{"id":383,"date":"2005-10-09T07:37:51","date_gmt":"2005-10-08T23:37:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nargalzius.com\/blog2\/http:\/www.nargalzius.com\/blog2\/archives\/2005\/10\/2005_10_09_0737.php"},"modified":"2005-10-09T07:37:51","modified_gmt":"2005-10-08T23:37:51","slug":"symantec-brings-complaint-against-ms-to-eu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/10\/09\/symantec-brings-complaint-against-ms-to-eu","title":{"rendered":"Symantec Brings Complaint Against MS to EU"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In one of the comments in my past post, the commenter said I should focus more on tech stuff since blogging about the personal stuff can get quite&#8230; uninteresting. Although I don&#8217;t really understand what her conception of a &#8220;blog&#8221; is, I would say it was a personal journal <em>unless specified otherwise.<\/em> But yes, I do like talking about tech stuff too so how &#8217;bout this post to call it even \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<h2><a href=\"http:\/\/it.slashdot.org\/article.pl?sid=05\/10\/08\/1946219&amp;from=rss\" title=\"View\">Symantec Brings Complaint Against MS to EU<\/a><\/h2>\n<p>linumax writes &#8220;Symantec has made a complaint against Microsoft to EC anti-trust regulators over the software giant&#8217;s entry into the security market. The &#8220;informal&#8221; complaint allows the Commission to consider whether or not an anti-trust case is merited. The Commission is the executive branch of the European Union (EU).&#8221; From the article: &#8220;The news comes on the day Microsoft announced plans to begin offering business users an integrated anti-virus and anti-spyware product called Microsoft Client Protection. A beta version of this product is expected to be released by year&#8217;s end. The company is already offering some customers a beta version of its Windows OneCare consumer security software. At issue is Microsoft&#8217;s plan to bundle its security software with Windows Vista, the next major version of the Windows operating system due next year.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em>via <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/slashdot.org\/\" title=\"Visit Slashdot\">Slashdot<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<!--more-->\n<p>This article of course isn&#8217;t really &#8220;tech&#8221; per se since the main issue is about legalities\/principles and not the technology in themselves, but when I saw Microsoft mentioned again&#8230; it got me thinking.<\/p>\n<p>I for one, don&#8217;t like monopolies, so I was happy when the first anti-trust case was launched against MS. Internet Explorer was (and still is) an <strong>evil<\/strong> piece of software. It never made the user experience better in any way &#8211; on the contrary it still is the primary reason why windows systems are compromised so easily. So why bundle such lousy, dangerous software into an operating system. I could understand the presence of a different motive in that decision, hence I had no problem rejoicing at MS&#8217;s expense<\/p>\n<p>But I also have to admit that most of my bitterness with MS&#8217;s business tactics have something to do by the sheer amount of wealth it has amassed by selling inferior technology. So yes it&#8217;s basically a crab-mentality sort of thing hahahaha (can you blame me? I&#8217;m Filipino after all).<\/p>\n<p>I say this because I realized to some extent that its so easy to see MS as the bad guy simply because of it&#8217;s stature in the world today. their disregard of the mantra <em>&#8220;with great power, comes great responsibility&#8221;<\/em> practically justifies people&#8217;s hatred toward them. But deep down, I know that ultimately what they&#8217;re doing is no different than other <em>less powerful<\/em> companies.<\/p>\n<p>Now this article is similar to the IE case in principle (lawyers, feel free to correct me if I&#8217;m wrong) &#8211; only applied in the security aspect. Specifically Symantec being threatened of their market by MS&#8217;s free offering.<\/p>\n<p>As I would say, i&#8217;d love to see IE die&#8230; but this is different. Here&#8217;s a simple question everyone should and analyze &#8211; to see if what MS&#8217;s is doing now is in fact wrong or not.<\/p>\n<p>Regardless of markets and the concept capitalism &#8211; on the sole perspective of technology and performance; Do you agree that MicroSoft (or any other company for that matter) should <em>not<\/em> integrate\/bundle <strong>FREE<\/strong> software that addresses major flaws their operating software, on grounds of <em>perceived<\/em> unfair advantage? Should they still <em>not<\/em> bundle the said software considering that the <em>very flaw<\/em> they are addressing is practically the <em>very reason<\/em> why people are shifting to more &#8220;reliable&#8221; OSes (Linux, et all)?<\/p>\n<p>Sure it <em>may<\/em> be unfair in a way, because I for one would rather have free bundled stuff (as long as they work) rather than pay for 3rd party software to do the same job. So Symantec would be at a loss when this type of software is integrated into the OS.<\/p>\n<p>If that were the case, maybe we should sue some of the somewhat &#8220;proprietary companies&#8221; too. First that comes to mind is Apple for iTunes&#8230; take it further to the iPod, that&#8217;s a more obvious &#8220;monopoly&#8221; if I saw one. Or maybe we can simply demand that <em>all<\/em> OSes should be stripped of everything but their kernels&#8230; you never know that a bundled free &#8220;module&#8221; might encroach on a third party&#8217;s market. Hehehehe.<\/p>\n<p>You see how ridiculous this can get. I&#8217;m willing to concede that the fire MS is getting nowadays is unwarranted. They get slammed either way that while initially I would&#8217;ve loved to see them suffer, now it seems that they are still paying for past mistakes that they&#8217;ve already learned from since.<\/p>\n<p>I have no problem with Apple&#8217;s tactics. I own an iPod and the very reason I like it is because of it&#8217;s iTunes support, and have no problem with it&#8217;s &#8220;limitations&#8221; as far as an open-source mind goes. Internet Explorer was a mistake as it never really contributed anything good for the user experience overall, but <em>my god,<\/em> can these people honestly think that MS is trying to pull a fast one on us with their &#8220;security&#8221; software?<\/p>\n<p>MS hasn&#8217;t really proven itself in the virus scene, but try researching about spyware, et. all &#8211; you&#8217;ll be surprised that one of the top three spyware detection tools is MS&#8217;s very own <em>beta<\/em> (and not to mention <strong>free<\/strong>) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/downloads\/details.aspx?FamilyID=321cd7a2-6a57-4c57-a8bd-dbf62eda9671&amp;displaylang=en\" title=\"View\">MS Windows AntiSpyware<\/a> &#8211; in fact, I believe that it is ranked <strong>#1<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t believe me? Visit <a href=\"http:\/\/www.grc.com\/securitynow.htm\" title=\"visit site\">Security Now&#8217;s<\/a> episode notes on a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.grc.com\/sn\/notes-007.htm\" title=\"visit podcast episode notes\">podcast on spyware<\/a>. Steve Gibson, the man behind <a href=\"http:\/\/www.grc.com\/securitynow.htm\" title=\"visit site\">Security Now<\/a> coined the phrase &#8220;spyware&#8221; among other things&#8230; so if you&#8217;re looking for credibility, then this is pretty much as credible as you can get \ud83d\ude09<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In one of the comments in my past post, the commenter said I should focus more on tech stuff since blogging about the personal stuff can get quite&#8230; uninteresting. Although I don&#8217;t really understand what her conception of a &#8220;blog&#8221; is, I would say it was a personal journal unless specified otherwise. But yes, I &hellip; <p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/10\/09\/symantec-brings-complaint-against-ms-to-eu\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Symantec Brings Complaint Against MS to EU&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[92,770,1054,1089,1259,1293],"class_list":["post-383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet","tag-anti-spyware","tag-microsoft","tag-security","tag-software","tag-virus","tag-windows"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}