Published at LXer:

My colleague over at Microsoft Watch, Joe Wilcox, declared that "Microsoft bowed before the EU and took its whipping." Eh, after a couple of days to look at the decision, I don't think so. At best, I'd say the European Union got the more favorable end of a draw.

Read More...

LOL, Europe cracks me up. The only thing Europe does is to complain. I still haven't seen they try to invest anything(substantial) in Linux or in a custom Operating System. How is shipping Windows Media Player with Windows a monopoly? If you don't want to use Media Player download something else. Windows already comes with very few programs and now I know why, because of all these whiners spread around the globe.

And what about "failing to release information about Windows to competitors in the server market."

LOL, that is one of my favorite parts. I understand it is important to collaborate with other Operating systems in terms of interoperability, but Microsoft already does that. Unless they want everything to be open up, so people can copy all Microsoft work, like the horrible "Vixta". Right on...

Let's take away Internet Explorer and other things like Notepad. Let the user decide what they want to install. It sure will be a lot easier to download a browser when no browser at all is installed. So they managed to "win" the Media Player battle and a Windows without Media Player was released, Windows XP N. What a big fat joke that was.

Remember Germany a few year ago complaining about Windows 2000? Win2k shipped with a light version of Diskeeper. The guy behind Diskeeper is a scientologist and the German government has some issues with the Church of Scientology. Before allowing Windows 2000 to be used on the German government servers, the Federal Office of Security in Information Technology demanded Microsoft allow them to examine source code to determine that the software was not secretly monitoring and transmitting user data to the church... I am sorry, but I've to type in caps: HAHAHAHAHA.

Seriously, I hope that in the near future, Microsoft drops support completely to Europe. Several game companies (especially from Japan) like Sony has already figured this out a long time ago. In the beginning, I was a bit upset with Capcom and Sony (and many others) for the way they threat us here in Europe. For example, it was possible to play online games with PS2, but almost noone was playing. Some games, like Resident Evil Outbreak#1 was released in Europe without network support, while it was possible to play it online in US and Japan. Europe was upset, so they COMPLAINED about it and Resident Evil Outbreak File #2 was shipped with Network support in the European market. Since noone was playing (surprise), Capcom shut down the servers for the euro-release of File #2 a while ago.

Movies, games, everything sells bad in Europe, taking into consideration the amount of money some countries have. That and having to keep up with lunatic governments. I understand that advertising in Europe is complicated. Language is the first issue, since every country wants to speak their own language. This is not an issue in the US at all. In Asia, not much either. Target something to the Chinese market and you are targeting billions. And since countries like Korea and Japan learn how to read chinese at school, well, you get the idea.

Really, it is time to Europe stop complaining about everything, get really together and actually do something useful. All I see they doing is packing open source projects and releasing distributions along with the 1000+ we have already and try to cash in a quick buck with support. Oh and complaining about something while packing them...

Note: yes, I live in a wealthy European country and have a good life here. I still don't like how Europe thinks though.