Should Microsoft Be Excluded From EU Government Sales? 350
David Gerard writes "From Groklaw: Heidi Rühle, a Green Party MEP, has presented a question regarding whether or not Microsoft should be considered as having failed to fulfill the conditions to participate in public procurement procedures in Europe, as laid out in Article 93(b) and (c) of Financial Regulation — '(b) they have been convicted of an offense concerning their professional conduct by a judgment which has the force of res judicata; (c) they have been guilty of grave professional misconduct proven by any means which the contracting authority can justify' — and the Commission anti-trust penalty just happens to fulfill both of those conditions." The EU Commission is required to respond within 6 weeks to such a question from a member of Parliament.
Big Problem for MSFT (Score:5, Funny)
Also, will the next big US war be in the UK?
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Sell MSFT now while you still can...
Re:Big Problem for MSFT (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Big Problem for MSFT (Score:5, Insightful)
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Software chosen by government tends to trickle down to corporations
Perhaps in Soviet Russia ;)
In the rest of the world it usually works the other way round.
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Re:Big Problem for MSFT (Score:5, Informative)
US Population: 301,139,947
EU Population: 490,426,060
Re:Ah, you forget... (Score:5, Funny)
Yep, but as it's mostly around the waistline that they're growing, they'll all be dead of obesity-related illnesses by the time they're 40
Re:Ah, you forget... (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, the population of the EU is increasing. Fast. We may not be doing an awful lot of breeding, but look at those borders go! We're the only major power on earth with an active policy of territorial expansion.
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Balance of power. The EU used to be dominated by France and Germany. They formed a voting bloc that almost always got its way, by sheer weight of population and hence voting rights; the other four founding nations, Italy and the three Low Countries tended to go along. Later Britain and Spain and a number of smaller nations joined and the power balance shifted a little, but not really enough to dislodge the old central axis most o
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EUR - 2033 - 0 survivors.
China - 2033 - 4 Billion.
Obviously, we need to make a bigger bomb, so we can get that all down to zero. That way, it will be:
USA - 2033 - 0 survivors.
EUR - 2033 - 0 survivors.
China - 2033 - 0 survivors.
Falkland Islands - 4 billion people.
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Well, this is "just" about EU government sales, and I think the idea is that the EU governments taken together are about half the size of the total US software market.
(Obviously, where government leads, others will probably follow.)
Re:Big Problem for MSFT (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really...The issue here is whether or not the EU as an administration should order products/licenses from Microsoft.
The issue isn't whether or not Microsoft can do business in the EU. The European union bureaucracy is huge, but not that huge.
As an European and an user of open source products I don't support this proposition.
Microsoft has been punished already. Time to move on. Microsoft is already facing serious competitions and its dominant position looks less invicible than it used to be.
Leftists such as this green party are taking it as an easy ideological shot against big companies (they hate them). I don't support that.Technically/Financially Open Source is the way forward for public services. But if Microsoft can prove that their products are objectively better for an administration, then I see no reason why it shouldn't be used.
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And as such, I don't find it that bad - brings Microsoft's non-compliance back into public view, puts a little pressure in MS, though not too much..
That's a lot about being an opposition party is all about - spreading information (and sometimes propaganda of course) about something they care about.
Re:Big Problem for MSFT (Score:5, Informative)
in this case the question would be whether a single company should be awarded an exception.
Re:Big Problem for MSFT (Score:5, Insightful)
But this shouldn't be about punishment. It's about who you want to do business with. I don't think any government should buy licenses from a software company that's been found guilty of manipulating the software industry. If you can't play by the rules you shouldn't be allowed to play at all.
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That's downright funny, coming from a citizen of a nation that owes $9 trillion - much of it to China. Who do you think is financing the current round of wars? It isn't US taxpayers, that's for sure.
Re:Big Problem for MSFT (Score:5, Informative)
Not true, it has NOT been punished, because it didn't do yet what it has been asked to.
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The last EU fine was because MS had taken no action after their previous court loss.
Perhaps if Ballmer had to spend a few months behind bars?
