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They dont come up with the figure from thin air you know, just the same way a judge comes up with a figure for you to pay something. From what I've seen it's based on a percentage of what you earn or gross.

Microsoft earn alot of money so the fine will be big to you and me, if a smaller company did the same thing it wouldn't be the same figure because they profit less.

Edited 2008-02-27 19:12 UTC

Yeah its almost like RIAA wants you to pay a million and a half per album you pirated.

do you actually know what the EU does?

Yes, the fine is big, BUT microsoft would not have those kind of sums in the bank had it not denied the competition

The reason no-one wanted the non media player version was it was the same price as the version WITH (in the uk at least)

It has nothing to do with creating a lucrative market for basic apps. It's about allowing software to compete on the platform. If you delete RealPlayer, it's gone. If you delete Windows Media Player, it respawns itself before your eyes, and when you run it, you get an advertisement of your choice from among a handful of Windows Media download services offering files that require Windows Media Player on Windows to keep playing. The de facto installed position of that software allows Microsoft to create dependence before customers are aware of lock-in or alternatives. The EU sees that tactic as abusive. I tend to agree.

They already have that freedom. Third parties are free to negotiate with OEMs such as Dell and Gateway and IBM to include their software. Google does it. So do other companies.



That's nonsense. Nobody is "dependent" on or "locked-in" to the Microsoft apps (Media Player, IE, etc). There are plenty of free alternatives. FireFox is eating IE's lunch in the EU -- perhaps somebody should email a clue to Kroes -- despite this so-called "lock-in".

That was easy: a lot of guys working on Samba came from Microsoft and left because Microsoft wanted more compatibility with older software, the developers didn't like it and joined (or started?) Samba. So specs where not needed.

I don't know which reality you live in that this occurred.

I'm sure Andrew Tridgell and Jeremy Allison appreciated the help of all these programmers when they were reverse engineering the protocol by looking at the bytes going over the wire (that was sarcasm, by the way, in case you didn't realize). Oh wait, they didn't get any help.

If you want to spout bullshit like you just did, you better be able to back it up with trustworthy links stating what you just said. Which you won't be able to.

Not to mention that Microsoft developers who did this would be sued into the ground for divulging trade secrets.

In summary, you're a f--king dumbass sack of shit, and you're talking out of your ass.

Well, while I don't recall any former MS guys who worked on Samba... I do recall an interview with either Jeremy or Andrew some years ago in which they said that earlier on, certain factions within Microsoft had been friendly, helpful, and cooperative, and excited about the prospect of SMB running well on other OSes. Which dovetails with statements made recently by Jeremy about how it is hoped that the agreement which got them the CIFS documentation might signal a return to normalcy for Samba<->MS relations.

Just like fines from the judge, pay them and you do it again, it's not like the EU can imprison all the CEO's and people responsible. If you had a court bindded by the rules of law what would you do?

What law have they made up, Microsoft should think themselves lucky since they got broken up during the Clinton era. It's a good job Clinton didn't have another term because from those video interviews I seen Bill Gates was sweating.

The difference in the WMP case and in this case, is that in the WMP case, Microsoft was force to offer to version of Windows for the same price and with one version beeing inferior to the other one. While in this case Microsoft is asked to release documentation about Windows API and protocols, for a reasonable price.

How much is Media Player worth? IE? Notepad? Paint? Solitaire? Quite frankly, if you say anything but $0, I'm going to be very surprised, because there are tons of free alternatives on the market that have necessarily reduced the value of Media Player to $0.



According to MS, "hundreds of Microsoft employees and contractors have worked for more than 30,000 hours to create over 12,000 pages of detailed technical documents that are available for license today." The EU claims that the documentation wasn't sufficient, but isn't required to provide independent analysis by anyone outside their payroll. Quite frankly, given the amount of money at stake here, I'd question the EU's objectivity on this issue. I say let ISVs tell us whether the docs are sufficient or not, not some hired flack from the EU.

Actually there are external adjudicators from the industry that have been appointed to judge the quality of the documentation.

