-free, though they could still support them. In other words, force them to open up their own formats or develop new ones that fall under these guidelines, but don’t force them to only support formats that fall under these guidelines, because some formats are too widespread while still entangled by these issues.
As far as implementing such I wish the courts would a) mandate that Microsoft change their file formats for their applications to default to pre-existing standard, open formats which are patent and royalty free and
In order to do this, you have to add that Microsoft would have to patch all currently-supported software to deal with this change. They shouldn’t have to retroactively apply this behavior to unsupported software, and they shouldn’t be allowed to let applications slip (or be accelerated) out of support, but it has to go across the board, not just to their latest products. End-users don’t like format changes, especially on Office documents, as Microsoft learned when Office 97 was released (the last time they had compatability problems with a new Office format). Office XP added read support for XML formats, and Office 2003 has added significant write support for it (so Office XP can read those formats). My guess would be that the next version of Office will write some XML format by default, with all supported versions (XP, 2003, whatever’s next) being able to read it. However, if they simply updated Office 2003 today to write out only XML, it would lead to corporations all over the world staying at 2000 or XP, with the closed formats, and the same would happen if it were government-mandated without retroactive updates.
2) mandate that all existing undocumented protocols used in networking/printing/data exchange (ie. all of those protocols which are involved in networked environments necessitating interoperability and exchange between mulitple different OS’s) be opened and submitted to standards committes to become patent and royalty free, open standards.
I’d have to say I agree with this, even though most of these areas are already well-supported by other implementations outside of MS’ world. It should also be noted that the standards committees should not be permitted to change the specifications until the MS version has been documented and placed into standard. This is often the biggest hurdle with standardization, that things are too often changed in really bad ways, and the first step in this case should be more to document the implementation than to create a good standard.
This would be a challenge for Microsoft and would require them to re-engineer many of their technologies-forcing them to a) confront patent issues andforce them to either provide clean-room implementations of certain technologies or purchase said ip outright and b) this would leave their products, at least temporarily, in a state where the advanatges of their products coud not be measured in terms of their propietary formats/protocols.
Forcing acquisition of IP is not the right way to go, in my opinion. Instead, they should be forced to remove anything they can’t readily open due to IP entanglement. Again, though, I would stress that they should be permitted to support proprietary formats that are outside of their control. The primary areas where this would help to bring competition back to product features would be IE and Office. In WMP, Messenger, and many other areas, the competitors are too entrenched in format/protocol warfare to really compete in a feature comparison. Opening up WMA and WMV formats only brings competition for the backend that streams those formats, and choice of playback for the individuals (which would definitely be a good thing, though there are many ways in which I think WMP is a better player than most of the competitors, and I don’t use WMA or WMV formats).
Ip licesncing is used to hedge the value of their products-by virtue of the size of Microsoft and their monopoly they can prevent/curb smaller companies which produce said IP from licensing this same technology to Microsoft’s competitors. If Microsof wish to uses third-party propietary IP in their products they should be forced to purchase said IP outright-ie. the IP would then no longer be licensable.
There’s really a much better way to handle this: instead of MS purchasing IP to simply put into what is nearly the public domain, they should be forced to an open review of their licensing agreements when licensing 3rd party IP. All licenses must be non-conditional with regards to what the 3rd party can do with the IP in the future, and should also be limited in that MS could not pay more than the IP is believed to be worth in the market, to prevent MS from artificially increasing the price of the IP for other vendors.
As for the rest of your statements requiring government standards for open software (in the sense that they should not be locked to a vendor by the software they use), I whole-heartedly agree. The US government’s shift to MS Office back in the early-to-mid-90s resulted in a shift in the software used by government contractors, and then companies that worked with government contractors, and all of the individuals involved. It was probably one of the biggest, and most widely ignored, factors for the fall of WordPerfect and a handful of other applications. On the other hand, in many of the areas I’ve worked with, the government has chosen “open” standards in such a way that they have almost locked themselves into a Sun environment that not even Sun may be supporting for much longer, though the hardware side of the environment may be around longer than the software side.
>> I used the novell lan workplace ftp client to get my first browser for windows. Not having a browser shoved in your face on boot up is not an obstacle for most semi computer literate people … <<
Well that is pretty much the point, how many users tha buy computers now are semi computer literate enough to download a browser through the command line FTP program?