Re:Big Problem for MSFT (Score:5, Funny)
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Would you hire a convicted child molester to watch your children? After all, since he was convicted and released, he's been punished already, so no reason to take any further action, right? Or, would you take past actions into account and disqualify criminals from certain activities (like molesters watching your children, or buying more things from an abusive monopoly, even at the time when they are not complying with the judgement against them). But
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If the EU government mandated that all government systems/agencies use OpenOffice and ODF, it would b
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That's bad for Microsoft.
Re:Big Problem for MSFT (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, it's the other way around about your statement. It's "who is corrupt enough to be bought off by MS to cancel this", not the other way around. Meanwhile, if MS even tries to cancel this it will backfire on them bigtime (antitrust round 3 anyone?). I'd say that this is pretty much guaranteed although the bigger question is how to enforce existing contracts through that duration and also the question of if the countries in the EU will have the balls to follow through on this.
Not to be totally ad hominem, but where is your incorrect logic coming from? The situation here is the exact opposite of what you posted, and coincides with your signature. WTF?
It's like one of those spam letters with a philosophical message at the bottom.
Re:Big Problem for MSFT (Score:4, Informative)
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How or why would government sales be less in the EU than the US? (regardless of facts, since I wouldn't know where to pull something up to verify what you're saying there...I think some refined google searching still might have a hard time finding it)
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Unfortunately, your US money is worthless. Mostly becuase you spunked away your whole economy with exactly the sort of short term corruption you seem to be advocating.
> Also, will the next big US war be in the UK?
In your dreams fat boy.
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Outrageously huge, and everyone.
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Bob
Criminal organisation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Criminal organisation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Criminal organisation (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Criminal organisation (Score:5, Interesting)
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Linux my-machine.my.company.com 2.6.22-14-386 #1 Tue Feb 12 07:12:19 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?
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Re:Criminal organisation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Criminal organisation (Score:4, Insightful)
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What if your socks were to burst into flames, just because I wrote these words?
I think that close examination will reveal that the EU is not in fact in the process of killing anyone at Microsoft.
For that matter, I'll be very surprised if it turns out that your feet are on fire.
YES! (Score:4, Funny)
I heard "Microsoft" and "exclude from"
Ummm, yeah... (Score:2, Insightful)
1) MS to sell it's products through "resellers".
2) Thousands of EU ministries and departments applying for waivers because the ABSOLUTELY MUST HAVE Powerpoint for them to continue in their vital work.
Re:Ummm, yeah... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it goes rather deeper than that.
Where you have entire IT departments which are used to doing 90% of their work (desktop AND server) on Microsoft products, the effort and expense of suddenly discovering that Microsoft products are now verboten for new systems would be rather more than most could realistically bear.
I'm as interested in seeing Microsoft's position weakened as the next rabid
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Good. Maybe they'd learn something about software monoculture and vendor lock-in and design their systems better in the future. They made their bed, they should lie in it.
Re:Ummm, yeah... (Score:5, Informative)
Where they are already in place, they would not need to apply for tenders. If new departments etc came into existence, then they could use other presentation software and would have budgets for training etc.
So basically Microsoft wouldn't be able to grow their existing base, until they sorted out their compliance. But current users of their software would be unaffected.
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Rather than a "ban", the EU could resurrect some old laws that are almost certainly still on the books:
Declare the corporation of Microsoft an outlaw, confiscate all its properties and put those properties in the commons.
All Microsoft copyrights and patents are immediately nullified within the boundaries of the EU.
While this may seem a little unusual, it would be an easy solution that would allow governments and agencies dependent on MS products to go forward without hindrance (or continued payment of li
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EU is picking winners: Why. (Score:2, Insightful)
Who is going to benifit the most from this, and what is the connection to this group?
Is there an eu msft that they are trying to shepard to the big time, or is it simple corruption?
Who wins with MS out of the picture?
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Those are the only alternatives to Microsoft, AND the next best thing to it?
Which company is going to provide the install support across all of the offices, who is going to retrain all of the IT staff, who is going to replace every instance of closed format documentation that they already have in place?
