EU hits Microsoft with Unprecedented Fine

[DemoCoder]

But this is a huge obstacle to businesses moving to other operating systems. When buying a new PC, you're not going to want to change the software of the entire network: you want it to work just fine with what you've already got set up.

a) there is no need to change to another operating system. Alternative filesharing and authentication for windows already exists

b) any *properly* managed windows network would allow IT to deploy updates to all windows clients on the network anyway

And when have we ever seen Microsoft, or any other company, change their protocols to rub out the competition? It just doesn't sound feasible, because it would cause a whole lot of their own software to stop working: that is, there would be a very large cost associated for Microsoft to attempt any such change.

That is not my argument, it is the anti-MS camp argument that MS creates APIs just to disadvantage competitors on the Windows platform, e.g. secret interfaces between Office apps and the OS, oh, and the infamous DrDOS example.

 

[DemoCoder]

But without c) Operable with other operating systems, you still are locking users into a single platform. OS developers won't be competing on price, but instead those companies that have used Windows in the past will find it very hard to migrate to a different OS.

Interopability does not require implementing proprietary protocols. There are plenty of examples of Windows on heterogenous networks interoperating fine. The question you are posing is if a shop is 100% windows boxes, and some guy wants to stick a Mac in there, can it access Windows file shares. That's an issue for the IT department, having made the dumb decision to make all their file servers NT shares.

I have never personally experienced the "all windows shop". In every company I've been at, all users had a variety of ways of sharing files: SMB, NFS, FTP, RDBMS (Oracle File System) WebDAV, and even configuration management file systems.

In fact, I'm apt to claim that my observed behavior of windows workgroup users is that more often than not, they share files by emailing them as attachments.

 

[Frank]

The debate here is over whether third parties should be allowed to sell products which clone MS's proprietary protocols and can replace MS versions. For me, this is a false debate, since I don't give a shit about MS proprietary protocols, as long as I can install a suite of Open Protocols, it's fine.

But that's the main and only debate for most businesses and MSCE admins!

Not every manager or systems admin is a geek. Most aren't, in fact. And they don't like things they don't understand. Which is mostly anything not made by Microsoft, or specific for their business, if Microsoft doesn't sell it.

You know the saying: "Nobody is ever fired by buying IBM"? Make that "Microsoft", nowadays.

 

[Frank]

In short: while there are plenty of possibilities to do whatever you want with computers without using anything branded Microsoft whatsoever if you know how, in real life that is NEVER an option. Because managers like safe. And Microsoft is the only safe option they care to know about.

 

[Frank]

[rant]I even had to use Microsoft Access at some time for any development whatsoever at some unspecified company, because that whas all my IT manager knew. It was safe.[/rant]

 

[Blazkowicz]

windows media player is bundled with all windows versions, and windows media services is bundled with windows server. thus every MS software user on earth can play WMV streams on the internet, and every windows server can stream WMV (if you install the service which is on CD.. why is it so the player has to be tightly integrated but not the server? )

isn't the market a bit slanted by this?
at least WMV9 is no longer proprietary since it may also be called VC-1.
but know you have the proprietary DRM and purchasing music, which could be a bigger problem?

 

[Blazkowicz]

That happened much later though, after the pressure from the EU. I think it was XP SP2 which brought the possibility to uninstall Messenger, IE, Outlook Express and the rest of the malware which some people actually like to use (or be used by as I see it ).

and how laughable it is. an "uninstall" that delete shortcuts. I delete the shorcuts myself, thank. ( everytime I see a big blue E on a windows desktop, it makes a trip to the garbage can )

 

[DemoCoder]

Well, it's the company's fault if they get stuck and don't want to switch. There is always a switching cost, and all cloning does is allow you to replace one vendor-lockin with another. I'd rather not be locked in period.

Secondly, is there a real need for competition in the area of small business file sharing? I mean, really? And by your own admission, if people buy MS because it is "safe" how likely are they to buy an ACME Workgroup Server when MS will be selling the same thing, along with a legion of rabid MSCEs shilling for it, and tons of other incentives for choosing MS, plus anti-ACME FUD. I really don't see what the EU is trying to accomplish here.

Either they're going to be smart enough to know about the alternative protocols, or they're not, and going to go with all-MS safe and dumb purchasing decisions.

And frankly, MS comes builtin with support for WebDAV shares, FTP shares, MS ships NFS client for Windows, MS comes with builtin Kerberos support, etc. For small workgroups, ample solutions exist already for drop-in, and for large workgroups, I personally would avoid Active Directory, SMB, and Windows domain security like the plague.

 

[DemoCoder]

windows media player is bundled with all windows versions, and windows media services is bundled with windows server. thus every MS software user on earth can play WMV streams on the internet, and every windows server can stream WMV (if you install the service which is on CD.. why is it so the player has to be tightly integrated but not the server? )

isn't the market a bit slanted by this?
at least WMV9 is no longer proprietary since it may also be called VC-1.
but know you have the proprietary DRM and purchasing music, which could be a bigger problem?

Anyone can install a DirectShow filter and WMP will happily play their streams. Moreover, the largest video streaming sites on the internet use Flash players. I guess the market is slanted towards Adobe.

 

[KimB]

Anyone can install a DirectShow filter and WMP will happily play their streams. Moreover, the largest video streaming sites on the internet use Flash players. I guess the market is slanted towards Adobe.

Well, using flash for streaming video is very nice because it's actually cross-platform. The other streaming video interfaces aren't.