Ok Mr Tomcat, explain why someone would pay EXACTLY the same amount of cash for two systems, one with all the "goodies" missing ?

Change the prices and then we will see.

Because, as I've pointed out on this thread, a Media Player isn't worth more than $0, when there are numerous free alternatives on the market (ie. WinAmp, etc).

Maybe so, but there is a huge sway of people who think for things to run properly on Windows, they need to say "Windows" in front of the name, and better yet, if it says "Microsoft".

Does many free alternatives to MS Windows (ie. Linux, Open/Free/Net BSD, OpenSolaris, ...) make MS Windows worth nothing ?

The DG Competition can ask 5% of the daily turnover for each day of non-compliance. Microsoft had to be compliant within 90 days after the Court of First Instance decided they did need to comply.

What they did is count the number of non-compliant days multiply with the daily fines, and subtract the non-compliance fine from 2006.

Back in 2006 the DG Competition did not fine the full 5% (if I remember well 3%) and warned the remaining money would be fined if Big M would still be incompliant. Apparantly this is what happened today (plus the full 5% daily fines after the 2006 fine).

It should be noted that Microsoft now is being considered compliant (the new terms allowed Samba to buy the documentation), but apparently they didn't get forgiveness for the non-compliant period since the previous fines in 2006.

Easy.

The calculation is made on the period in which Microsoft broke the law and is a percentage variable between 3.5 and 11.4 depending on the gravity of the illecit income made in consequence of the felony.

Funny fact.

If the morons at Microsoft had just paied in first place instead in dragging the discussion for years (hoping the EU will starve on the way) they would have to pay less due to a shorter period of infringement.

Well written Law are such a bitch

Microsoft did pay the fine in the beginning before making the appeal.

Probably the same formulars used by the USA when someone sues a fastfood chain becuase the hot coffee that they ordered was... wait for it... hot!

Edited 2008-02-28 16:48 UTC

Promote? I think most of the people actually interested in using an alternative operating system could give a damn about a 1.5 bn promotion.

When you force something down someones throat, they tend to demand it be worth it.

When you do things like improve the product, they vote with their feet.

It is not in the interest of anyone in the EU to promote an alternative operating system.
That was not what the whole case was about.

You're not making sense man. The EU cannot do anything else but fine M.$. Would you be happy if they just didn't do anything? It's not like they can come to M.$ and put the company behind bars for breaking the law. Sheesh get a grip on reality.

The figure btw. is like the cost of matchbox for you really. M.$ earns it back so fast it's hilarious. Multiply by 100 and then we can talk about impact.

Edited 2008-02-27 19:21 UTC

You didn't read his post very well did you?

He's not saying they should punish them in a different way.

I did, and he's basically just saying he disagrees with the fine. So I'm just saying that the EU has no other way but to fine M.$. They cannot do anything else short of ignoring a law-breaker.

He's suggesting that the EU is watching for any little excuse to take money from Microsoft. That they aren't really looking out for the people of the EU, but that it looks good to beat up a big American company and get more money for the EU.

They broke the law, they got ordered. They didn't comply they got fined. What's there the EU can "choose" ? You didn't read the article did you? They DO NOT HAVE a choice in this. It's the law. They had a choice originally, weather to order them to comply and open interoperability possibilities. They chose so and gave M.$ some time. They didn't comply so they get fined.

It's not like there's a fat guy at the EC which simply pushes a "fine M.$" button.

The error here is "broke the law."

A criminal case would be devastating to Microsoft. There would be standards applied to evidence and testimony to ensure they were accurate and correct, and there would be protection against double jeopardy. A conviction in a criminal case would be on the level of the Enron trials, with the company virtually shutting down and jail time for dozens of people. All these repeated "fines" have been levied in civil cases, which use much lower standards and can be repeated at will.

And when a large, multigovernmental organization feels powerful enough to start demanding "compliance"...

