Governmant is now asking Public to propose a settlment for the M$ antitrust case!!!

Great, this means they will be handing out tons of free software and doing business as usual:rolleyes:

I think they should let Mac and 'nix users get a 50 percent say in it or it is likely to mean nothing. I mean really, can you see all the M$ devotees wanting to punish them as much as they deserve? which Judge thought of this? I am betting it was a republican whose cousin owns lot of M$ stock:mad:
 
outsider, have you got a link to an article about this? i'd like to read more ...
i fear ed is right though, it'll probably boil down to a bunch of manics telling bush to let ms go without punishing them at all ... since when do crimes get to be judged in this long-winded fashion? :mad:
 
I emailed them :p

basically I said two things

1) No windows pre installed on x86 compatible chips (gives the consumer choice)

2) Free viewers for proprietary formats so people are not forced at "virtual gun point" to buy expensive M$ products in order to view documents that someone else sent them.
 
It's more realist that your other solution... AdmiralAK, your idea of forbiding Windows on OEM is good, but it will get kicked down as bad for the consumer, which it is in the short term anyway.
For file format, I would go for the obligation to explain the file format so other apps can import them more easily.
 
I actually wrote to M$ asking for a free viewer for word documents akin to a pdf viewer so that I didn't have to purchase Word just to read other people's files when Word is not my application of choice.

They sent me a link to download the free viewer, and for a skeptical moment I was impressed ... the viewer ran only on Windows and was effectively M$ Works. They don't get it. They never got it. I doubt they'll ever get it. Let other people do the work, open up ALL the API's right now, and mandate that a couple continue to bo open.
 
You're right on the money there... one of the most important things is to force open EVERY API now, and they should be kept open. Watch M$ Office almost instantly see more competition than it's had in years, and it's price plummet back down to reasonable levels.

Although that's just one solution for part of the problem. It only helps to restore competition to the marketplace. You still need to deal with Microsoft's business practices, licenses and contracts, and huge cash hoard it can use to kill corporations like Netscape.

Cheers,
Dak
 
Originally posted by Ed Spruiell
Great, this means they will be handing out tons of free software and doing business as usual:rolleyes:

I think they should let Mac and 'nix users get a 50 percent say in it or it is likely to mean nothing. I mean really, can you see all the M$ devotees wanting to punish them as much as they deserve? which Judge thought of this? I am betting it was a republican whose cousin owns lot of M$ stock:mad:
Click to expand...

Woh, don't think that PC users like Microsoft! I was a PC user, and I hated them all the time! I know that they actually are a successful company, but I never liked them, and most of my friends who are also using PCs also disliked them, but you have little alternatives. I tried to switch to Linux back then but had to realize that in those times, Linux support was too small to make it my main OS.

Anyway, only because people are using Windows doesn't mean they like the way MS is running their business.
 
Well, here I have to speak PRO microsoft. As much as I dislike them, the mentioned facts about them giving away their browser for free is what annoyed me all the time.
Microsoft had a vision, an idea they realized. Why should browsing your own HDD be different than browsing a website or an FTP server in the other side of the world? You can't say they "gave away their browser for free" with Win98, Win2K etc. You "merged" the browser with the OS! After all, in Win98 SE and Win2K, MS used the same IE API to access your HDD and everythign else than it used for internet access. For me, this was the future of an OS! Make it all the same! It worked! It worked great! But now, they are not allowed to do it any longer. Now people might say that they only did this to force everyone to use IE. No, that was not the primary cause. A company wouldn't change their OS to win a browser war! They wanted to be revolutionary in this part, and they were, and - as Apple does it all the time - they paid the price you sometimes have to pay for beeing revolutionary.

Now I'll get flamed!

*ducksandrunsforcover
 
I originally made this allusion about 3 years ago, before this all went to big courts.

There are a few car companies out there, and they all put stereos in their cars. Most of them allow standard attachment methods and case sizes so that the user or a professional can replace the stereo. Now a car is already a big piece of equipment with a lot of electronics and power equipment, it wouldn't be a big deal for a car company to put the volume knobs in the ceiling for "convenience" but it would break the compatibility with the large market of third party stereos.

Typically, the stereo is kept as a component to allow customer choice, and it is considered a benefit for a car to allow this future customization. Value added.

If Ford had 90%+ of the car market, they'd be reasonably expected to keep their stereo a modular component lest they be found guilty of antitrust leveraging one monopoly to gain another. Cars to stereos. The benefit is slight, the detriment is great. This is how I see thing, and this is how I see the integration of IE with Windows. Vision Shmision, there were ulterior motives far greater than the public benefit which was claimed and has yet to be proven. Besides that, the court already decreed (decried) that stuff like this was bad, and wrong, but failed te predict and legislate the future.

Now through predatory pricing / subsidization of IE, they have brought a barrier to market of undeniable consequence. Browsers can not make money in the traditional software manner, they must be tools to make profit through another business. The only reason AOL/Time/Warner/Netscape is legal is because microsoft exists, otherwise it too would be bundling and monopoly extension. We are building precedents for failure, and the incapacitation of capitalism.

Open up the API's, take funds to pay for 10 years of federal monitoring, and force the permenant retirement of Balmer and Gates from M$ or any of its primary affiliates. ... that and set somebody on fire.
 
Microsoft should be split into 3 companies: an operating system company, an internet service company, and a software company (applications), none of which can recombine through corporate merger for at least 25 years.

This will be good for several reasons:

1. This will truely put MS and its current technologies in a competitive environment, and in order to survive, will have to make ALL their programs for many platforms, not just windows. This will be good for the consumer as s/he will have CHOICE and FREEDOM.

2. From the perspective of a stockholder, "3 microsofts" will have greater stock value than "one microsoft". The Republicans should like this one.

3. MS will not have the muscling power over their customers and the industry with the attitude that "we have conquered all, we own you, and you will accept what we give you".

4. This will help the slumping econmony, a little, as more jobs would be created (more redundancy) in each of the three companies, forcing more higer paid salaries to pay taxes.

5. This could actually reduce the national debt. How? Bill Boy Gates would be required to retain stock ownership in only one of the companies while selling all remaining stock in the other two companies. Selling that much doe, say billions, at the lower end of the capital gains tax (since he's owned the stock more than 18 months + 1 day) would generate a lot of money to spend for the next up and coming DEMOCRATIC President. Seriously though, this would give a cash infusion into the government for unemployment benefits as well as other services, and more cash for schools, hopefully the schools lacking good/decent state funding already.

6. Require some portion of Bill Gates assets of which he sold from the other two companies to actually go towards schools where the schools would choose which computers to PURCHASE (NOT donated from M$).
 
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