 

[DemoCoder]

Exactly, but according to the theories presented here, Flash video shouldn't have been a success since MS provides out of the box playback and serving for video, shouldn't MS have won? How did YouTube and Flash beat WMP? Think about it. Crossplatform video ain't exactly that relevent when 90+% of Internet users are windows users. Yet MS still lost.

 

[Frank]

Well, it's the company's fault if they get stuck and don't want to switch. There is always a switching cost, and all cloning does is allow you to replace one vendor-lockin with another. I'd rather not be locked in period.

Secondly, is there a real need for competition in the area of small business file sharing? I mean, really? And by your own admission, if people buy MS because it is "safe" how likely are they to buy an ACME Workgroup Server when MS will be selling the same thing, along with a legion of rabid MSCEs shilling for it, and tons of other incentives for choosing MS, plus anti-ACME FUD. I really don't see what the EU is trying to accomplish here.

Either they're going to be smart enough to know about the alternative protocols, or they're not, and going to go with all-MS safe and dumb purchasing decisions.

And frankly, MS comes builtin with support for WebDAV shares, FTP shares, MS ships NFS client for Windows, MS comes with builtin Kerberos support, etc. For small workgroups, ample solutions exist already for drop-in, and for large workgroups, I personally would avoid Active Directory, SMB, and Windows domain security like the plague.

Well, you know the main (and often only) requirement for custom software from most of our customers, next to it working as intended? It should use IE, ASP.NET, C#, and not require any installation next to the program itself on the client computers.

Pretty dumb reasoning, if you ask me.

 

[KimB]

Exactly, but according to the theories presented here, Flash video shouldn't have been a success since MS provides out of the box playback and serving for video, shouldn't MS have won? How did YouTube and Flash beat WMP? Think about it. Crossplatform video ain't exactly that relevent when 90+% of Internet users are windows users. Yet MS still lost.

WMP may be in 91% of PC's, but 98% of internet users (according to Adobe's site) have Flash installed. Additionally, both linux and mac penetration are on the rise.

Edit: Oh, and don't forget that many users have issues running WMP from within Firefox, which about 25% of all internet users use.

 

[Fred]

Arguably the increase in mac penetration is precisely b/c they now have so much compatibility with pure MS stuff. They floundered for years doing their own thing, and it wasn't until they started bundling in things that every PC user takes for granted that people even looked twice at their overpriced machines.

 

[KimB]

Arguably the increase in mac penetration is precisely b/c they now have so much compatibility with pure MS stuff. They floundered for years doing their own thing, and it wasn't until they started bundling in things that every PC user takes for granted that people even looked twice at their overpriced machines.

But they've had a good degree of compatibility for at least five years now (I only use Macs very rarely, but five years ago I made use of one for a language class, and they had MS Office installed).

I think the primary factor behind the recent improvements has been Mac OS X. The OS is very slick, and has many UI features that are far superior to Windows (though I still don't like the overall layout of the OS...so I'm very excited about XGL for Linux! But, back on topic...). Their hardware (particularly for their laptops) is also top notch.

For example, I'm at a 3-week cosmology conference in Santa Fe at the moment, and I'd wager that 60% of the people here have Mac laptops, 35% Windows laptops, and a couple of Linux laptops.

 

[nutball]

For example, I'm at a 3-week cosmology conference in Santa Fe at the moment, and I'd wager that 60% of the people here have Mac laptops, 35% Windows laptops, and a couple of Linux laptops.

Macs seem to have a disproportionate penetration amongst astronomers/astrophysicists, it doesn't surprise me it's similar for other branches of the field. Most the common data analysis suites have been ported to OS X (especially those out of NASA projects). The combination of being able to run Office and familiar Linux apps on a platform that Just Works(TM) makes the Macs very appealing (it's why I have one!).

 

[KimB]

Well, I don't think most of Office is of any appeal at all to physicists (we use Latex for word processing), with the sole exception of Powerpoint. Even then a number of physicists just make slideshows with Latex (to generate PDF's), and at most gatherings presentations for all talks are converted to .pdf for distribution among the attendees.

So that leaves the majority of the benefit for physicsists in the Unix-based OS. I think that is indeed one very significant reason why the Macs are catching on.

 

[nutball]

Well, I don't think most of Office is of any appeal at all to physicists (we use Latex for word processing), with the sole exception of Powerpoint.

Yeah Latex is ubiquitous in astronomy too for publishing, but if you want to knock out a short memo and e-mail it round as a PDF, Word for Mac is much easier. Powerpoint and Excel are the other selling points (yes, Excel! A great tool for manipulating small-ish tables of data with no hassle). Plus Macs play movies, properly. And Macs have wireless networking, rather than the wireless notworking offered by Linux. All in all it's a great compromise between Windows and Unix.

Though TBH I do wonder whether the real reason is iTunes :smile:

 

[Fred]

Yea dont get me started about physicists and their choice of computers, lets just say its bizarre. 6 years ago if you didn't have a SUN station and use Unix you simply had no business being in the field. Nowdays Macs are very prevalent (and I hated Macs until their recent OS) and the horrible compatibility woes are somewhat lessened.

I wont even get into the horrible time I had using VaX workstations back in the day.

 

[KimB]

Yeah Latex is ubiquitous in astronomy too for publishing, but if you want to knock out a short memo and e-mail it round as a PDF, Word for Mac is much easier.

Well, I suppose things must vary from department to department, because I've never seen anybody use Word in ours.

Most quick memo-type things are just written in plain text.