Which EU law did they break then? As far as I know each EU country has individual laws and any attempt to create a common law has been a failure. Sure there are rulings and decisions (not sure what the english word is) made by the EU, but that also means that EU can change these as they see fit...including to such an extent that it gives them billions of dollars. I have yet to see which specific law that are broken and how that applies to the member countries because everytime I hear about this case in debates like this its only "they broke the law" and thats it. The media does, however, not seem to use the word "law" as much in this case. They rather say "ruling". I find that kinda interesting.

You talk about this as it was a criminal case, which it is not obviously. That would really cause a scandal.

just my 2c...

Edited 2008-02-27 19:49 UTC

You're right they didn't break a particular EU law per-se, but they are a monopoly by EU standards, and EU law governs "stuff" about monopolies. It gives certain rights to certain institutions to make sure the economy is kept healthy. These institutions empowered by law, found M.$ to be lacking and ordered them to change. They didn't and got fined for non-compliance.

Edited 2008-02-27 20:07 UTC

While each member country has indeed their indiviual laws, there are quite some common laws, mainly related to commerce and transportation.

One thing that can be easily misunderstood is that this common laws are inacted by creating or changing national laws, i.e. when there is sufficient agreement for a new common set of rules, each member nation is required to include these rules in their own legal frameworks within a certain time.

Depending on the country's already existing laws there might not be any change at all (rules already covered), some changes to existing laws required (some rules not yet or only partially covered) or new bills introduced.

So even if the rules are then covered by different laws in different countries, they are still valid in all of them, effectively making them common law.

Actually they do have other options.

During the hearing at the European Court of 1st instance a so-called "think tank" produced a list of options the EC has available according to the EU treaty.

For example the commission could impose a ban on competing for governmental contracts using Microsoft products.

Since this is a huge market (Administration offices, schools, etc) this would be far worse from Micrsoft's point of view than any fine.

Actually, that figure represents about 2% of Microsoft's yearly income.

Let's see:
0.02 x 365 days is about one week. I wouldn't call that a long time. It's more comparable to a 1000$ fine for an ordinary person which is actually quite adequate if they repeatedly break the law and don't give a damn about it.

Indeed. Supersized corps require supersized fines to even get their attention. As you demonstrate, that number, which sounds huge to those of us who file our yearly 1040EZ forms, is really just a very reasonable and life-sized fine relative to the entity being fined. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that a certain amount of leniency has been shown.

The good news is that, despite my fears to the contrary, we actually have started seeing some improvements in their behavior as a result of the legal interventions of the last 10 years. But it is hardly time to let up. There is still so far to go.

True, and if the EU really wanted to hurt MS they would of charged a real billion and not an american billion. That would have put real pressure on MS's wallet

...umm, they charged them with 1.37 billion USD. If they can look at that fine without breaking a sweat, then I doubt the extra 101 million Euros would have mattered much. Balmer probably causes that amount of damage with office furniture every week.

Try looking up what a billion is in the US and then see what it is in most of the rest of the world that can count. We're not just talking about differences in currency value ;-) ok

Edit: Comment removed because not accurate.

Edited 2008-02-27 19:47 UTC

The EU is definitely NOT against US-based companies.

If you look at the list of companies that get fined, you will find that MOST of them are EU-based.

And about the height of the fine: None of the EU-based companies were stupid enough to go to the stage where they get slapped with daily fines, nor was any of the companies as big as Microsoft. Both factors are rising the fine.

The rules are simple: Don't act in a way that makes the market dysfunctional. If you do, you get fined. The fines are steep enough to make bad behaviour be a slow way towards bankrupcy, so misbehavior does not make economical sense.

Microsoft obviously thought they could do with the EU commission what they did in USA, but alas, they were wrong.
Had the fines been less high, Microsoft would just have continued their behaviour, because the loss by compliance would have been more than the loss by fines.

What happens with the fines?
The fines go into the EU budget, paying for subventions, the administrative costs and GALILEO.

The EU bureaucracy is a big myth. The Europian Union is one the most efficient administrations in the EU, compared to national and local administrations. Compared to the work produced, the EU has a reasonably low amount of people employed and burns little money.

