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The European Union fined Microsoft on Wednesday of abusing its near monopoly, a record fine of $613 million dollars.
The EU gave Microsoft 90 days to offer a version of Windows to manufacturers without its digital media player and 120 days for them to release accurate programming code to other companys in the server market
The downside is that MS will be able to stretch legal appeals until 2009 - which gives them plenty of time to launch Longhorn *with* the Mediaplayer.
[May be wrong!]
330million GBP sterling, with laws against embedded browser and media subsystem, hence allowing for choice.
Apparently MS has £30,000,000,000.00 GBP ($55,000,000,000.00 USD) in the bank spare. Slap on its little pinky at the most. Also they have not stated the Microsoft cannot, include the browser and Media player on the same disc, and in the setup profile.
Just does not mean anything at all until, people pull away from the operating system.
like Real Network's player and Apple's Quicktime say it threatens their business and they want it unbundled.
so next we have some file management company complaining
and the EU decides that explorer should be unbundled
from the system?
oh wait! opera is based in the EU, so next thing to
go is IE.
pcanywhere, well there goes remote desktop.
hummingbird, bye-bye hyperterminal.
don't forget all those screensaver vendors!
if everyone gets on board, we'll be back at DOS.
if they leave the guts of the NT kernel behind
with hotswitch command windows, i'll be a VERY
happy camper!
wait a minute, now desqview and multidos are
unhappy :)
Yes, this is correct. The EC is trying to give you the choice back that MS doesn't want you to have.
so next we have some file management company complaining and the EU decides that explorer should be unbundled from the system?
A file browser is a natural and necessary part of any OS. This is not the case with a multimedia viewer.
oh wait! opera is based in the EU, so next thing to go is IE.
The US governement has demanded that for a long time, without the need for a EC company to inspire them.
pcanywhere, well there goes remote desktop.
hummingbird, bye-bye hyperterminal.
Are full versions of those automatically included in every Windows installation?
don't forget all those screensaver vendors!
Screensavers offer a choice by default, and it is trivial to add others to the ones already installed. The screensaver API is published in its entirety. And there is no third party data that requires you to use one or the other, so that the ones installed by default can't influence those third parties to publish their data in a different format than they would otherwise.
Polemic statements will not help anyone understand the nature of the problem. There's no point in making irrelevant comparisons between fundamentally different situations.
A file browser is a natural and necessary part of any OS
it may be a natural part in contemporary times,
but not necessary.
vms, os/400, dos, sun/os
polemic or not, where is the line drawn?
under NT4 i will use nothing other than seagate
for backup purposes. under win2k, i find that the
only *reliable* system is the builtin backup
software.
again, where does any particular person draw the
line. your line is not my line.
technical excellence should be where these
companies compete, not in the courts.