>> can still buy a copy of Netscape or Opera off the shelf at Fry’s. <<
Yeah that is great maybe I will drive from PA over to CA to buy a copy of a crappy browser like Netscape that has ton of Spyware and AOL crap all over the place. That will be a week and 6000 miles well spent.
>> Microsoft when behaving as an illegal monopoly doing business as usual needs to be stopped. You can poo-poo and make all the justifications you want right up until they crush your company and then maybe you’ll finally get the point. <<
Usually people are happy to get bought out by Microsoft, because they get paid a crap load and never have to work again. Just take a look at the news there are tons of companies getting aquired for their technology, for a crap load of money, not just by Microsoft, but also by IBM (like when they bought Rational).
>> What browser AOL ships has absolutely nothing to do with if or what Microsoft forces on windows lusers. <<
It does matter because they have a direct contract with AOL, and if they aren’t allowed to have an install file for IE on the computer than they can’t have AOL. Which means this ruling would be breaking a contract, a multi-million dollar contract, that EU would have to take out of their takings.
Jesus Christ you don’t believe it. It has taken 5 years to work out this so far, and still it is not settled, yet here in this small thread you have the answers.
This is so simple a problem, that a child could lick it. It really has nothing to with monopoly and everything to do with politics.
Problem is Politics my friends. Whenever Politicians and Businessmen mix, dirt ensues and justice is made a mockery of. How many judgements have they had against them now? How many adjustments to their practises have been seen to be made? QED.
Nick you gotta be joking man, or you are high on shit.
IE the best browser?????????????????
Well said, enough said.
All this babbling about Wars and bombs and other things which is COMPLETELY OFF TOPIC.
Or did Hitler use Linux to bomb UK?
Cut the chit chat and stay on topic…
P.s I don’t have any problems getting this post modded down When the Politicians talking about war has left the building D.s
Messenger, IE and WMP can all be totally uninstalled from Windows, or just turned off if you prefer.
Once again, the people who spend hours bitching and moaning about this are apparently the same people who can’t be bothered to do a google search in attempt to correct a problem that irritates them so much.
Some things never change.
“Once again, the people who spend hours bitching and moaning about this are apparently the same people who can’t be bothered to do a google search in attempt to correct a problem that irritates them so much. ”
You know, maybe you and people like you would see it different if you were trying to market a product like Winamp and you suddenly noticed it was doing very well because some company with a monopoly on OSes had used it to shut you out while they grab another monopoly in another market. Just maybe when MS owns the entire computer industry, people will finally understand what all the “bitching and moaning” is about.
“Problem is Politics my friends. Whenever Politicians and Businessmen mix, dirt ensues and justice is made a mockery of. How many judgements have they had against them now? How many adjustments to their practises have been seen to be made? QED. ”
Politics were already there:
* Copyright infringement. The government + their paperboys regulates this.
* Patents. Software patent lobbies by Microsoft in Europe.
And you know, many more. From a narrow scope point of view politics now involved is the result. From the wider scope, politics was already for long involved in the software or computer industry. Back to the narrow scope, the problem is the result of something else which should be dealt with at its’ roots; not its’ leafs. I leave the roots up to everyone’s own imagination…
When will people bash Microsoft for the right reasons? Everyone deliver systems today with a bunch of apps preinstalled etc…
I agree. It seems that a lot of the MS-bashing is based out of dislike of otherness and not out of any knowledge of the OS whatsoever. If Microsoft is smart, they will find a way out and fix their stuff. I think Europe is a hard market for them, though
On the other hand, there are legal restrictions on MP3 so Linux versions can’t ship with pre-installed media readers
“On the other hand, there are legal restrictions on MP3 so Linux versions can’t ship with pre-installed media readers”
True. One is IIRC the license of MPG123 which has been solved by LibMAD/LibMPG321. The other one is: Patents. The reason why RedHat doesn’t ship it. Patents, which only apply in the USA.
My god Ronald (post #12), an anti MS comment that makes sense and is not just thoughtless spouting.
The courts should go through actual examples exactly as you have and require that MS adress those very problems.
Instead we have them going “um, stop including WMP and IE, and yeah, that’ll be $500,000 oleas.
The courts seem to be more determinted to line their pockets than actually fix the problem.
“Microsoft stop selling Windows in europe all together and lobby the US to pass laws that will block any of your software from being sold there. Let that babies suffer will linux as the rest of the world enjoys windows XP.”