Yes, all the translation etc. costs money. Yes, the moves from Strasbourg to Brussel cost money. However, these are part of what the EU stands for. Even with these costs, the EU bureaucracy burns far less money than most member states governments.

Edited 2008-02-27 21:20 UTC

What? Do you know how many people work for the EU? 23,000. Compare that to the 43,000 civil servants working for the city of Paris (inner city only, 2 millions inhabitants).

As for Gallileo (of which the EU is funding only one third), the EU is promoting international competition and the development of high tech companies and research. You can always argue that cooperation would be economicaly more sound, that may be true in the short term but in the long one? We all know where monopoles lead.

fixed

0.9B Euro is a drop in a EU budget. It's also removed from the pool that EU members have to contribute, it doesn't increase spending.

Except that there is no EU welfare state. Most of its member countries are "welfare states" (open market with social security) but not all as this is a matter that its members decide for themselves and of course those aren't paid by eu fonds.

That game can be played both ways and the U.S economy while strong isn't going to be the winner in the end.

Yeah, we have all seen how good the US economy is these days...

Edited 2008-02-27 19:22 UTC

Well, I am not saying anything about the Economic power of the EU vs the US but note this:

Taking goods and services together, the EU and the USA account for the largest bilateral trade relationship in the world. The significant amount of bilateral trade and investment illustrates a high degree of interdependence of the two economies.
This was taken from an EU website. http://www.eurunion.org/profile/facts.htm
clearly a trade dispute is not in either the US or EU's benefits.

Yes, it's not viable for any side to do any kind of economic damage to the other. Who would end up "less poor" in the end is questionable.

You do of course understand that the US market is minuscule in comparison to the EU, the worlds biggest market ?

If the US decided to go for a trade embargo, they would be doing more than shooting themselves in the foot, they would put the US further back into bankruptcy than it is at this minute.

That would be great, except you are comparing a single country to almost an entire continent.

Until the EU becomes a single country, your statement is PHAIL.

Something new to learn everyday.
Until now I thought that the USA were actually a union of states, covering almost an entire continent (North America).

Must be Canada then.

Something new to learn everyday.
Until now I thought that the USA were actually a union of states, covering almost an entire continent (North America).

Must be Canada then. "

The U.S. Civil War was properly known as the War of Secession. The outcome was the loss of States' rights. A state may no longer secede, making it nothing more than a jurisdiction rather than a fully independent state ( state as in Nation ) which had a membership in a the Union of American States ( a.k.a. The United States of America ).

The Civil War had NOTHING to do with slavery. Slaves were originally only "freed" in the states which had seceded so that those states would lose their work-force and home-turf defense. The freeing was technically not legal, merely a proclamation by the U.S. president that slaves defecting from the seceding states would be welcomed to the North as freed men, causing the famous "Underground Railroad." At the end of the Civil War the abolition of slavery was actually issued in order to alleviate the risk of the few Northern slaves acting in revolt.

The seceding states, mind you, had legal rights to succession in many cases ( others had terms to their membership ), especially Texas. In fact, Texas, to this day, remains ultimately legally capable of seceding and is basically considered a Nation State. One evidence of this is flag height. A State must fly its flag below the U.S. flag's height. It is ILLEGAL to fly ANY State's flag at or above the same height of the U.S. flag, except for the Republic of Texas, whose legal entity name in U.S. law is Texas or "State of Texas" or "State of the Texas Republic." ( not certain if the last entity name/title is still considered for new document/law usage )

So, basically, the U.S.'s experiment failed with the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution. It became a singular nation of States and Territory's and soon began to expand beyond the borders of the seas, doing so by taking advantage of every possible opportunity to expand. The last two states were added in 1959. Alaska was purchased from Russia. Hawaii's royal family was taken out of power and they originally became a U.S. occupied land, then U.S. ally, then a territory, then a state.

Just check out how many "nations" the U.S. either is occupying, allied with, or calls a territory. These are merely the various stages a land must traverse for the U.S. to "quietly" assimilate them into the matrix.

