U.S. Faults Microsoft Licensing Compliance 241
An anonymous reader writes "In a written report card on how well Microsoft is complying with its 2001 antitrust deal with state and federal prosecutors, Justice Department lawyers said they might need the court to force Microsoft to act more quickly." The DOJ's court filing is online if you want to wade through it.
Microsoft.. Microsoft.. (Score:3, Informative)
But of course.. one day.. Welcome to Microsoft Linux 1.0 (Interactive Mode)
RTFA (Score:4, Informative)
Of course you would know all this if you had READ THE DOJ'S PAPER
Judges (Score:5, Informative)
The judges in these cases have been impartial, but the DOJ seriously backed off when the administration changed.
Re:You call this a capitalist society? (Score:2, Informative)
The "abuse of influence" (the curtailing of competition through aggressive marketting tactics, hostile takeovers, and intentional incompatibilities with software made by other companies, and other tactics employed/being employed by Microsoft) is the only realistic way to maintain a monopoly; monopolies have almost never historically resulted from a product being simply superior to others in its class...
So really, while having a monopoly is "not illegal", if the means of attaining a monopoly are illegal, the end is also effectively illegal as well, no?
Re:You call this a capitalist society? (Score:2, Informative)
As a matter of fact, capitalists (those who own the means of production and reap the profit) prefer as little competition as possible...
Re:Reminds Me of the English Bobby Joke (Score:5, Informative)
Their job is only to stop/catch unarmed (or at least, without ranged-weapons) criminals anyway. A policeman with one of the standard-issue batons is significantly better armed than joe crook with a knife...
Any time there is a gun-toting idiot (briefly) around, the police just call in the armed-response unit (ARU). Much better-trained snipers who don't seem to care where they hit, so long as the bad-guy gets it. Similar to SWAT teams, I suppose.
Gun crime isn't much of an issue in the UK anyway. There's a pretty-persistent rumour of a shoot-to-kill policy amongst the armed police. Perhaps that's a contributory factor
[Note that I'm not at all opposed to the bad-guy being shot. If you play the game, you play by ALL the rules...]
Simon.
Insightful??? (Score:5, Informative)
If you look it up yourself, [opensecrets.org] Microsoft's contributions doesn't rank anywhere near the top compared to other donors. In fact, they contribute fairly evenly to both parties.
More mindless drivel on slashdot.
MS Anti-Trust Settlement Committee Website (Score:3, Informative)
Here's Microsoft's "Protocol Licensing Home Page" (Score:2, Informative)
http://members.microsoft.com/consent/Info/defau
Re:Insightful??? (Score:2, Informative)
Funny you mention that. Because I did look it up myself and your findings don't really match the numbers. Microsoft is the #1 contributor for Computers/Internet donors [opensecrets.org].
They are listed as contributing 59% to Republicans and only 41% to Democrats. In 1996 before the antitrust trial began they donated 54% to Democrats and 44% to Republicans. Before that it was even more extreme, in 1992 donating 77% to Democrats and 20% to Republicans. In fact, during the antritrust trial in 1998 they donated 64% to Republicans and 36% to Democrats.
So in a 2 year time span, from 1996-1998, when the antitrust trial began, there is a massive shift of funding, as the Republicans received almost an 800% increase in funding from Microsoft.
But the antitrust trial couldn't possibly be to blame for such a dramatic shift in funding. It must be a complete coincidence.
Dak
Re:RTFA (Score:2, Informative)
Move Along, Nothing To See Here (Score:2, Informative)
Re:RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
I have no idea why Microsoft did this, but it effectively makes it so that certain programs seem to cease operating when you upgrade to XP. For the AVI files you mentioned, the value to delete would be HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AVIFile\shell\open\LegacyDisable
This really pissed me off the first time I used XP, and tried to reassociate the files with mplayer2.exe instead of wmplayer.exe, and the associations just wouldn't take. Didn't matter if I did it manually, or used mplayer2.exe to do it, it just didn't work, until I found that value hiding in those types...