Great idea. Then the E.U. should seize MS’s assets in Europe, including all intellectual property, on the grounds of “national security,” and release it all as open source. Don’t laugh, I’m personally familiar with cases here in the US where similar things have occurred.
You know, maybe you and people like you would see it different if you were trying to market a product like Winamp and you suddenly noticed it was doing very well because some company with a monopoly on OSes had used it to shut you out while they grab another monopoly in another market.
Again, in English? Considering that WinAmp doesn’t compete in terms of media formats, it doesn’t really seem to be in the same realm as WMP, QuickTime/iTunes, and RealPlayer. On the other hand, it made a rather good position for itself when Windows couldn’t play MP3 files without a downloaded application. So good, in fact, that AOL bought it and it’s now just another check box in the list of crap that Netscape installs on your system, much like anything else that competes with Microsoft’s “bundled/integrated” products. I’m amazed AOL didn’t try to buy up an OS given that they bought Time Warner in part as an attempt to compete with MSNBC.
Just maybe when MS owns the entire computer industry, people will finally understand what all the “bitching and moaning” is about.
I think most people have a problem with the “bitching and moaning” because the people bitching and moaning are complaining about Windows 95/98 in 2004, and because people are complaining about the “best product” not winning in the market when history has shown us time and again that the “best product” doesn’t win if the competitors have better marketing. In the meantime, there are plenty of alternatives to Windows, and if people are really opposed to it, they should use them. The same goes for anything in Windows, and if you have an issue with Windows launching a certain application, take a bit of time to figure out what it takes to stop it before complaining that it does it. Complain instead about how hard/easy it was to do so and how obvious/non-obvious the method was.
Instead, we get large corporations complaining to the government about how another large corporation is behaving, so the government spends money trying to prove that large corporations are behaving badly. When the stories come down the line, everyone tries to act like it’s the customers that are being protected here, when the reality is that the customers have proven time and again that they’ll reject Microsoft’s software the same way they reject any other product: if something else is significantly better and well known. That’s why I tell people about FireFox or Google Toolbar if they complain about pop-up ads. It’s why I tell them about other media players and codecs if they complain about WMP or WMA. The courts have rarely touched the problems that people really seem to be complaining about, and giving MS a $1B fine for a vague charge about media player bundling doesn’t solve those problems, either (nor does distributing the OS without the player, since most will download it as soon as they encounter WMA or WMV content, or complain about confusing options at retail, or complain about OEMs shafting them when they don’t install WMP). When the courts in the US addressed the only really strong claim they had (unfair pricing with OEM and ISV customers), people said they were letting them off, and the OEMs that had good contracts with MS complained that the DoJ had made things worse for them, by requiring MS to have a single contract with all OEMs.
Some people in this thread have touched on the real problems at the core of most of the complaints that have lead to these lawsuits. Some have even offered some decent solutions to those problems, or at least better solutions than could be reasonably presented on the current course of action from the various courts around the world hearing cases against MS. Sitting around complaining about an MS monopoly and brand X software competing against MS software isn’t part of the solution, it’s just the never-ending end-result of the problem. In a truly monopolized market, none of us would have WinAmp, iTunes, RealPlayer, Netscape, Linux, and so on and so forth, but the likelihood of that becomes less and less as the value of software decreases through the very actions of all of these companies and Microsoft themselves (after all, there was a time when a non-beta browser would cost you $20-50).