I'm not asking that question from the standpoint of !nobody - ms is the way to go!, but from the standpoint, of who is going to be paid for that work, and what thier connection is to the minister who i
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Define "best choice"?
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Exactly. First of all, there are most likely lots of dumb rules that say things like, when comparing products, being open source isn't allowed to count as an advantage (it's a government, it almost certainly has stupid and arbitrary rules).
Secondly, the fact that Microsoft products have a huge presence in the Real World, which the EU occasionally has to deal with, means that their products are at a significant advantage from the word go.
To a government, using Microsoft products makes sense if you're th
Re:EU is picking winners: Why. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say we all win when a strong message is sent to large corporations that says "we will not tolerate illegal behavior from you, and we will stand by this principle even if this means we must make some sacrifices". It's called having a spine. Ideally the goal is not necessarily to get MS out of the picture (unless they refuse to reform their business practices, that is) but to get this kind of behavior out of the picture.
"Nothing that you sell is so good or so vital that we will put up with your abuses in order to purchase it" is an attitude that I wish were more widespread. How this plays out and whether that message is actually sent will be interesting indeed.
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Re:EU is picking winners: Why. (Score:5, Informative)
Well said. I mean, come on... public money vs. convicted criminal organisation... it doesn't take a lot of ethics to work out that Microsoft products shouldn't be bought by our governments.
Re:EU is picking winners: Why. (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft has repeatedly broken the law to become the "best choice" by introducing artificial problems with competing products. It's the same issue as "should the government sign a contract with a concrete supplier who has the lowest price, but also has been repeatedly convicted of blowing of their competitors' factories and hiding bodies in the concrete they sell." According to the laws, no the EU should not be giving contract to either MS or this hypothetical concrete supplier.
It doesn't matter who benefits the most. The idea is for the the EU people to benefit by discouraging criminal acts that are harmful to them. If anyone else benefits, it is incidental.
Umm, I don't even understand what question you're trying to ask.
The people of the EU win.
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Does this include the choice to restrict choice? Thats a problem with absolute statements, they tend to blow up godel-like when self-referenced. In pragmatic terms, it parses but fails to produce a desired effect when run.
Re:EU is picking winners: Why. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ya see, it's that last line that I'm worried about. I don't think they do.
That is certainly a valid opinion, if one I don't share and question your ability to support.
One of the big things that open source offered to me was choice. Whether it's the megacorp, the small company, or open source. Which ever I chose to use. Restricting choice in any way is a bad thing.
And it's that last line which I have issues with. Is restricting say, the choice of people to give large cash contracts to people who recently murdered their wives a bad thing? What we're discussing here is not a matter of one company being favored over another. All companies have to abide by the same laws. MS broke the laws and like anyone else who did that, they have to deal with numerous ramifications of that. People convicted of treason and espionage may be banned by law from serving in the military. Taking that choice away from the military is not necessarily a bad thing. This is the government we're talking about, not a private company. Unlike private companies, they are subject to all sorts of rules regarding their behavior because they exist only to serve the people.
Here's the other thing I'm scared of, tying into the first argument. A couple of my friend working in IT over in europe (one in London, one in France (can't remember his city's name :)) on two separate occasions have said "we need this not to go too much further" in reference to the EU's actions on MS. They are starting to feel like it's just the EU is turning this into a publicity stunt instead of a judicial action.
I think that's a very common feeling. It is my belief that very few people understand antitrust abuse, why it is a crime, and how it works. After a hundred years of living under laws that make antitrust abuse illegal, most people simply assume all markets are functioning free, capitalist ones and don't even understand that there are alternatives. When competing products are artificially broken via antitrust abuse, most people blame the victim, not understanding the mechanism of antitrust abuse. When one, successful company is punished for an action and people don't understand how monopolies can be abused, they often don't even understand how that action differs from legal behaviors by other companies. Certainly very few people look at the big picture of how free trade works in a regulated capitalist market to ensure continued innovation and lower prices. They take innovation and the relatively low costs for granted and while they may have some vague understanding that extreme socialism is "bad" and resulted in disaster in some parts of the world, they don't understand how or why or equate antitrust abuse to causing those very same deficiencies in their own economy.
