The Week in Your Words: Another fine mess for Intel

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 15 May 2009 at 17:39

In a week that saw the EU take a very large bat to Intel, Microsoft endure the wrath of our components editor and Google fall over to loud cheers, we take a look back to see what our readers made of it all.

Intel fined $1.5bn for "harming millions" of PC buyers

Can you hear that yelp? That's Intel getting its hand caught in the cookie jar. The EC has decided the chip giant used foul means to try and push AMD out of the market. The resulting $1.4 billion fine isn't so much chucking the book at Intel, as firing it out of a cannon with a hand grenade and 500 Spartans attached.

"I have defended Microsoft over the Explorer rubbish, I do however agree that Intel has acted very badly and deserves this, but like so many I wish that AMD was compensated," says totallypbm. "If the EU was really interested in fairness at least $750 million should go to AMD."

That wouldn't do much good. AMD would probably think it was a hostile takeover and sell up.

"It would be nice if Intel admitted that it had behaved illegally and committed itself to fair business practices in the future," says milliganp. Instead we'll get an appeal and the process will drag on for years while AMD and other competitors are denied a free and fair market in which to compete."

j_woolliscroft was feeling equally sceptical: "Quite a fine, however Intel will still win. First it will appeal. Then it will cancel or use some excuse to 'invalidate' licensing agreements with AMD."

Windows 7's Disingenuous "Advantage"

In a week when we discovered that most politicians are stupider than six monkeys trapped in a hammock, Darien Graham-Smith's fury was directed on an entirely different kind of idiocy: Microsoft's justification for its anti-piracy measures. His griping provoked quite the debate.

"This irritating doublespeak is standard everywhere now," argues David. "A bit like the train companies telling you that they've removed the buffets and now have a trolley which may or may not appear and that this has been done for the convenience of passengers - which clearly it hasn't."

Right... those are some serious train issues, you've got there. We suggest everybody just look at their feet and walk away in embarrassed silence.

"I do believe that there is a security risk in this situation, most of it due to Microsoft's software requiring so many patches," says Joe Pace - who has a name so good it deserves its own series of Tom Clancy novels. "If one does not get updates because of the lack of a genuine OS, how will one be covered when some security loophole is patched by Microsoft?"

Big_D wasn't buying this. "How many 100% bug free programs have you written Joe?"

Easy Big_D, that's Joe - I once killed a shark with a shoelace - Pace, that is.

"And how much pressure were you under to get it out by a specific date, as opposed to when it was 100% bug free?"

Hell, Big_D's a dead man.

"Program anything with more than a couple of hundred lines of code and it will have undiscovered bugs. Microsoft can ensure the most common combinations work, but if it tested everything, you'd never see a new release of an OS or application and it would cost several hundred thousand pounds, when it did finally appear!"