EC competition commissioner slams US dissing Competition Commissioner 'Steely' Neelie Kroes hit back at US politicians who criticised this week's verdict from the Court of First Instance. On Monday the court roundly rejected Microsoft's appeal of anti-trust charges and upheld the decision to fine the software giant €497m, forcing it to change its behaviour in Europe. …
Just shows you unreliable a partner the USA is right now.
If we're dependent on GPS, then they have leverage over us, and although he's using words and implied threats now, there could come a time when USA threatens to cut the GPS signal, or even DNS routing if we don't do what they say.
Rather than rely on them, we should build our own GPS system and cooperate from a position of strength.
"...harming consumers by chilling innovation and discouraging competition."
There is nothing in the world more chilling to innovation and discouraging competition than the US IP laws and the patent system.
And innovation from Microsoft is an oxymoron. But DOJ knows that, surely, they just need to go through the motions that MSFT has paid them for...
Dontcha know that the jurisdiction of the USA encompasses all of the mercantilist interests of Companies With US-American Shareholders?
Damn Europeans, a CIA-mounted coup will emerge from our hallowed embassies in a few hours, like a Great Ancient One one let loose by a transdimensional summoning.
Prepare your vaseline!
Thomas O. Barnett was until 2004 a top antitrust partner at a law firm that has represented Microsoft in several antitrust disputes.
Mr Barnett also has "previous" - he sent a memo to to state attorneys general around the US about Google's recent complain about the Windows Search in Vista. In the memo he suggested they dropped any enquiry.
So basically this man will say and do ANYTHING for the company who have obviously put quite a lot of money into his bank account.
Banana republics - who needs them ?
http://www.orsn.org/
Based in Europe, principally; the only US server is being run by, of all people, Paul Vixie. Great service, sensible policy: track ICANN unless they go bad, in which case stop tracking ICANN. Yours for the princely sum of exactly zero of your chosen currency. :-) To get going, download the root hints and set up as a hint zone for "." in your nameserver, or you can patch/configure your nameserver software to get that effect. I've got djbdns and bind nameservers to use it just fine.
Cheers,
Sabahattin
Can you please file this in the circular bin along with all the other "please on please don't run articles on this topic that bores me oh register!!!" complaints. Some of us come to El Reg as our PRIMARY source of IT news, and a secondary source for news in general. I for one never read slashdot.
Keep it coming, Vultures.
-daniel
I mean, come on. The US government lives to service their major corporations. Might as well accept that any US Federal department is basically just a P.R. department for US corporations. So their outburst was totally expected, and just as totally misplaced. But they have to try, or their lords and masters in corporate land get all huffy and start crying.
it is free speech when a private citizen says it. this is VERY different.
this is paid commercial speech, from a senior official of the US judicial system.
the Assistant AG is NOT a private citizen, he speaks as a government employee, or in this case, a corporate whore who should have kept his gob shut, because of his obvious conflict of interest. it is this sort of behavior (well, besides Gitmo and the like) that makes the US Department of Justice look like such a partisan, corporatist joke.
he should have looked up "recuse" in the dictionary, then did what it says. the political implications of his statement just make it worse, especially considering how touchy the EU can be about its sovereignty. newly minted political entities tend to be that way until they mature (yes, i am older than the EU).
to be fair, he is a fairly typical lawyer-lobbyist.
@ Lars
actually, the US experienced maturity, responsibility, and a social conscience briefly, around the time of WWII, and has since lapsed into decadence, characterized by long periods of narcissistic oblivion, punctuated by brief moments of horrified self-awareness and occasional diversions into fear-driven aggression.
this is best exemplified by the Baby Boom generation, most of whom refused to reach psychological adulthood, and basically have remained at the maturity level of a 17-year-old boy well into their 50s. of course, now, with their depleted savings and retirement funds, foreclosed houses, offshored jobs, failing Social Security, and privatized Medicare, they wonder how they managed to piss the country away on shopping, wars and tax cuts.
behold the Roman Empire redux, in fast-forward, complete with a mad Emperor, a deadlocked legislature, and a corrupt judiciary. the Huns and Goths are due any minute.
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