EU Releases Microsoft Antitrust Report 612
Hassman writes "Ever wondered the reasoning behind the EU fining Microsoft and ordering them to sell a Media Player free version of Windows? Well now you can stop wondering. If you aren't up for the full read (it is 302 pages), check out the Reuters summary. Want more? Check out a quote from the summary: 'There is a huge switching cost to using a different operating system [as in not Windows],' he [a MS exec] wrote Gates. 'It is this switching cost that has given customers the patience to stick with Windows through all our mistakes, our buggy drivers, our high TCO, our lack of a sexy version at times...' Mmm...sexy indeed." Reader BrerBear writes "News.com is reporting that the European Union has released its report on Microsoft's conduct, to which Microsoft has pre-emptively responded. Inside are more classic examples of what one should never write in an internal memo: 'In short, without this exclusive franchise called the Windows API, we would have been dead a long time ago,' from Microsoft Sr. VP Bob Muglia."
Re:As a web streaming provider (Score:5, Informative)
Kinda like how it's nice to rely on the fact that everyone uses Internet Explorer. How irritating.
Re:As a web streaming provider (Score:1, Informative)
Sexy version, or sexy vision? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:To the Owners/Managers of Any Company (Score:2, Informative)
I work at lockheed martin, and we have 3 gigantic 3090's that do nothing other than communicate with a mainframe 2000 miles away through intolerably antiquated modems. We *have* to keep using them though, because all the financials and invetory systems are on these beasts, and no one knows how to get it off.
Granted, getting things off MS stuff is not nearly as hard, but 1) companies are still sensitive about old switchovers that they're still paying for, and 2) even with MS's stuff, there are costs - not the least of which is you have to have someplace to move everything to that can handle the load, which essentially means you need to double the hardware that you really need, because you have to move it on to *something*, and then what do you do with the old stuff?
There are a lot of costs with switching. Its not a myth.
Re:Win32 API (Score:5, Informative)
As someone who spent many years with MFC and has (or had) a huge skill investment in it -- you're wrong. Almost every single class is riddled with special cases, exceptions, bizarre hacks put in to maintain compatibility with earlier bugs... it's a classic example of an underengineered design that has required the most brutal and tortuous maintenance to keep going. Why, surely only someone with no ability to judge the elegance and utility of a system could say what you said!
the abomination that is
I was right!
Re:Common Sense ... (Score:5, Informative)
The GUI API for OS/2 was almost the same as the one for Windows. IBM and Microsoft started developing OS/2 together. In fact, the very early GUI for OS/2 (1.0?) was almost visually and functionally identical to the one that Microsoft used with Windows 1, 2, and 3. The API was so close that IBM had a conversion system (called Mirror??) where the vendor had top make a few changes, then could re-compile for OS/2. Of course the extra CPU time required for the conversion was a huge performance hit (think 386/33, 8M RAM), so it really never became mainstream.
What was developer unfriendly was the pricing of the NDK. Microsoft practically gave its NDK away, whereas IBM sold theres for big bucks (over $500 as I remember).
Re:To the Owners/Managers of Any Company (Score:3, Informative)
We're talking about SWITCHING cost. There is ALWAYS a cost to switching platforms/software, etc. You're talking about operating costs. Completely different.
There's only a cost if that time exceeds the amount of time users waste dealing with typical MS problems like Outlook viruses and the like. I expect you might actually see a cost here, but for a large organization, it could probably be offset by the cost savings in maintenance.
We don't spend any time with "typical MS problems like Outlook viruses and the like". We don't use Outlook for anything, and we have virus programs running. I'm not sure what problems that you are referring to. Our computers are zero maintenance, except when we have to do something like change the toner in the printer.
Re:As a web streaming provider (Score:2, Informative)
Take, for example, the open source "MPlayer" [mplayerhq.hu] (it states to be the media player for Linux, but AFAIK it compiles and runs on Windows as well) - it can play all three formats along with numerous others, and is in my experience much better optimized than any of those three individual players you mentioned. It doesn't have the clutter of WMP's interface as well, nor commercials or "upgrade noticies" etc...
Of course, noone uses MPlayer (on Windows, that is) since Windows Media Player comes with Windows. Why would they take the time to switch, after all, especially when they're not even made aware of MPlayer's existance?
A worth reading (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Actually... (Score:3, Informative)
100% lie (Score:3, Informative)
Wow, I guess Winamp uses magic powers to play WMV/WMA files.
