phil hunt wrote:

If the EU decides agains MS then why wouldn't they be fined the
maximum? They've shown no remorse and will continue pursuing very
anti-competitive behaviour.

--
Thanks,
Alex Kemp (loose \lessspam-\ for email)

On Thu, 07 Aug 2003 20:23:51 +0100, Alex Kemp
<alex@lessspam-alexkemp.co.uk> wrote:

But not always very successful. The courts turned the EUC down
previously, so they have to be a bit careful or it damages their
credibility.

I'm going to say something strange, and it'll get me flamed,
especially since I type this on my work-workstation, which runs under
Windows. Anyway, to be honest, I don't really understand what the
problem is. So, Microsoft bundles their product with their own Media
Player. It doesn't seem very democratic to me that they should be
forced to include products of competing companies. That's a bit, well,
communist? I just find it strange (using simple common sense here, not
any global, economic considerations) that MS should be forced to
distribute other company's products.

Don't get me wrong, I don't care for monopolies, but I tend to feel
that the markt should be given a chance to regulate itself, without
governments putting their fingers into everything. Linux, FreeBSD and
other free operating systems *are* gaining ground, even dominate some
segments, and that's a result of the dynamics of the market.
Eventually, I feel, "things" will balance themselves, if left alone.

But perhaps I give people too much credit: that they have the ability
to think for themselves. If I want to RealPlayer, I download it. If I
want Quicktime, I download it. Easy. I also use Unix/BSD and Windows
for different tasks, and don't do the "there's only ONE real OS!"
routine. The *choice* is already there. People need to be educated so
that they know about these choices, but forcing for-profit companies
to distribute foreign products, that's just alien to me.

What I -do- expect from a government is to protect me against stuff
like the forsaken TCPA (the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance,
http://www.notcpa.de/) and its "successor", but I've seen very little
opposition on the government-side here. That's the stuff that truly
concerns me, not whether Windows comes with Media Player or with Media
Player, Real Player and Quicktime. I couldn't care less about that.
(But since this IS being done with *my* tax money, perhaps I should.)

-M.

In article <8806jv81sarftja9r5houl76i7tauhqbif@4ax.com>,
Michael Vondung <mvondung@gmx.net> wrote:


Kinda got a point there. Apple bundles the Quicktime player with it's
OS, and doesn't include RealPlayer or Windows Media Player. It's not
like anyone who wants Realplayer or Quicktime is going to have trouble
getting it...



Well, I dunno about *that*. Taking advantage of unpublished APIs and
other features to make something work 'better' is very easy to do when
you control the OS as well as the competing application. I don't care
about the media player issue nearly as much as the leveraging their
client dominance to expand their position in the server space.



In a competitive market with low barriers to entry, that would be the
case. It's not the current situation, though.

[zap]

--
al Qaeda delenda est

Michael Vondung <mvondung@gmx.net> wrote in message news:<8806jv81sarftja9r5houl76i7tauhqbif@4ax.com>. ..
The problem is that that since they have a very dominant share of the
market for PC OS's, they are using that to force competitors in other
markets out of business.

Most users are happy with what's delivered on their PC and don't go
hunting for alternatives if there is something there will do the job.
This is why IE remains the dominant browser and Netscape is now
history.

Every time MS bundles another product with Windows, they are pretty
much guaranteed to have no competition within a few months for that
product.

This is what they were convicted for in the US. Not for being a
monopoly, but for using that monopoly to muscle into other markets
unfairly.

If this is allowed to continue we will end up with the entire computer
[no make that information] industry controlled by MS.

What I don't understand is why the music and video industry cannot see
MS coming. Once MS has a firm grip on the software for playing music,
they will then be in a position to force the music industry to pay
ever larger license fees until eventually RIAA will be effectively
owned by MS.

Brenton.

In <8806jv81sarftja9r5houl76i7tauhqbif@4ax.com>, Michael Vondung wrote:

The point here is that Microsoft is using its desktop monopoly
to give itself an advantage in servers. One prong is that
they're introducing MS-only communications protocols at the
desktop end, so that you *have* to use MS servers if you want
to connect to those desktops (which, remember, are nearly all
of the market.)