I apologize for getting long winded. The truth is, a lot of people feel that the EU's actions may be "bad" but at the same time very few of those people understand the reasons and very few have had to live with the terrible conditions the lack of those laws created in the past. (Cue the quote about those who do not understand history.)
Lastly, and this is perhaps the most depressing part, I'm seeing more people yelling "yeah, take that MS" when someone else legislates against microsoft instead of focusing their energy on making software that is unquestionably the better choice.
That is a very interesting choice of words. You said, "legislates against microsoft." Has any law been passed that applies to Microsoft and not everyone else? Nope. No one has legislated against Microsoft, they've just enforced existing laws against Microsoft because Microsoft built thier entire business model on breaking laws and then tying things up in the courts and paying fines and settlements, which they plan on being smaller than the cash they make from breaking the law in the first place. To date, they've been completely correct. The courts are horribly slow and ineffici
I wonder who Heidi Rühle's campaign con (Score:2)
Re:I wonder who Heidi Rühle's campaign con (Score:5, Insightful)
After all it's a political party, and they must have more on their agenda than environmental and health issues.
Not every green party member can be minister for environment and/or health.
Re:I wonder who Heidi Rühle's campaign (Score:4, Insightful)
Using GNU/Linux on older hardware is more than feasible.
Re:I wonder who Heidi Rühle's campaign (Score:4, Informative)
So, Heidi Ruehle (if you don't have Umlauts, use 'ue' instead) doesn't have individual campaign contributors, more to the contrary, the rules of the Green Party demand a strict differentiation between "being in office" and "having a mandate".
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And you'd be wrong.... I thought this too, up until I talked about it with a real Frenchman. This rule had been introduced in the times of the typewriter where it wasn't possible to make uppercase accentuated letters. The académie française changed that later because nobody uses typewriters anymore and computers can actually do it. You're now supposed to use accents, even in the uppercase form.
Yeah (Score:2)
It's all tied together... (Score:4, Insightful)
Environment? It's commonly accepted knowledge around here that later versions of MS operating systems require beefier hardware and upgrades than certain darling competitors. (I'm running modern versions of Ubuntu on computers my workplace was throwing out.)
That's increased power, more equipment that has to be recycled (lest it be landfilled), and more goverment money that could be spent on an environmental or human health program that instead goes into the pockets of an American Corporation.
To be honest, it's actually a rule that should be followed, not some stupid play for power and media attention. Those convicted of abusing their power aren't eligible for government contracts.
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Second,
and more goverment money that could be spent on an environmental or human health program that instead goes into the pockets of an American Corporation.
So, should the US Government decide that it would forbid itself from purchasing anything from Europe as money would then go into the pockets of a European Corporation, you would s
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So, first thing. My current computers are more power efficient than my older ones. P3s are a power hog and my current Core2 Duo uses less power over the entire system.
This is a very good point, but I think it is undermined by several other ones. First, power consumption is not he only environmental cost of hardware upgrades. Old hardware needs to be disposed of and has a lot of hazardous materials in it. Often, this stuff ends up in landfills, or being very messily recycled in the third world resulting in significant poisoning of water supplies. Even if it is recycled properly, that is an additional cost in both money and energy used.
Second, the computing power neede
Re:I wonder who Heidi Rühle's campaign (Score:4, Insightful)
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However, seeing as she is actually a member of a more left wing party and her proposal only stands to disadvantage the software market's 800-pound gorilla, I seriously doubt that she's receiving any extraordinary
I hope they are... (Score:4, Interesting)
(/me crossing fingers)
Quick Answer. (Score:2)
Next Question.
(Otherwise we won't have a Star-Trek future. If MSFT keeps going that guy will never get off the face of the planet to meet the Vulcans)
Zefram Chochrane (Score:2)
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Oh - and Maggies Farm is thee best Rage song EVA!
(ps: Thanks for the name - I forgot it... there goes five geek points...)