U.S. history classes all have sections describing "Imperial America," but they always speak of it in the past tense, and few are able to recognize that current events are tomorrow's history. Even though they know it, they don't understand what it really means because they were trained in schools to not form connections, or else they will be called "nuts" or "conspiracy theorists."

<psycho rant>
End result: One crappy nation ruled by special interests with governmental officials having almost no clue as to their job description because they cannot connect the past to the present either.
</psycho rant>

Hmm, well just a little history lesson :-)

--The loon

raver31
Member since:
2005-07-06

You do of course understand that the US market is minuscule in comparison to the EU, the worlds biggest market ?

---------------------------

What kind of rot are you talking about?

2007 GDP for US was 12.57 trillion, the EU 16.6 trillion.

Last I checked, 12.57 vs 16.6 is not minuscule unless you decided to single handedly change the definition of the word.

Sources:
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/brazil-becomes-worlds-biggest...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union

Yeah, but us trillions are like EU billions

While I'm often critical of my home country, and strongly support the EC in taking the action which we in the US have failed to take, I do believe in sticking to reality when making criticisms of the US. The US GDP is 40% higher than that of the EU-15.

http://tinyurl.com/2maaj8

That said, neither the US nor the EU can afford a trade war. And US citizens like their SUVs too much to consider risking our precarious economic standing over this issue.

EU-15?
I am counting 27
http://europa.eu/abc/european_countries/index_en.htm

Hmmm, I think my original link was talking about the 40% higher *per capita* GDP for the US, which is not really what we are talking about. (Though it does have some bearing on the comment that someone made about the US ecomony being in bad shape.)

Perhaps this is a better comparison:

http://tinyurl.com/y2pn7u

Looks like overall the EU-27 is ahead by a nose. (5.5% in 2007.) The original assertion, to which I was responding, claimed that the US economy was "miniscule" compared to the might of the EU's economy.

Whilst I don't think the US would be stupid enough to try that sort of stunt with Europe, I'll add a +1 to your post as it seems someone is modding people down again incorrectly.

Dave

The EU is not the least bit afraid of the USA anymore. The EU is far stronger economically and the US would be hurt far more.

"far stronger" my ass. the eu is more populous but the usa is richer. both economies are of comparable size. and i really don't think that the us-government is unhappy about the decision of the eu.

This is not an EU vs USA issue. This is EU vs Microsoft. You guys love trying to make everything issues either with the entire USA or with Bush...lame.

The high prices apply to the protocol documentation. And by high prices, they mean an initial price of 3% of revenue, which was lowered to 2% and then 1% and now sits at 0.4%, which was finally acceptable.

I think it is hard to compete with Microsoft, but I don't think it's because of anti-trust or anything like that. Microsoft is a big company with a bunch of smart people, and the ability to hire more smart people as needed. If you want to go head-to-head against this juggernaut, then you'll need to hire a set of smart people as well. Perhaps the EU should start forbidding Microsoft from hiring people from Europe and instead force them to work for one of the ECIS companies.

Oh, really. Do tell about their "successes" in the industry so far. Because, as far as I've seen, they haven't accomplished anything other than levy fines.

You're obviously biased. I don't know if you're some person from EU who's just angry coz he had to pay a tax which wasn't there before, or a foreigner who just doesn't like the EU, but you're quite obviously biased.

The EU has done a lot of good and a lot of bad pretty much as any other comparable "entity", but it sure isn't just puffing hot air. See eg: software patents etc. (yes, I know the corps themselves were against it in the end)

Stop trying to shoot the messenger. What are the EU's successes?

For example the car manufacturers no longer tell their dealers to not serve customers of neighboring country after Volkswagen and Opel (General Motors) were fined several tens of millions Euro for such misbehavior.

This signal, i.e. that it is no longer acceptable to create artifical borders, has also been understood by other industries.

I'm referring to the computer industry. What, exactly, have the EU's successes been, other than fining MS?

Isn't that enough? They are tackling the single biggest problem in the industry today, and in the process, doing the US DOJ's job for it, since it is apparently unwilling to live up to its responsibilities to the American people.

