Monthly Archives: March 2004

EU finds MSFT guilty

Posted on by Kathy E. Gill

After a five year investigation, the European Commission announced today that Microsoft broke European Union (EU) laws “by leveraging its near monopoly in the market for PC operating systems (OS) onto the markets for work group server operating systems and for media players.”

Part of the remedy requires Microsoft to disclose iinformation that other servers need to communicate efficiently with Windows clients; the firm must do this within 120 days. The Commission also fined Microsoft € 497 million ($611.8 million) for abusing its market power.

“Dominant companies have a special responsibility to ensure that the way they do business doesn’t prevent competition on the merits and does not harm consumers and innovation ” said European Competition Commissioner Mario Monti.
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Data mining, take 2

Posted on by Kathy E. Gill

Proving that where there’s a will there’s a way, Eyebeam as created an easy-to-use tool that shows which of our neighbors have contributed (and how much) to presidential candidates. These data are current as of 31 December 2003; they are publicly available from the Federal Election Commission (which presents “just the facts” thank you very much).

Their national map is color-coded by party and allows you to zoom to country, state or 3-digit zip code. Another “pre-set” query shows data for the top 10 donating cities.

Candidates also report spending, and Eyebeam has charts for hotels and airlines.

Thanks to Dan Gillmor

Remember Lott?

Posted on by Kathy E. Gill

It seems like ancient history, but it wasn’t that long ago that the Blogosphere forced traditional media to re-think a story — that of a senior Congressional politician starting a speech with a yearn for the pre-civil rights era.

The politican was US Rep. Trent Lott. The occasion was (Sen.) Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party. The time was December 2002. The outcry led to Lott’s resignation.

Weblogs at Harvard points us to a Shorenstein Center case study of that story, analyzing the events and players.