Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> EU defers antitrust advice until Microsoft verdict
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | The Commission decided in 2004 that Microsoft broke EU law by
> | abusing the dominance of its Windows operating system to muscle
> | out rivals, fining the company 497 million euros ($678 million)
> | and demanding changes to its business practices.
> `----
>
>
http://yahoo.reuters.com/news/articlehybrid.aspx?storyID=urn:newsml:reuters.com:20070502:MTFH41447_2007-05-02_15-06-47_L02584022&type=comktNews&rpc=44
> http://tinyurl.com/2x2wuq
>
I wonder what would happen if MS replied to that with
'As you have found us guilty then clearly it is not possible to sell or
supply our product in the EU anymore, because we have no intention of
reducing our product in any way in order to let our competitors take part
of our market. Also those that we have sold are clearly illegal by your
ruling. Therefore in order to make ammends we have sent out a code with the
regular updates that disables all MS products in the EU, i.e. withdraws
their licence to use our product. This puts us back within the law.
However, since we are American and not EU citizens then we have no
intention paying your fine because we are not really subject to your laws,
so up yours' {thumb on nose, waves fingers}.
It must be tempting if you are Mr MS to do something like that. Well it
would be tempting for me, you might be a nicer person.
It's all very well saying that people would move to Linux, the problem there
is what are they going to do on Friday morning after that code to disable
their OS has been put out over night. The ammount of money lost from
business and EU MP expenses would be too much, they would probably have no
choice but to say 'oops sorry'. Which is of cause the lowest of the low for
any MP.
Anyone can withdraw their licence, we all sign up to that what ever software
licence we press the agree button on.
I know its daft, I don't really mean it. But I can't help feeling that in MS
Win it would be possible to effectively turn it off from an update, revoke
the license. It has to be there really doesn't it, because they use that
WPA thing to disable those they believe to be illegal copies. So a two
pronged attack from hackers, one gets control of that licence on a users
PC, the other to find the database of licence numbers leaving a bit of code
to wipe the database clean. Then what power you have for blackmailing
governments, says Rob whilst stroking his white cat and feeding MI5 folk to
his pet sharks and sales reps to the pyranas, obviously.
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