Submitted by “The court-mandated committee overseeing Microsoft’s compliance with a federal antitrust settlement has commenced reviews on the company’s next major operating system to ensure it meets the settlement’s terms. The so-called Technical Committee recently received a build of Windows 7 from Microsoft and is checking it for any features that might violate the agreement. Presumably, most heavily under scrutiny is whether the OS causes host computers to favor Microsoft applications over third-party software – a practice the federal government cited in its original complaint against the company.”
They already know there is no teeth in that dog.
The elections run next November. Fido may yet get some dentures.
Edited 2008-03-11 10:51 UTC
meh, isnt “intellectual property” usa’s biggest export these days?
meh, isnt “intellectual property” usa’s biggest export these days?
Pop culture isn’t exactly “intellectual…”
heh, maybe so. but its easy to digest
You’ve got it all wrong. Our major export has been intellectuals. Unfortunately, we seem rapidly to be running out of stock.
Our main export is entertainers; please, stop sending Celine back.
“Our main export is entertainers; please, stop sending Celine back.”
Celine is a Canadian export…
…..and her US visa should be revoked.
So true, it hurts.
Nah, i think war is USAs biggest export these days. Just have a look at how crazy the Afghans and the Iraqi are about it, they could explode from excitement.
The Syrians and Irani would die to get their share!
Not unless your an american company operating in Germany. The your IP isn’t exported, it’s stolen.
Oh yeah, during the mid 90’s when the Democrats were in charge of the White House, MS was under much more scrutiny than is is now. That is how Windows 95 and Windows 98 had so much more competition, than MS does now.
The increased competition had little to do with the government, it had more to do with the times. During the mid 90’s there were still large companies (IBM-OS/2..commercial UNIX vendors etc) and interesting startups (Be, NeXT) that were willing to compete with MS. And actually, it was around this time that Microsoft truly began building monopolistic momentum, notably the effective killing of Netscape with IE and marked by the effective death of OS/2, one of windows’ largest competitors..around 1998. The truth of it was that the mid-90’s were actually one of the high-points of MS-anti-competitive practices, we are merely witnessing the aftershocks now in the present day. Apple remained as Microsoft’s only commercial competition on the desktop, and existed in their own little world for a while, allowing Microsoft to ease back for some time. It is only recently with the surge of OSX and the increasing viability of Linux that Microsoft has gone back on the offensive, and so it appears that the government et. al. may have been keeping microsoft in check during some period, it is more that microsoft didn’t seem to be fighting because they had nobody to fight. The only thing anyone can count on with Microsoft is that after crushing Be and IBM, they aren’t going to sit back now and let a new threat rise unhindered, they will go back to being the same old “play-dirty” microsoft…just as they’ve always been.
Apple only remained around because Gates new he HAD to have SOME “competition” and pumped money into them to keep them afloat. Otherwise, Apple probably wouldn’t be here either.
I’ve heard that argument many times, but it just doesn’t ring true. The fact of the matter is that Microsoft has earned its investment in Apple MANY times over from its sales of Mac Office. So, tell me, would you invest $200M, if you knew that the return would be $1B? It’s just smart business.
It was yet another Bill Clinton shakedown move to milk Silicon Valley of all their cash — with Microsoft on one side and Sun & dotcoms on the other.
I believe it would be a good thing for the operating system if this thing goes through.Windows should perform better and be more secure.
One can’t say that Vista favors MS software. It makes them all slow as hell. It’s a good thing that MS understands that they have to develop a replacement for Vista, and that they have to do it thorough and fast. I’m really looking forward to Windows 7 so I can skip Vista. Maybe I will give Windows 2008 on my desktop a chance.
I doubt you’ll see anything before 2010. Microsoft likes to take it’s time over these things.
But what do you expect guys? MS is a monopoly thats where goverment steps in and asks for the right exploits and backdoors that eventually gets discovered by crackers who give a lill joy to the script kiddies . I like better projects like Nlite/microwinx which bring the trust to the John Doe User not the goverments.
I’d like the think MS business practices are catching up with them. Realistically, I know that won’t happen until the cost of paying fines or knowledge level of the consumer outweighs the profit margin of continuing business as usual. I’m not holding out for the later of those two options.
Yeah. $1.4 billion sounds like a lot. But it’s really only about a month’s profit for MS. I’m sure they simply consider it a part of the cost of doing “business”.
Yeah, I have faith in there accountants as much as there legal and marketing departments. It’s most likely listed under the expenses on the income statements and balance sheets.
This Technical Committee has been inspecting Microsoft’s source code, emails, and specs since the 2000 antitrust settlement. When competitors complain, this committee is in a position to determine if the complaints have merit and if they do, Microsoft seems to be compliant about fixing the problems on a mutually agreed-upon timetable. I think this is the reason why Microsoft hasn’t had visible antitrust problems in the US: there’s a clear set of things that it must do (or that it must not do) and there’s an ongoing collaboration to ensure that the rules are followed. I wonder if this can happen in the EU?
The EU doesn’t *want* such a system in place. During Vista’s development, Microsoft submitted builds to the EC multiple times, asking whether they had any problem with it legally, and all the EC would say was “It’s not up to us to tell you if there’s anything wrong, it’s up to you to follow our law”. In other words, “That’s for us to know and you to find out.” Indeed, the EC *wanted* Vista released with “legal problems” so they could levy the inevitable fine. To this day, the EC *still* refuses to lay out explicit rules or even guidelines as to how to comply with EU law, let alone set up a regime for ensuring compliance while products are in development.
Another example was this network protocol documentation business. The EC declares, “What you’ve given us isn’t sufficient”. Microsoft asks, “Why not?” The EC responds, “That’s for us to know and you to find out”. By refusing to state exactly what the problems with the initial documentation were, they EC drags out the process of obtaining “sufficient” documentation (as Microsoft is stuck trying to read the EC’s mind), which we now can surmise was done intentionally in order to lay the ground work for the 1.4 billion dollar fine years later (the reason for the fine was the delay in documentation, a delay caused by the EC refusing to state what the problems with the initial documentation were).
I know many here hate Microsoft and therefore cheer on such government shenanigans, but that kind of government abuse is downright scary. There is nothing more frightening than government tyranny. Punishing people for not following laws that aren’t explicitly stated is the height of hypocrisy, government arrogance, and government abuse.
Oh, poor Microsoft, the EC is so mean, I never realized this. Bad EC. Microsoft should be treated like the honest company it is, the one that never used SCO, the one that never ran campaigns like “Vista Capable” to confuse the consumer, the one that has always played clean business. EC, you should be ashamed treating such a company in such a mean way.
LOL
Edited 2008-03-11 22:30 UTC
I find it remarkable that Microsoft has achieved such a level of perceived arrogance, that the US govt is investigating them for anti-trust violations in a product that hasn’t even been released, and won’t for some time.
They’ve certainly brought this on themselves, but I still find it quite amusing.
I also found that strange and very funny.
It is almost like getting arrested for a crime that has not yet been committed.
Bad Mr Ballmer !
THOUGHT POLICE!
The laws are selectively enforced, arbitrary, and designed to cast down competition. In a free market with no government intervention (abolish copyright and patents with a constitutional amendments, at the very least we should reform the current system), competition will arise due to consumer demand. We must not look to government to solve market problems. That is an economic fallacy.
Watch this great video of “Professor Dominick T. Armentano and Congressman Ron Paul discuss[ing] anti-trust and monopoly”(YouTube video description).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C4gRRk2i-M