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Re: [News] Microsoft's Antitrust Results in Stripped-Down Windows in South Korea

__/ [ Mark Kent ] on Monday 28 August 2006 08:42 \__

> begin  oe_protect.scr
> Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
>> __/ [ B Gruff ] on Wednesday 23 August 2006 15:59 \__
>> 
>>> On Wednesday 23 August 2006 16:31 Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>>> 
>>>> S. Korea to Get New Versions of Windows
>>>> 
>>>> ,----[ Quote ]
>>>> | Earlier this year, the Korea Fair Trade Commission fined Microsoft
>>>> | 32.5 billion won ($34 million) and ordered it to provide two separate
>>>> | versions of Windows, saying the company abused its dominant market
>>>> | position by tying certain software to its Windows operating system.
>>>> | 
>>>> | [...]
>>>> | 
>>>> | Microsoft is engaged in a similar case in Europe.
>>>> `----
>>>> 
>>>> http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/060823/skorea_microsoft.html?.v=2
>>> 
>>> They will not sell more than a dozen, of course, because the price will
>>> be the same.
>>> However, the message is loud and clear, "You don't do another Netscape by
>>> a some future date telling us that your bundled stuff is An Intrinsic
>>> Part of the OS"!
>>> 
>>> - oh, and so much for their suggestion that they might need to cease
>>> trading there:-)
>> 
>> I think this serves as an important legal precedence for other countries
>> that
>> feel similarly about this issue. This includes the EU.  You could now make
>> the case that if Korea won the case, so could you.
>> 
>> The days of extending a monopoly by prebundling software on a CD (or a DVD
>> in the case of Vista, or Internet updates, as in the case with WGA and
>> IE7, which are 'high priority' updates) are over. They are at least
>> reaching an end. And just wait until all those Windows Live links in Vista
>> stir up a commotion. No wonder Microsoft deletes employee E-mails after
>> just 6 months... the company, whose founder abandons, has become afraid of
>> antitrust, as one high-status article recently argued.
> 
> It's hard to imagine how good engineering can take place in an
> environment where information is destroyed after 6 months.  Can you
> imagine how difficult it must be trying to find out /why/ something was
> designed in a certain way?  It would be like deleting your memory every
> 6 months and having to relearn everything - it's no surprise at all that
> the same problems recur in Windows, is it?

Windows Vista was built between October 2005 and March 2006. Longhorn was
scraped as it could not be built between 2001 and 2005 (programmer's
attention span and view is too narrow).

Best wishes,

Roy

PS - I'm not in a computing mood today. Bank Holiday and rain are a bad
mixture, so I think I'll just head off to the gym soon... and with that
Thursday deadline and a server migration on that same day, I might have to
take a temporary break from COLA... *sigh*

-- 
Roy S. Schestowitz      | Reclaim your workstation - install GNU/Linux today
http://Schestowitz.com  |  GNU is Not UNIX  |     PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
roy      pts/3        cg001a.halls.man Sun Aug 27 15:22   still logged in   
      http://iuron.com - proposing a non-profit search engine

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