Media Player is just one version of this. /All/ of media players
are just bait for the associated server software. Since MS is
the one that is guaranteed to be on just about every desktop,
though, anyone buying a server would have to have a Very Good
Reason to use anything but an MS server.

_That_ is what the EU is looking at, and if you read their
statement about evidence, that's what they've documented.
The great majority of prospective server customers have made
purchasing decisions where MS' desktop incompatibility with
non-MS servers caused the purchaser to buy MS rather than
the server they would otherwise have preferred.

--
| Microsoft: "A reputation for releasing inferior software will make |
| it more difficult for a software vendor to induce customers to pay |
| for new products or new versions of existing products." |
end

rosignol <rosignol@nwlink.com> wrote in message news:<rosignol-F5688E.20495107082003@corp-radius.supernews.com>...
Of course it is. The question is whether you like the balance.

On Thu, 07 Aug 2003 20:23:51 +0100, Alex Kemp <alex@lessspam-alexkemp.co.uk> wrote:
I get the feeling the EU would be reluctant to do this as it would
be seen to be victimising Microsoft.

--
A: top posting

Q: what's the most annoying thing about Usenet?

On Fri, 08 Aug 2003 04:11:29 +0200, Michael Vondung <mvondung@gmx.net> wrote:
Do you have examples?

It's democratic if they are following the will of the people. Since
most people probably don't have an opinion on this matter, the
democratic thing to do would be whatever the EU thinks will benefit
the maximum number of Europeans.

It's interventionalist, but not communist. To be communist it would
have to put the means of production (which I guess in this case
would mean the computers Microsoft use, and the source code and
build tools for their software) in the hands of the state.

I'd be happy if govmts stopped passing laws -- for example the EUCD
and software patents -- that can be used to criminalise competition
to software products. If that happened, then I'd agree with you that
the market should be given a chance to work. (Oh, and for the market
to regulate itself, you'd have to abolish copyright law).

True.

I suspect this may be an exageration.

See above.

I have no problem with people building a "trusted" (that is to say
trusted against the user, so one's computer works in the interests
of its corporate masters) computer and attempting to sell it on the
free market, as long as other people are also allowed to make, sell
and have proper computers. Let TCPA compete with real computers on
the free market, I say, and see how many people buy it!

I don't think that's the issue -- more important is MS attempting to
stop people building software that interoperates with MS products,
e.g. by obfuscating interfaces. *That* needs to be stamped down on
hard, IMO.

--
A: top posting

Q: what's the most annoying thing about Usenet?

On 8 Aug 2003 01:57:13 -0700, rossb <brenton.ross@aspect.com.au> wrote:
Indeed. I think the RIAA members' position is, roughly, to put their
head in the sand and wish this horrible computing technology would
just go away and leave their industry alone. Probably it's necessary
for a whole generation of record company executives to retire and be
replaced before they "get it".

--
A: top posting

Q: what's the most annoying thing about Usenet?

rosignol wrote:

[snip]

MS was forced to publish these 'unpublished APIs'... Did you take a look
at them? Most of them that I saw, were simply wrapper functions around
2 or three other published APIs - in other words convienience functions.
There was very little there that I was able to find that could not be
readily accomplished given the standard API. About the only thing that
I saw, that might be sort of usefull was support for dynamic arrays.
Basically, the unpublished API stuff is as far as I can tell a load of crap.

Tom Shelton

rossb wrote:

For a media player? Please! There are a lot of websites out there - it
is virtually impossible to surf the web and not come across a website
that doesn't force you to have QT or RP eventually. Real sucks (at
least on windows), pure and simple.

Tom Shelton

On 8 Aug 2003 06:22:42 -0700, Till M Ruessmann <till.ruessmann@number-two.com> wrote:
If you think the current situation with software, where a company
can use bad laws to make it illegal for anyone to compete with them,
is a "competitive market with low barriers to entry", you are wrong.

--
A: top posting

Q: what's the most annoying thing about Usenet?

