Trying to do that creates a bigger problem.

Which is this: it means the legal system ends up dictating to Microsoft what constitutes an Operating System and what doesn't. That is a super-sized Pandora's Box.

OTOH, forcing Microsoft to make the decision themselves for all these "almost out-of-scope" items means they have choose between two extremes. To wit: If Windows Media Player is now an OS component, then they only way they are now allowed to provide it to customers is on OS installation media. That means no free downloads, no magazone CD-ROMs, etc. It must be no more than an Installation Checkbox Option, just like the Screen Savers. The only way for Microsoft to upgrade WMP on installed PCs is via a proper, legitimate OS upgrade. As sold in boxes. But it also means the Applications company can create a competing product that is most definitely not an OS component. :-)

Wade.

But it seems unprecedented - and unfit for most concepts of government control:

Govt. must be 'conservative' (in the former un-spun meaning, not the New spun excuse for a 'reactionary' mindset in all things). G. must move slowly, yet no previous "industry" has ever moved - and so often scurrilously - on such a scale as.. toy computers everywhere.

Not surprising that any idea of hobbling these barbarians is very like that Gordian knot. This plot has everything! Vast wealth for the terminally $-besotted, vast chicanery for those who imagine that success is unrelated to means.. and the omnipresent fear that the current illusion of 'prosperity' (esp. in US-centric circles) might be tied to 'more of the same'. {sigh}

I suspect that no consensus shall emerge re hobbling these twerps - until more attention is paid to the Corp slavery of 24/7, two-working for salary of one -- and the other tens of millions of people which comprise the largest growing segment:

"The working poor". Dunno how that plays out in Oz, of course. Here it is intertwined with our antediluvian idea of Corp medical 'care' for profit - all too inaccessible to 30-ish% of the population + the growth of mainly junk-wage jobs / no med, vacation or other perks. Stress: the growing windfall for Pharm-Chem Corps everywhere!

Somehow the M$ dilemma is at the heart of all these huge social blunders -- and the increasing adversarial position of Corporate VS humans. (This even without examining the entire inane idea of, "The Information Economy"! -- as if #$!@^#^*$ infotainment: can cook the rice, rebuild the bridges and such!)

No, I have no 'solution' either. Viscerally it's easy: nuke from orbit since.. so much of the dilemma involves a concentration of sociopaths in a convenient locale.

:-)

Ashton

(Yeah - just a few rule changes re Corporations as special a-social 'entities' could alleviate much - but in Murica, the people who buy the laws are the ones benefitting from the status quo) Ever thus. It was a fine experiment though - til Capitalism became our actual National Religion.

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