U.S. Faults Microsoft Licensing Compliance

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..

[DaLiNKz]

always in the news, never for anything good. Truth is I don't even see Microsoft as the threat it was, maybe thats because I have sort of lost any real caring about Microsoft.. good or bad. Linux is taking over the server market.. Windows does workstations fine. Maybe Microsoft should learn how to be a bit more friendly in the developmental departments with other groups then to try to attack them all..

But of course.. one day.. Welcome to Microsoft Linux 1.0 (Interactive Mode)

RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is mostly following through with its settlement with the federal government. They've elected to withhold TWO APIs, and they're moving the "Set Program Access and Defaults" desktop icon to a permanent location in the start menu.

Of course you would know all this if you had READ THE DOJ'S PAPER

Judges

[FuzzyDaddy]

Judges, yes. Prosecutors, no. The department of justice is responsible for pressing the enforcement of the law. The judge decides between the two sides.

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?

[Blind Linux]

I'd actually say that what you're saying is in support of Free Market Venture Capitalism. To break up Microsoft, however beneficial it could be to the economy as a result of more competition, constitutes state intervention in the market and is befitting of a Command Economy, the diametric opposite to the laisser-faire, individualist ideology of capitalism.

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?

[Larsing]

Actually, capitalism and market economy has very little to do with each other.
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

[Space cowboy]

I invite you to (any time you like) get on the wrong side of a "bobby".

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 :-) I think I heard of someone being shot earlier in the year around where I live (NE London). The shooter was shot dead by the police ARU. There was some criticism over the fact that he was hit by more than five bullets, which seemed overkill...

[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???

[Pave Low]

Why does this garbage always get modded up on slashdot?

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

[cyber_rigger]

TheTC.org [thetc.org]

Here's Microsoft's "Protocol Licensing Home Page"

[Anonymous Coward]

Straight from the horse's mouth!

http://members.microsoft.com/consent/Info/defaul t. aspx

Re:Insightful???

[Dak RIT]

If you look it up yourself, Microsoft's contributions doesn't rank anywhere near the top compared to other donors. In fact, they contribute fairly evenly to both parties.

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

[jdew]

simple to fix.. go in to tools | folder options | file types and remove the media player file types manually now go and associate them with bsplayer, from within bsplayer. problem solved.. have to do this for jpgs and such too :/

Move Along, Nothing To See Here

[PingXao]

I'm only commenting because I actually wasted 20 minutes RTFA. The thing is a standard, scheduled, report that has to be filed every 6 months. It outlines the steps that the gubmint and MS have taken with respect to the different parts of the settlement agreement. It also lists the complaints received in the last 6 months (less than a dozen). MS could move a little faster on some of its action items, and that's it. Nothing more.

Re:RTFA

[Trepalium]

Microsoft in their INFINITE WISDOM added a feature to Windows XP. Certain types, particularly those that play with Windows Media Player, or are viewable by Internet Explorer have a REG_SZ value on the association named LegacyDisable. If it exists, XP decides that it's smarter than the application that decided to take over the file type association, and silently ignores it. Only if the application is designed to use the XP method of associating with files will it be allowed to change them (or if it deletes those registry values).

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...