This is unlikely to happen (Score:5, Interesting)
(a) they are bankrupt or being wound up, are having their affairs administered by the courts, have entered into an arrangement with creditors, have suspended business activities, are the subject of proceedings concerning those matters, or are in any analogous situation arising from a similar procedure provided for in national legislation or regulations;
(b) they have been convicted of an offence concerning their professional conduct by a judgment which has the force of res judicata;
(c) they have been guilty of grave professional misconduct proven by any means which the contracting authority can justify;
(d) they have not fulfilled obligations relating to the payment of social security contributions or the payment of taxes in accordance with the legal provisions of the country in which they are established or with those of the country of the contracting authority or those of the country where the contract is to be performed;
(e) they have been the subject of a judgment which has the force of res judicata for fraud, corruption, involvement in a criminal organisation or any other illegal activity detrimental to the Communities' financial interests;
(f) following another procurement procedure or grant award procedure financed by the Community budget, they have been declared to be in serious breach of contract for failure to comply with their contractual obligations.
2. Candidates or tenderers must certify that they are not in one of the situations listed in paragraph 1.
Not to mention the added bonus of all that cash heading into European projects like KDE and linux instead of overseas.
Not sure what the American Gov would think of it though...
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It would be really interesting is if this threat snowballed into a migration to OSS from MSFT to pre-empt a perceived problem - you know, like the whole MSFT patent threat thing appears to have been intended to do to Linux adoption.
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Stings like hell
Are you kidding don't you know how these things actually work.
Step one: Legislative arm decides to make themselves look importation, so they create some ban on M$ software purchases
Step two: Administrative arm convinces legislative arm its time for major upgrades.
Step three: Funds are approved.
Step four: Wait for the public to forget the particulars of step 1
Step five: Administrative arm makes massive M$ purchases before ban in step one takes effect.
Step six: Microsoft Profits
Step seven: Ban expires just i
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Not only that but imagine the resources turned onto moving from MS to Open source solutions. It could end MS as a major player in the EU institutions and that would knock on into the private sector.
I'm not convinced that it would have quite the effect you envisage. This would prohibit European institutions from procuring new software from Microsoft. They would still be able to use their current software - which I expect they would, rather than spending vast sums on retraining - and it's not even clear to me that they couldn't buy Microsoft products through an intermediary.
From the language of the rules, it sounds like this is designed to stop the EU procuring goods or services from shady distributors
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Not Again (Score:2)
SmallContractor wins? Fine.
Step 1. BigContractor appeals the award on technicalities like this.
Step 2. While the appeal is on, BigContractor uses the appeal as a stick to extract some of the awarded value from the SmallContractor.
Step 3. Profit! When they get their vig, BigContractor drops appeal.
Looks Good on Paper, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
Ubiquity of the (somewhat decent, I guess) baseline bundled Windows Mediaplayer results in raising the bar in c
Well (Score:2)
Re:Looks Good on Paper, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think excluding a source of solutions (as bad as we claim it is, regardless) could have a negative impact on the market and competitive.
You do realize that MS is under threat of being banned for the crime of undermining the free market and using criminal actions to make competing products artificially worse, right? How exactly would removing them from bidding on a subset of new contracts for the next 5 years negatively impact competition? There are still dozens of companies with solutions that could bid and compete with one another fairly. In fact, companies that have not bothered investing in those markets and competing because they knew it would result in very poor ROI, would now have financial incentive to invest in competing solutions. I really don't see how you think this would negatively effect competition.
Of course Microsoft could be engaged in underhanded tactics (vis ISO standardization of Office Open XML..).
Microsoft has been engaged in underhanded tactics and after years and years of slow court proceedings they were convicted. The law says that certain government agencies should not give new contracts to companies convicted in this manner for 5 years in order to insure that companies that have been following the law have a chance to compete, instead of having to go up against a company who may be winning contracts solely because their criminal actions have allowed them to undercut others or otherwise prevent them from providing a bid on projects.
I'd like to think that Microsoft's ubiquity may very well have raised the bar/baseline for many different software products.
