Mircosoft to put some of DOJ requests to use.

[Mac_forever]

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,103605,tk,dn080502X,00.asp

Microsoft is placing some of the requirements from the gov't to use before the judge makes a judgement

[Omega]

Using the Service Pack, users will be able to remove five of the company's key "middleware" products: the Internet Explorer browser, Media Player, Outlook Express, Microsoft Messenger, and Microsoft Java Virtual Machine.

Why the hell would anyone want to remove Internet Explorer? It's basically the only browser on the market that renders things correctly. Even on Macintosh OS, IE 5 is the closest to correct rendering that I've seen (out of Netscape 4.7, IE 4.5, and IE 5.0). Opera is faster, but it still doesn't render things correctly in many cases.


The software maker also announced that it will begin a licensing program Tuesday for its internal communication protocols, allowing third parties to create server software that is interoperable with or can communicate with Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP, and future operating systems.

This is a really nice step on the part of Microsoft. I think any networking protocols and basic programming environments should be in the public domain. It's just retarded that all these networked devices can't talk to each other natively. The closest thing I've found is in Windows 2000 Advanced Server there are optional file services for Macintosh that allow Macs to mount shared volumes from the server. I've also heard rumor that Macintosh has some ability to Windows boxes to connect to a share. Other than that, my work has been using a Snap Server for quite a while, that supports Mac, Unix, Novell, and Windows networking. That's how everything should be.


The company said that the program will be royalty-based and the pricing will be available only to third parties entering into nondisclosure agreements.

Oh...that's good...for a second I thought Microsoft was going soft on us ;).


Microsoft's preemptive moves appear to be an attempt to ease anticompetitive concerns about the software maker and fend off more stringent remedies.

Hm, ya think? This reminds me of when Bush said "Two planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers today, in what appears to be a terrorist attack" (or something to that nature). It's kind of comical, though, that Microsoft knows its screwed, so they're starting to impliment part of their imposing punishment, in hopes of avoiding bad punishment.



Well, those are my thoughts on the article. It's kind of interesting stuff, and makes me think a little bit of the movie "Antitrust," and makes me wonder how real-to-life that may actually be...

[compguru]

see that clump of dust near your computer.... its bill

[Mac_forever]

You never know who is watching you. You might be the next software competetor of Microsoft

[vee_ess]

Why the hell would anyone want to remove Internet Explorer? It's basically the only browser on the market that renders things correctly. Even on Macintosh OS, IE 5 is the closest to correct rendering that I've seen (out of Netscape 4.7, IE 4.5, and IE 5.0). Opera is faster, but it still doesn't render things correctly in many cases.

That's only because they will be shut down if they don't follow the court order as they have been ordered to remove middleware products. They will then have to face contempt of court legal issues also.

What's interesting about this, is that Mac OS has been known for including these type of things, which are considered features on Mac OS, but on a big fish, even though there is less middleware, they go after them. Then again, there isn't as much software for Mac OS to be blocking out.

[Mac_forever]

Think about it, if Apple MacOS had the biggest market share, wouldn't they be where Microsoft is now. There is also a difference b/t apple and microsoft. Apple's addons can be deleted w/o harming the OS, but Microsoft's are harder to delete and some could hamper the OS performance.

[vee_ess]

They are still doing the exact same thing that MS is getting sued for. In fact, they have a lot more of that kind of stuff than MS does. Both companies should lay off the middleware. I mean if it is truly a feature of the OS, that's one thing, but both companies do this to rid themselves of competitors in their respective markets.

[Mac_forever]

But still, a lot of Microsofts middleware can't be deleted without harming the OS. If you do that on the MacOS it won't do anything to the OS.