EU slaps Microsoft with Massive $1.35 billion fine

[Asher]

Originally posted by snoopy369
MS would claim that, it's called their legal argument However, a group of legal experts called 'judges' ruled otherwise.

Source?

The EU seems to be contending the only thing missing right now was the royalty fees being too high until October. Thus the fine is only up til October.

The burden of proof is on the EU in the court case. In these forums, as you're saying 'EU experts wrong', the burden of proof is on you (as you're arguing against the expert).

I think the general consensus was the missing piece of information was the high royalty fees, which the EU complained about first in March...

And how dare you consider the EU commission to be expert in software design?

[Harovan]

While I don't hold a grudge against Microsoft (and neither Apple, Sony or the Open Source folks) and don't wish them ill, I still find it highly amusing to see Asher in outrage. The first bag of popcorn is already gone, please keep up the good work.

And lighten up, it's 1.35b dollars, not hard currency. At the current rate the Fed prints money, next week you can buy a cheeseburger and a coke with it.

[Asher]

By the way...how soon til the EU whips out the fines for Apple?

It's 2008 and they're using secret APIs to give their web browser speed advantages over the competition.

http://blog.vlad1.com/2008/02/28/finding-the-os-x-turbo-button/

Eventually I came to this tech note from Apple. The reason why Firefox 2 wasn't affected was that Fx2 was not a Cocoa app; it is a Carbon app, and as such was exempt from being subject to coalesced updates. The key thing showed up in the "last resort" section of that tech note: how to disable coalesced updates for an individual app! This seems to be available available only on 10.4.4 or later, but that was fine; OS minor updates are free. I verified that adding the plist entry fixed the problem for me locally, and checked this in to become part of the build. See if you can spot when this change hit our performance testing infrastructure:

While figuring all this out, I noticed that Safari/WebKit didn't seem to be affected by this framerate cap -- the fps meter when Safari was running the same benchmark happily went up beyond 60fps. After I found the plist entry, I checked Safari's plist and was surprised to discover that they didn't have this disabling in there. Doing some more searching, I found this code in WebKit. Apparently, there is a way to do this programatically, along with some other interesting things like enabling window update display throttling (though it's unclear what that means!) -- but only if you're Apple.

All these WK* methods are undocumented, and they appear in binary blobs shipped along with the WebKit source (see the WebKitLibraries directory). There are now over 100 private "OS-secrets-only-WebKit-knows" in the library, many of which are referred to in a mostly comment-free header file. Reading the WebKit code is pretty interesting; there are all sorts of potentially useful Cocoa internals bits you can pick up, more easily on the Objective C side (e.g. search for "AppKitSecretsIKnow" in the code), but also in other areas as a pile of these WK* methods used in quite a few places. Would any other apps like to take advantage of some of that functionality? I'm pretty sure the answer there is yes, but they can't. It's not even clear under what license libWebKitSystemInterface is provided, so that other apps can know if they can link to it.

[Lord Avalon]

Sir Ralph, it's actually 899 million euros. And they probably want it in euros.

[Wiglaf]

Originally posted by Asher
By the way...how soon til the EU whips out the fines for Apple?

It's 2008 and they're using secret APIs to give their web browser speed advantages over the competition.

http://blog.vlad1.com/2008/02/28/finding-the-os-x-turbo-button/

Eventually I came to this tech note from Apple. The reason why Firefox 2 wasn't affected was that Fx2 was not a Cocoa app; it is a Carbon app, and as such was exempt from being subject to coalesced updates. The key thing showed up in the "last resort" section of that tech note: how to disable coalesced updates for an individual app! This seems to be available available only on 10.4.4 or later, but that was fine; OS minor updates are free. I verified that adding the plist entry fixed the problem for me locally, and checked this in to become part of the build. See if you can spot when this change hit our performance testing infrastructure:

While figuring all this out, I noticed that Safari/WebKit didn't seem to be affected by this framerate cap -- the fps meter when Safari was running the same benchmark happily went up beyond 60fps. After I found the plist entry, I checked Safari's plist and was surprised to discover that they didn't have this disabling in there. Doing some more searching, I found this code in WebKit. Apparently, there is a way to do this programatically, along with some other interesting things like enabling window update display throttling (though it's unclear what that means!) -- but only if you're Apple.

All these WK* methods are undocumented, and they appear in binary blobs shipped along with the WebKit source (see the WebKitLibraries directory). There are now over 100 private "OS-secrets-only-WebKit-knows" in the library, many of which are referred to in a mostly comment-free header file. Reading the WebKit code is pretty interesting; there are all sorts of potentially useful Cocoa internals bits you can pick up, more easily on the Objective C side (e.g. search for "AppKitSecretsIKnow" in the code), but also in other areas as a pile of these WK* methods used in quite a few places. Would any other apps like to take advantage of some of that functionality? I'm pretty sure the answer there is yes, but they can't. It's not even clear under what license libWebKitSystemInterface is provided, so that other apps can know if they can link to it.

Blah blah, Apple has a tenth of a fraction of the dominance so it matters almost nothing.

You can't just run around saying the fine is illegitimate because MS maintained it for several months despite a court order to not engage in such behavior dating back to 2004. As far as why it is so high, I'd imagine it's mostly punitive for violating the order. Some times when douchebags continue to crap on your authority you need to hit them in the face with a hammer.

[proviisori]

EU getting money from MS

[Asher]

Originally posted by Wiglaf
Blah blah, Apple has a tenth of a fraction of the dominance so it matters almost nothing.

That doesn't matter. MS got in trouble for similar **** before they are dominant also, why does marketshare matter? Most of the IE no-nos occured before it even had 50% marketshare.

The simple fact is Apple is doing exactly what MS has done in the past. Secret APIs that give Apple advantages in development.

If it's not right for MS, it's not right for Apple either. Show some backbone and consistency in your flip-flopping arguments, Mr Kerry.

[Wiglaf]

Originally posted by Asher

That doesn't matter. MS got in trouble for similar **** before they are dominant also, why does marketshare matter? Most of the IE no-nos occured before it even had 50% marketshare.

The simple fact is Apple is doing exactly what MS has done in the past. Secret APIs that give Apple advantages in development.

If it's not right for MS, it's not right for Apple either. Show some backbone and consistency in your flip-flopping arguments, Mr Kerry.

This would be like fining some kids who run the only lemonade stand on the street a billion dollars for monopolistic practices. It accomplishes nothing, they do almost no damage, and even if they horde all the lemonade on the street, no one cares. Let the Apple kids have their fun and stop trying to knock over their lemonade stand please.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Wiglaf
This would be like fining some kids who run the only lemonade stand on the street a billion dollars for monopolistic practices.

If the kid on the street wore a turtleneck and tight jeans, you're damn right they should be arrested.

It accomplishes nothing, they do almost no damage, and even if they horde all the lemonade on the street, no one cares. Let the Apple kids have their fun and stop trying to knock over their lemonade stand please.

Apple pisses into cups and tells you its lemonade. People like Agathon tell us it's wine.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Lord Avalon
Sir Ralph, it's actually 899 million euros. And they probably want it in euros.

Yes, and I have been dead serious too.

[snoopy369]

MS' initial judicial ruling were due to its dominance in the OS market, not in the browser market, as you well know.

[dannubis]

Asher talking out of his arse again ?

[Asher]

Talking out the arse is what the commission does. It's a ridiculous ruling.

[Wiglaf]

I think the $1.5 billion will finally wake up MS and they'll stop breaking the terms of the original agreement. Seems like a good deal for everyone.