Re:Run for your life! (Score:3, Informative)
You have a key point there.
While the US is a federation of states, its citizens largely see themselves (in front of the rest of the world) as being US in identity - whatever state they come from is less important.
On the other hand, the EU is also a federation of states (in a slightly weaker way), but its citizens see themselves distinctly as having national identities and would represent themselves by their nationality rather than being of the EU.
Anyway, this is just tangential
Re:Run for your life! (Score:2, Informative)
And this is so at many levels. For example, here in Tokyo I meet new French, Germans, Americans, Swedish, Canadians, Australians etc weekly. And here is the principle difference between Americans and people of every other nationality: Americans will say, "I'm going to the cinema. Do you want to come?" while everyone else will say, "How about the cinema?"
The Americans I meet in Tokyo are, by definition, atypical: they've got passports [gyford.com]. But they share with their politicians a sense of certainty and rectitude which most other peoples (barring, in my experience, Jewish Israelis) don't have. Personally, I find the vitality and self-centred certainty sometimes quite attractive, but it sure as hell rubs most people the wrong way.
Re:100% lie (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Serious question... (Score:3, Informative)
Despite the fact that Windows is more prone to things like viruses and malwares (which'd not be the case if it's not the dominant OS), its API is a pain in the ass to use compared to POSIX. Their Platform SDK documentation in MSDN isn't very useful either. Yes MSDN is big, but that's just because it includes a lot of useless information that you don't want. The Win32 APIs themselves look ugly compared to POSIX's. Say, for example, I want to do an mmap.
In Linux, it is:
void * mmap(void *start, size_t length, int prot , int flags, int fd, off_t offset);
Simple, elegant.
In Windows, the function calls stink just from the look of it.
HANDLE CreateFileMapping(
HANDLE hFile,
LPSECURITY_ATTRIBUTES lpAttributes,
DWORD flProtect,
DWORD dwMaximumSizeHigh,
DWORD dwMaximumSizeLow,
LPCTSTR lpName
);
LPVOID MapViewOfFile(
HANDLE hFileMappingObject,
DWORD dwDesiredAccess,
DWORD dwFileOffsetHigh,
DWORD dwFileOffsetLow,
SIZE_T dwNumberOfBytesToMap
);
You see... I just want a pointer where I can access it as a file. In Windows I need to write more code, memorize more parameters and (just one in this example) data types just to do simple file mapping. In POSIX it's a breeze.
Re:Most people dont care (Score:4, Informative)
It's true that markets aren't fair. But they *are* supposed to be "free markets". A market in which any new entrant has no chance of getting a foothold, and the factors causing that are 100% predictable/static, is not free. And non-free markets are very bad, because they screw up the core ideas of capitalism. Maybe not everyone can have a share of the money/market, but everyone should have a *chance* of doing so, not be frozen out by 100% predictable/static factors. Capitalism depends on some chaos and instability in the system.
MS is singled out for two reasons. First, because Windows is a monopoly. And second, because Windows maintains its monopoly, not by being good, by just being a monopoly. Windows has a monopoly because it supports a wide range of hardware, right? Nope, it's the other way round, Windows is a monopoly because hardware devices support *it*.
Re:Run for your life! (Score:2, Informative)
It's an abbreviation, live with it. Dropping off the end of a word is a sign of laziness, not hate.
Re:Run for your life! (Score:2, Informative)
Not only would we *like* to remain the world's only superpower, it is the avowed policy of our government to ENSURE that that remains the case.
I don't like what my country is becoming. I hope the people will wake up soon and see that it's foolish for us to elect governments that have these ultranationalist (we're #1 and by all that's holy we'll never be threatened again!), evangelical (the world will be saved by democracy NOW!) messianic (the United States has an obligation to bring freedom and democracy to the world!) policies.
But MS did prevent Quicktime to run on Windows (Score:2, Informative)
Unfortunately I am not able to find a link, but during the US trial against Microsoft, an engineer from Apple did state that Microsoft deliberately had some of the APIs crash (randomly?) when it detected that the calling application was the Quicktime player.
Similarly the file explorer would not show search results when the file type was Real Audio -- although Microsoft was quick to say that this was just a bug which they had fixed.
I would be happy if someone could add links to articles mentioning the two incidents (searching for microsoft, trial, real, quicktime etc. doesn't tighten the net).