Microsoft Finally Bows to EU Antitrust Measures

Rogue Pat writes "Microsoft ended three years of resistance on Monday and finally agreed to comply with a landmark 2004 antitrust decision by the European Commission. Competitors will be able to buy interface protocols for 10.000 Euro to make their software work better with Windows. Moreover, Microsoft won't appeal the 500 million Euro fine any further."

I heard oink-oink outside of my window...

[Corporate Troll]

... but I work on the 5th floor....

Paid for the dinner

[mrjb]

Kroes personally negotiated with Microsoft President Steve Ballmer in a number of conversations including over a meal at a restaurant near her home town of Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, she said.

"I paid for the dinner," she said.
If they had their dinner where I think they had their dinner, that should nearly cover the fine.

Re:Paid for the dinner

[Hanners1979]

"Waiter, there's a chair in my soup..."

Re:Microsoft should have payed the fine

[Anonymous Coward]

"has falled"

Is that you, George?

Re:Paid for the dinner

[mgblst]

What I want to know, is did she pay for the dinner, or did the EU pay for the dinner? I find it hard to believe that she coughed up for it.

And I would recommend a Japanese restaurant for dinner with Steve...you know, where they sit on the floor. Less dangerous that way.

Re:Microsoft should have payed the fine

[Anonymous Coward]

user is havening a problem with falled dollars

Re:I heard oink-oink outside of my window...

[Anonymous Coward]

I just don't think any of the mods got the joke, and if you'd studied your floyd properly you'd know that pigs could fly.

Re:any takers

[Threni]

> Heh... I only just realized that 10.000 is ten thousand, not ten. I wondered what that extra zero was doing there!

Which of the four zeros is the extra one which turned ten into ten thousand?

I just wonder how useful the protocol will be

[Maxo-Texas]

A few key excerpts of the specifications...

Section 73.12
Network communications will use the LikeDos63 format.

Section 110.42
Shared disk communications will check for the SAMBA tag. If true, return "network device driver" error.

Section 173.01

Packet Aw1: We don't even know what purpose this serves any more. However, one must be with every message or after 10 hours a memory leak starts.

Packet Zzz: This puts the message reader to sleep for a few seconds. One must be sent each hour or weird problems develop. It looks like it gives the message processor time to catch up.

Section 174.13
Check for media windows player version 13 and WGA confirmation before sending messages. If either fails, disable the subsystem.

etc...

Re:Microsoft should have payed the fine

[greenbird]

15% currency devaluation since 2004? If MSFT invested the 500 million since then they would be way ahead of the game; they easily would have (and probably did) exceeded a 15% return over 3 years.

Not if they invested it in the development of Vista.

Re:Took long enough...

[shaitand]

'The 27 countries in the EU do total out to just edge out the US alone. Add Canada to the US and their GDP passes those 27 countries.'

The EU is a combined political entity composed of 27 sovereign states. The US is a combined political entity composed of 50 sovereign states. The diffence is only in mindshare. The states of the US had a common enemy and since they repelled the enemy together they quickly formed a strong union. The EU states only formed a union very recently and had a great deal of independent history before banding together. There has been a great deal of time and history in the US that has strengthened the central political body and led to citizens being legally and mentally considered citizens of that central authority rather than of their own state. This will eventually be true of the EU given enough time.

The amendment to make all men equal didn't free the slaves, it made everyone a US citizen. They used to be citizens of their given state. It actually wasn't that long ago that the central government made laws that pertained to relations between states and laws that affected individual citizens were made by the states themselves.

That said, what does Canada have to do with anything? Canadians have nothing to do with the US, there isn't even any hard evidence they exist!