And as an American citizen, I thank Europe for their dilligence.

No, it's not enough. It hasn't been the LEAST effective. The EU has already gone after MS in trying to remove WMP from Windows and, for all of that effort, the industry IGNORED the so-called remedy.

http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1740580115

"The European Commission won an appeals court challenge from Microsoft on Monday, but its 2004 antitrust decision has done little to change the competitive landscape for media players in Europe."

Now, it's gone after MS to produce interop docs, MS responded, and the EU says it's not good enough. So, what has the EU accomplished other than spouting good intentions and levying fines? Samba clearly doesn't need the EU's help to provide interoperability. It's not clear whether any of this will yield ANYTHING. My bet is that it's an utter waste of time.

Funny you should mention Samba. Because the Samba team clearly felt that it was worth going to a lot of effort to negotiate a deal to get that documentation. The deal having been negotiated via the expenditure of much effort by Andrew Tridgell himself. Do you really think that they would have been able to do so without the EC's actions? In that case, Microsoft clearly demonstrated that they see the handwriting on the wall by going a bit beyond the absolute requirements of the settlement to facilitate FOSS projects. (Good on Microsoft for that!) But it would never have happened without pressure from Europe. The whole "make your product available without media player bundled" was well intentioned, but misguided and ineffective. Chalk it up to inexperience in dealing with Microsoft. However, insisting upon proper documentation, and plotting of the patent landmines is very much not.

Why are you so disturbed by the idea of vitally important protocols, upon which (for better or worse) the world economy depends, being properly documented?

Edited 2008-02-28 19:56 UTC

Samba doesn't need the docs to make their basic code work. LANMan/File/print services already work fine, as is. What they're wanting now are the protocols which will allow them the REPLACE ActiveDirectory servers (and their upstream replication servers) so that Samba can nibble further on Microsoft's corporate lunch. This is about EXTENDING open source reach into the enterprise, not on fixing what's already there.



Yes, they certainly could have. Microsoft already has programs in place (ie. Shared Source license) to allow customers to view its source code. The sticking points were that Samba didn't want to pay up, and they wanted to be indemnified from patent infringement. They lost the first battle (had to pay $10K which, frankly, is chicken feed in the larger scheme of things) and won the second; although, anybody (but Novell) who uses Samba (ie. Red Hat, etc) is subject to possible patent litigation, according to MS.



I disagree. What we have here is a difference of opinion on technology licensing. FOSS proponents have a bug up their rears about NOT paying for technology that they want. Right or wrong, MS deserves to be compensated for its IP, in the form of license fees. As long as FOSS proponents take the position that they won't pay for access to IP, they'll be forced to reverse-engineer.



Yeah, and we're seeing the EU gear up to do the same thing on behalf of Opera. Do not be surprised when the EU orders MS to produce a version of Windows without IE. It's going to happen and, frankly, nobody will want it. Just another repeat of the same ridiculous process. The only ones who will benefit are the lawyers and the bureaucrats.



I don't have a problem with documentation. What I have a problem with are bureaucracies run amok, without any kind of constraints. The whole thing strikes me as rather fascist. The EU is both prosecutor and judge over Microsoft. They can not only assert that Microsoft isn't complying, but they can judge them, and then fine them, as well. The courts are little more than rubber-stamp mechanisms. Many of you seem to relish the fact that it's MS on the hotseat, but I'm more concerned about the EU becoming the overbearing elephant in the middle of the room; incurring billions of dollars in fines from companies and yielding little or no practical value. Watch the Opera antitrust suit. It's going to be very telling.

Edited 2008-02-29 01:10 UTC

In case you are referring to the monitor trustee, Professor Neil Barrett, he was selected from a list of experts Microsoft themselves suggested as being capable for the job.

Of course we could make up a conspiracy theory about an EU mole inside Microsoft putting a "trojan horse" on the list.