Tom Shelton wrote:
[snip]

I should point out that I don't use WMP much either... I pretty much
stick to Winamp for music on windows. Much lighter and it works better
So, about the only time I use WMP is for those comical little video
clips I get from co-workers periodically.

Tom Shelton

rossb> The problem is that that since they have a very dominant
rossb> share of the market for PC OS's, they are using that to
rossb> force competitors in other markets out of business.

rossb> Most users are happy with what's delivered on their PC and
rossb> don't go hunting for alternatives if there is something
rossb> there will do the job.

The more serious problem is: most users simply don't know there is a
choice. i.e. they don't think it's even POSSIBLE to go hunting for
alternatives. And since they don't know they can do it, they don't do
it -- even if they want to.



--
Lee Sau Dan §õ¦u´°(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)

E-mail: danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee

Michael> Don't get me wrong, I don't care for monopolies, but I
Michael> tend to feel that the markt should be given a chance to
Michael> regulate itself,

No. If you know the theory about how the market works, you should
have learnt that the market doesn't work anymore in the presence of a
monopoly. The market works because there is competition, driving the
participants to optimize their offerings. With a monopoly, this
mechanism collapses.


Michael> without governments putting their fingers into
Michael> everything.

Any government exercising market economy knows that the market doesn't
work when there's a monopoly. So, they regulate it.



--
Lee Sau Dan §õ¦u´°(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)

E-mail: danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee

In <66728128.0308080057.358e3729@posting.google.com>, rossb wrote:

Nonsense. MS doesn't think small like that.

The RIAA accumulated its present degree of power over the
course of decades because they control the channels of
distribution for music: disks and radio air time.

Now they're in the process of handing control of the
channels of distribution (disks, streaming, and digital
radio) over to Microsoft. Explain to me again why MS
would keep them around after that?

--
| Microsoft: "A reputation for releasing inferior software will make |
| it more difficult for a software vendor to induce customers to pay |
| for new products or new versions of existing products." |
end

rosignol wrote:

[Snippperdesnip]


Does Windows Media player run on Mac OS? I don't know because I could
get a HP with WinXP on it for free from my former employer. Apart from
using my olde iMac with Mac OS 8.6 on it, I don't use a Mac anymore;
traitor me :-(

I would like to try Mac OS X, but as my iMac has only 64Mb RAM on board
(extendible to only 128Mb) this is not an option. Unless I buy a new Mac
of course.


[Snippperdesnip]

Nils

Nils Zonneveld <nilszonneveld@yahoo.com> wrote:

You could try Mac OS X as your iMac can hold 512MB RAM easily, its just
that larger chips where not on the market when your iMac was introduced.
check www.macstuff.nl

But the screen update will seem slow compared to Mac OS 9 or Windows as
the PDF based enige is kinda like printing to screen, which is nice for
'What You See Is What You Get' principles, but takes a lot more
horsepower to make it realtime. Still I prefer Mac OS X over 8.6 on a
233MHz machine because of compatibility and multilingual support.
--
Dennis SCP

begin In <8806jv81sarftja9r5houl76i7tauhqbif@4ax.com>, on 08/08/2003
at 04:11 AM, Michael Vondung <mvondung@gmx.net> said:

Only government is big enough to remove the m$ shackles from the
invisible had.

Au contraire, it isn't very democratic to allow them to ride roughshod
over all and sundry. The antitrust laws were passed by a democratic
process.

How is government control over the economy worse than microsoft
control over the economy? The voter has more influence on the first
than on the second. Besides, making corporations obey the law is not
the same thing as government ownership of the means of production. If
Bill Gates breaks into your house, is it communism when an agent of
the government arrests him?

Bought a PC in the last decade? How easy was it to avoid paying for a
copy of windoze that you didn't want?

How is that different from forcing a convicted criminal to perform
community service?

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT

Any unsolicited bulk E-mail will be subject to legal action. I reserve the
right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail.

