The week in your words: EU fines, leaks and Wiki bans

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 29 Feb 2008 at 17:26

In a week that saw Microsoft slapped down by the EU then embarrassed in court, and the Department of Health indulge in one edit too many on Wikipedia, we take a look back to see what our readers have made of it all.

EU slaps record fine on Microsoft

If Microsoft was expecting a big group hug and a chorus of "kum bay yah" following its decision to open up last week, the EU swiftly brought it back to earth by slapping it with a record fine for failing to meet interoperability targets.

Given the plethora of possible talking points, it seems strange that conversation centred on Bill Gates. Buggerit2, might have had something to do with it, nudging the Microsoft supremo gently into the debate.

"If an individual is fined in court, and then proceeds to reoffend and is fined again he is branded a criminal and society rightly stigmatises him. Bill Gates is inextricably linked with Microsoft. Is he not a criminal?"

"No," responds krisjones2. "Microsoft is a separate corporate entity. The EU has fined Microsoft Corporation not Bill Gates. Breaching competition law is a civil, not criminal offence."

"Whatever one thinks about Bill Gates, he is a huge philanthropist, having donated billions of his personal wealth towards alleviating disease in the developing world and supporting education for the disadvantaged."

That doesn't wash with PeeCeeBee though. "I'm afraid I became unhappy about Bill years ago, when he declared that it was his intention that Microsoft would produce 100% of the world's software... and no matter how he chooses to portray himself now, nothing can take away the bad taste."

Have you tried toothpaste? Bobbdobbs felt PeeCeeBee's criticism was rather harsh. "Well it's better than having the burning ambition to produce 0.00005% of the world's software," he responds.

Not true, we dream of having the patented PC Pro smiley face widget on that many machines. We just have to keep believing.

Microsoft emails reveal Vista driver fiasco

Microsoft hasn't reached its dominant market position without learning to have a plan-B ready in such situations. In this case its grand strategy involved having a series of embarrassing leaked emails read out in court, which revealed that even Microsoft execs weren't convinced by Vista before launch. Genius.

Their heartfelt complaints brought a slew of similar stories from our forums. "I had to set up a new Vista machine yesterday," begins gotimmy, in his best storytelling voice. "There was no mouse with it, so I plugged in my Logitech USB mouse that I normally carry for my laptop. All worked fine until it asked me if I wanted to locate drivers for the mouse (which was working fine). I clicked no, and the mouse immediately stopped working. I then spent 15 minutes looking for another mouse. Yay for driver support, and yay for productivity."

His wasn't the only story of woe. "I decided to buy Vista HP OEM and dual-boot with my XP installation," says blueleader01 wistfully. "I had my first BSOD since the awful Windows ME. This was due to problems with my ATI X1950XT drivers. Sorted that out and then had problems with my Creative X-fi Xtreme sound card drivers. Not a total loss though as I needed another OS so that my son could use XP for gaming (something else that is currently better on XP) and I could keep all my important stuff safe from his tendency to fiddle about."