If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Options
Microsoft Antitrust Cases
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
in General Chat
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4505698.stm
What do you think about all these cases of various people suing microsoft for things like including their own browser or their own chat software with windows?
I don't think it's a big deal, once you get connected to the internet (espacially broadband) you're free to download whatever browser or chat software you want. You can even download a free copy of open office 2 and not have to buy word, excel, etc
What do you think about all these cases of various people suing microsoft for things like including their own browser or their own chat software with windows?
I don't think it's a big deal, once you get connected to the internet (espacially broadband) you're free to download whatever browser or chat software you want. You can even download a free copy of open office 2 and not have to buy word, excel, etc
0
Comments
As for other browsers, Microsoft has deliberately made it so that Opera couldn't properly load msn.com webpages, in order to keep people on IE.
But it can be down to personal preference though. There are so many other alternatives to Microsoft software out there, open office being one of them, yahoo messenger, trillian, realplayer, winamp etc. etc. yadda yadda. Some people just go for the first thing they see, and if it does what they want, why change.
I also read somewhere that Microsoft released a version of Windows XP without Media Player bundled with it, for OEM vendors, and not many of the PC manufacturers have taken it on as of yet. I think one name of a company that stuck in my mind who have started using it is Fujitsu-Siemens.
But also out of order if microsoft deliberatly do things to stop non microsoft software working on windows
All those years ago everyone was suing microsoft for including Internet Explorer with windows, imagine what it would be like to get a brand new PC with an operating system and no web browser to get you started. :eek2:
If I have any gripes about Microsoft it's that Windows on purpose is designed to run slow no matter what speed machine you have, so you're always wanting to buy a faster PC. I remeber when someone told me their brand new 3 GHz Pentium 4 was slow I was shocked - then told him to download SpeedXp and it was way faster. Really the tweaks SpeedXP employs should be standard within Windows.
Somehow I think all these slowness problems are more to do with the hardware sellers like DELL, etc flexing their muscles and wanting Windows to be slow, so people will keep buying newer machines.
The best solution to this would be to have a competing Operating system and yet after all this time no company has even made a dent in this market ... And I can't really see Linux being mainstream for an average user with basic computing knowledge.
Their suing because Microsoft is abusing its OS position to deliberately force out its competitors. Which they are doing, otherwise they wouldn't have won.
How can there be a competing OS, when Microsoft is so endemic? It's the whole Betamax/VHS thing over again.
Ahh... but this isn't the main reason behind the antitrust cases. Microsoft make things extremely difficult for OEMs to include things like Firefox, Thunderbird, Winamp and anything else on a preinstalled machine. Yes, it's easy to do - but they are bound by licensing restrictions.
There is no reason why Messenger, WMP, or Outlook Express cannot be removed from a Windows PC. The only reason Internet Explorer cannot be uninstalled is because Microsoft wanted to make the entire Windows audience feel at home using their familiar browser to navigate their computer - the more folk use a piece of software, the more comfortable they feel, and the less likely they are to change.
Microsoft make a decent OS these days - XP really is a very good operating system. But it has so many things installed that I dislike, I don't use it. I can do more on Linux/*BSD, I don't have to worry about a licence for each of my computers, I get fast updates and free upgrades. It's great
The fact still remains that microsoft spend a huge amount on research and give plenty to charity every year from the profits they make. They also do in fact make some incredibly powerful and well made software. Firefox has recently found out how hard IE has always had it now they have a large user base and firefox officially has more high security vulnerabilities than IE.
Antitrust is a pile of bollocks. If you don't like IE then don't use it. Don't whinge and bitch because microsoft include it. It is more software they have spent money writing that they are giving away for free. If you don't like it learn to use linux.
Yes, Microsoft are doing this... but hte fact of the matter is, who is powerful enough to stop them, anymore?
They've quite got market dominance all worked out.
That's true - when I do a scan for spyware cookies they're all in FireFox now and not so many in IE6
OSX is nice, but only available for Apples.
Windows XP is bloody good, though.
Not sure about it running slow. Mine's an old(ish) Athlon XP 2200+, and it runs speedy speedy.
There might be a chance of competition of anything else was any good, but it's not. Unix based systems are wonderful for servers, but too painful to use for the desktop.
They did.
In response to it, Opera released a version of their browser in Bork.
I could program a site that would be uncompatablie with IE if I wanted. However, whislt firefox WAS great... now its popular, people have found all the holes in it, and its just another browser. With tabs.
Personally, going back to IE recently, (HDD failiure, Firefox was installed on it.) I notice that Firefux is alot more user freindly.
So we take a standards-compliant browser, and butcher it to make the same mistakes as the most popular browser on the market? It's a better idea for sites to stick with the standards. It'd be like making all the car drivers change how they drive for one particular road, that was made of chocolate rather than tarmac. Common sense would be to change the road surface, rather than try and make vehicles that grip on both surfaces.
Lies! Debian Sarge is niiiice!
I have it running on my workstation, My only gripe is that the latest KDE is *still* several generations behind MacOS/Windows, It's at a Windows ME / MacOS 9 Level at the moment. Mucho sucky!
Gotta love the fact that it's 100% free though!
No, you're not listening.
msn.com changed the pages- when a non-IE browser tried to access msn.com, it accessed a page with deliberately broken borders, so as to make the browser look broken.
And FYI, it is IE that doesn't read to the standard, not Opera. Opera is fully WSC-compliant, even the bollocks with CSC.
I'll say it categorically. Standards are not the be all and end all. Popular convention is. Name me one fully POSIX compliant implementation of UNIX. Can you not? Name me one program that fully implements the UML standard. You can't do that either?
Common sense is to make sure anything your competitor can handle you can.
A standard is not a convention.
I think the standard XP is bloated but some of the versions where people have trimmed all the fat run really, really well.
even things like cleartype fonts make simply looking at the screen a better experience. But I hate all those animated characters, etc - they're fun when you're new to computers but experienced users don't want them.
I can't really see the day when the vast majority of PC's run anything other then Windows .. And I'm not sure that is altogether a bad thing .. although the cost of the OS should come down the way PC Hardware prices have .. which isn't happening.
It would be a nightmare if everywhere you went everyone had a different OS .... I'm much more concerned that once the PC is up and running that you have loads of choices for the applications, like what browser, email cllient, office suite, virus program, etc you can use.
I think one good thing about all of these things is no matter what the big companies do to constrain us they'll always be hackers out there taking apart the software and helping keep the big boys in check.