Reply to domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me. Do not reply
to spamtrap@library.lspace.org

On Sat, 09 Aug 2003 22:32:47 -0400, "Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz"
<spamtrap@library.lspace.org.invalid> wrote:

Very easy. Granted, I don't buy PCs from international chains like
Gateway2000 or Dell, but from smaller, regional or national (Germany)
chains, but Windows was always an option. When I bought customized P4s
last fall, the sales person explicitely pointed out that Windows was
optional and that I could go without OS if I already have one, or want
something else. They didn't bundle their machines with Windows by
default -- and it was a German chain with seventy or so shops.

If people buy a Gateway2000 or a Dell, they pay a lot more money than
they would if they went to a smaller chain, a local store or put
together their own machine (I don't bother with the latter anymore,
because my hardware dealer doesn't charge extra and lets me pick
individual components, so I'd be a fool not to take the advantage of
two years warranty). The Windows OEM doesn't make that much of a
difference.

Have you tried to buy a widely supported processor that is not from
Intel or AMD? Personally, hardware monopolies worry me a whole lot
more than software monopolies.

The difference is that Microsoft didn't put a gun under someone's nose
and demanded their money. I understand that some of the very emotional
and paranoid folks here feel treated that way, but that's a
perspective that escapes me.

Most people who use Windows do so either because they made the choice
to get this OS or because they made the choice not to put effort in
getting an alternative OS. Like it or not, but Windows is (in general)
a whole lot easier to install than Linux or FreeBSD. I *run* FreeBSD
on one machine and XP on another. The former is more powerful and
doesn't hide anything from you, but the average user does NOT care.
They don't want to learn how to configure inetd, they simply want to
click a few check boxes and buttons, and hit the 'net.

Regarding usability (from an end-user's perspective) Windows XP is
years ahead of *any* Linux distro or BSD version. Suse comes perhaps
the closest, and it's not even really free. Same with RedHat. Truly
free operating distros/packages like Debian or BSD are a whole lot
harder to set-up and get running.

Linux/BSD hackers often seem to think that Windows is successful
merely because of Microsoft's semi-monopoly, and completely overlook
the fact that this is ALSO because of its ease of use and
installation. It is not the only player on the field, but it's the
player that's the most approachable.

If you need legal help to "sell" your free OS to people, then that's a
concept as ridiculous as "quotas" for female employees in
corporations. *I* have always hired people best suited for a job, not
based on their gender -- I never needed some government forcing me to
hire x number of women. In fact, I generally hire more women than
males, because in my experience they are more reliable and organized.
(As long as there hasn't been a German or American
president/chancellor that's female, I refuse to take *any* lectures
about equality seriously from either of these governments anyway).

Entirely too many people in this group and the Linux community have
difficuluties to even acknowledge that Windows might perhaps be the
best choice for some users, while Linux/BSD is the better choice for
others. I am not saying that Linux/BSD isn't suited for desktops,
either. But instead of repeating all of this, go here:
http://ezine.daemonnews.org/200208/dadvocate.html and read Greg's
article on this topic. I agree with him.

Lastly, I understand that a lot of this is about protocols, and I
agree with all the problems associated with this. (I also don't
particularly enjoy if I send someone a Word 2002 document and they
can't even open it in Word 2000.) However, I still believe it is silly
that Microsoft should be forced to distribute products of competing
companies. Like someone pointed out, Apple isn't distributing MS
software.

Maybe it's just me, but I do believe that Linux and *BSD will continue
to gain market shares -- even and perhaps especially in the desktop
market. KDE is one of the primary reasons, in my opinion. Much hated
by some Linux hackers, KDE makes Linux and *BSD a really neat choice
for workstations, if some of the issues mentioned in above referrenced
article can be addressed and resolved. If more and more people use
open formats for their documents (MS applications support most of
them), some of the monopoly-troubles will go away, too. Microsoft's
increasingly restrictive politics and unnecessarily high prices *are*
both in favour of Linux and *BSD.

Monopolies, much like dictatorships, tend to eventually trip over
themselves. Too many people need babysitters, that's one of the curses
of today's society -- and too few individuals take responsibility for
themselves and for their own choices.

-M.