I dont care about Microsofts problems, their problems are theirs and I got my own but what really gets me is that people are sitting here and there and everywhere saying that Microsoft controls the market and how bad Microsoft sucks and how much we need change blah, blah, blah. First of all everyone had a choice at the beginning of what to use. I dont use Internet Explorer much, I use FireFox or Netscape, always have and always will. I made my choice to use these products. I tried Quicktime, RealPlayer and iTunes and WinAMP I decided to use Windows Media Player because Windows Media Player works better, I like the quality of the WMA format and yes the DRM protection is an added bonus because I dont want people stealing music out of my computer, or if at home I decide to run a Game server or my wireless connection gets hacked they can take my music and videos but its not going to play, that the beauty of DRM, its mine, I keep it and no one can steal it. I can even play those same files with my Portable player. If people would just get it through their thick skulls that stealing is stealing, download music from Kazaa or Morpheus its stealing. I dont care how pretty you try to paint it, put a dress on it and make it do a break dance and lip sync to DMX, it may seem funny but it is stealing. I dont have a problem with Linux and or Open Source, I use them both on a daily basis and I think they are good. Its all about choice, market your product market Open Source and yes even market Open Source offerings on Windows then it succeeds. Because even though Open Source and Linux may be a good thing find me some other reason to choose Linux besides “MS Sucks” or “MS is evil” or “Bill Gates is the anti-christ”. Open Source is starting to sound more and more of a religous mantra than anything of substance. In this industry people want to hear more of how Open Source is going to be beneficial, both financially and technically more so then “Microsoft sucks, its a Goliath and convicted monopolist” I hear more of that than the actual merits of Open Source. Microsoft gets bashed for their losses in the courts yet if IBM or Novell would get trashed in court, even if they deserved it, we would have Eric Raymond, Bruce Perens and Steven Vaughn-Nichols writing editorials about how bad the legal system is and how screwed up the judges are. Most of you who are sitting here being negative about Microsoft dont even have competing products on the market and more than likely you surf the web with something else besides IE, you are just following the crowd. Do you follow the crowd if they cry “WITCH” and pull out the pitchforks and torches? No the normal people get the heck out of the way. If you did then there is no help for you and this is the same thing, you are running to crucify and burn Microsoft at the stake and more than half of you dont know why? Don’t sit there and complain because we all have a choice. You want people to use your product then Market it properly.
>> Nick you gotta be joking man, or you are high on shit.
IE the best browser????????????????? <<
I was talking about back in the day when there was basically just Netscape 4 and IE 4. And you can’t say with a straight face that Netscape 4 was better than IE. I dare you.
I am not talking about now there are plenty of good browsers now. I personally, (note the personally) think IE is the best browser for my needs as a web developer. I personally hate Mozilla because it is just bloat ware. And FireBird is feature-less.
Interesting discussion… especially when I read things like “but IE/WMP/… can be deinstalled” and “you can install Mozilla if you want”. The problem here, is that they are installed by default. The result is that just because 95% of the computers ran on Windows, now 95% of all computer users use WMP and IE. And that is where it is about: they have misused their monopoly in one area to get new monopolies in other areas as well.
And you all seem to think a monopoly as a normal thing. Well, then imagine this, and think for yourself whether it is fair:
– 95% of all cars are Citroën cars.
– The C3 is sold for $100.000. The C5 for $500.000 and the Citroën SUV costs $1.000.000. (I bet you all know 80% of the Windows price is revenue)
– Now an interesting innovation is made: the electric car. That’s very good for the environment, right?
– With that car, you get a year of free electricity from Enron.
– Sounds great, right? Now there’s one little problem: Enron power uses 300V instead of the normal 110V.
– So you can throw away all electric devices you have at home.
– Moreover, 300V has been patented. Only Enron can make such a voltage that your car can be charged.
– Additionally, almost shops now start to sell 300V devices, because that has become the standard.
Now, would you say one of the following? I guess not. I explained all analogies between the brackets.
– Ford and Mercedes had to market better (yeah, wel all know that Windows’ huge marketshare has nothing to do with it being bundled by default with almost all PC’s)
– Hummer has a MONOPOLY on benzine cars (but nobody uses them, like Apple)
– Citroën must have made the best cars (we all know Windows 95 was better than OS/2!?)
– People can still choose to buy another car (sure, anyone can use Linux or whatever. But is it practical? No. Because Microsoft has a monopoly)
– You can buy an adapter (have you tried MacLinkPlus? Have you tried to exchange “complex” documents between Word and OpenOffice?)
Well I chose Opera many years ago. I used Netscape also, but never IE except at work.
I hate the way ie is virtually impossible to take out of the system. If I don’t want to use it, I want to remove it.
Simple as that. One reason to love Linux.
Pulling WMP out XP is not going solve the anti-trust issues surrounding WMP. People are going to have to download WMP out of necessity in order to view files encoded in wmv and to listen to files encoded in wma. The EU should order Microsoft either to open up wma & wmv formats, which Microsoft would fight not to do, or allow the formats in question to stay closed, but allow linux distros to ship with wma & wmv file support legally.
Stop with the car analogies. You lose everytime and just look like an idiot.
You lost because of you lacked to state an argument to support your wonderful argumentum ad hominem.
The point of that post is, as i see it, to state an example of why patents and closed implementations work pro monopolies. See through the literal analogy!