You'd like to think that? Why? Most software products follow the standard market model. Investors look at a market and potential ROI. They then invest in the markets they think will provide the best ROI. When one company has a huge influence in a market, that allows them to use that influence to break compatibility with others, thereby introducing an artificial problem with that competitor. This means the "monopolist" can make more money with less effort to compete. It also means investors looking at the market see that investing in that market will have to account for trying to work around these artificial compatibility problems in addition to other costs, and at the same time they will always have a very well funded competitor who can take a loss in the short term to undercut them on cost. In short, very few companies invest in those markets and fewer products and innovations result. This is one of the main reasons why antitrust abuse was banned in the first place. It slows down innovation in a market, not speeds it up. I think you have a very wrongheaded idea as to what influence MS has had on markets. Think 8 years after the invention of tabbed browsing before most users saw it. Think 18 years since the first desktop OS to introduce spell checking for all applications, and 90% of users still don't have it.
Ubiquity of the (somewhat decent, I guess) baseline bundled Windows Mediaplayer results in raising the bar in competing media players (iTunes, Winamp?, etc.)
Are you joking? The top two media players are shipped by companies who bundle them with products they have a monopoly or near monopoly on. What does that say about the quality of the players themselves? They aren't competing based upon the merits of the players, but upon the relative popularity of Windows and iPods respectively. For years most users who tried ripping their CD collection put CDs into their computer, told it to rip them, then discovered it had ripped to WMA format and added DRM to prevent them from copying it to any other device, including the most popular portable player. Then consumers had to install different software or figure out how to change the settings and do it all over again. That is not quality. That is the epitome of a really, really poorly made piece of software dominating despite being horribly inferior, and pe
Rules apply to everybody Except MS (Score:3, Insightful)
Regarding Ethics, Morals, etc. Those are for wimps. These are not in the Microsoft vocabulary.
Microsoft expects to violate every norm of civilized society in order to maintain their market position. The world be damned.
It appears that only the EU has the balls to stand up to Microsoft and try and make them behave. Will it work? I doubt it but, it is making Microsoft stand up and notice. I see that MS has just released well over 50,000 pages of secret programming info to the EU so maybe (very small maybe) something good may come of this.
I really don't understand why any company needs to corrupt society as much as Microsoft does to maintain their position. Wouldn't it be cheaper to do provide a superior product honestly?
Are there similar rules or laws in the U.S.? (Score:2)
It depends ... (Score:3, Funny)
Leave the big ones, like Great Britain, for the US to buy.
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Whether a small company or a megacorporation.
Should MSFT be barred, they would think twice before engaging again in illegal activities in the EU.
Which is the intent of the law.
Re:Uh, no (Score:4, Informative)
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Yes, that's precisely why I said "future".
As for the "Green" Aspect: how much of the worlds carabon foot print is caused by Tech support running around trying to Fix Windows BSoD's? and general buggines?
Given the gut on the typical Unix administrator, I think you'd really have to cut back on support calls to reduce total energy use if they're waddling down the hall instead of a Windows ad
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But I'd love to see them try! That said, I can't see productivity levels dropping far [xkcd.com] from current EU government levels...
Re:Is it just me? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Is it just me? (Score:4, Insightful)
A crime is still a crime, even if lots of other people are doing it too. Abuses of monopoly positions are detrimental to competitors and customers - why shouldn't action be taken to prevent it?
And yes, other corporations currently abusing their position (and ignoring court rulings telling them to stop) should get the same treatment.
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While I don't label myself as Republican or Democrat (mainly because I share views that exist in both the extreme left and the extreme right), I do NOT want McCain getting into the white house. Too many ties to current politicians, to many years of "experience" to get corrupted. Reduced education budget (which is a big concern for me since my girlfriend is a teacher), excitement about continuing to pump billions into a country most of us will never even see while our own country is fal
Re:That would just about scuttle the Airbus tanker (Score:5, Informative)
This is the same Bush who imposed crippling tariffs on European steel firms to protect American firms? And who suddenly saw the importance of free trade once the EU imposed sanctions on the products of several swing states just before the election?