Sure, but Microsoft didn't know that Barrett was in clandestine contact with its competitors. Microsoft discovered these contacts and called Barrett a "co-prosecutor", which was actually pretty accurate. Because the EU admitted that it's given Barrett broad powers to "monitor Microsoft". Which means, in other words, that he isn't an independent agent performing a limited function as an expert witness. He's a member of the prosecutor's office. The EU stacked the deck against MS (no surprise there), and anyone with half a clue can see that he isn't an objective source of information.

Total rubbish.

Firstly, the amount the EU fined MS is tiny compared to the EU commission's budget, never mind the rest of the EU.

Secondly, repeatedly saying the EU has a large bureaucracy does not actually make it true. The EU has a very small and extremely efficient bureaucracy, as anybody who has done even limited studies of the EU can tell you.

Thirdly, the EU has found many other, mostly European, companies in violation of it's anti competitive laws and has levied pretty high fines on them as well. To somehow imply that MS is the EU's whipping boy is absurd.

If your gonna try and argue that MS does not deserve these fines, you should at least read up on what your talking about first. Maybe that way people like me will not feel the need to correct your obviously biased and misinformed rants.

So what. $1.3B pays the salaries of a lot of bureaucrats.



False. The EU employs 40,000 employees. If you consider that to be a "very small and extremely efficient bureaucracy", you're smoking crack.



No, it's not absurd. The extent of fines and regulation against MS is unprecedented.
Read the news. Even Kroes admits that they're breaking new ground here in going after MS.

40'000 people is not a lot considering it's a multi national entity, now is it? Hell, MS alone employs 79'000 people.

The EU employs less people than the British government, one of it's own member states. It also employs less people than the US federal government, so I repeat, just because you keep stating your misinformed opinions as fact does not actually make em true.

As for these bureaucrats supposedly greasing their own back pockets, let me tell you a little something about how the EU works. These people are not for sale, as the fact that MS was unable to buy it's way out of this court case attests, unlike what happened across the pond.

If you seriously think that the MS somehow deserves to be let of for so blatantly ignoring the EU anti competitive rulings, then you my friend are the one smoking crack.

the us federal government employs about 1,8 million people.
in comparision, the the eu commision is really tiny.
sure, they do much less. but they certainly are a lean form of government.

We'll just have to agree to disagree on this subject. I happen to believe that 40K bureaucrats are a LOT of bureaucrats. And, comparing with other bloated European socialist bureaucracies doesn't lessen the number.



Hilarious. So you believe that the U.S. Supreme Court was paid off by Microsoft to let them off the hook? So, where do you get your drugs?



I never said that MS deserves to be let off. MS should comply with the order. What I would like to see, however, is a truly independent review of the protocol documentation, not some hired flack for the EU who works hand-in-glove with Microsoft's rivals.

Sure, and the US is a picture of bureaucratic efficiency. I don't see what your obvious anti socialist biased has to do with MS getting fined, but then in my experience, libertarians generally don't think all that straight.


Oh please [rolls eyes], be gentle with my bruised ego! It's a well known fact that MS made substantial financial contributions to Dubia's election campaigns, in exchange for political pressure being put on the US supreme court, effectively buying themselves a 'get out of fines free' card. To claim otherwise, you'd have to quite obviously be high :-p.


I find that statement very hard to believe. Mudslinging I'd be more willing to consider if it came from an obviously non biased source.

Straw man. I don't care about comparisons between the US and European bureaucracies. Neither has any appeal to me.



The actions of the EU bureaucracy haven't yielded ANY practical benefits to the computer industry. They've simply sucked $$$ from the private sector into the public sector.



If it's indeed a "well known fact", then you won't mind actually providing a verifiable reference.



Given that you believe that tripe conspiracy theory about the U.S. Supreme Court, you're going to have to work harder to feign disbelief.



I don't see why you'd oppose a truly independent review of the protocols. What are you worried about? Worried that your sacred cows in the EU might have played you for a sap?

Edited 2008-02-29 08:46 UTC

Of course they need the money. You can't continue to grow an already bloated bureaucracy without more coin from foreign corporations...

Considering your obvious intense lack of education (EU welfare state... priceless, I'm still laughing), maybe you shouldn't jump to conclusions.