The EU threatened Microsoft Corp with new fines yesterday, claiming the software giant had failed to live up to legal promises to provide competitors with updated, complete and reasonably priced information on work group servers.
"The Commission's current view is that there is no significant innovation," Antitrust Commissioner Neelie Kroes said.
Under a landmark 2004 antitrust ruling by the Commission, Microsoft had to disclose complete and accurate interface documentation on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, allowing its competitors to interoperate with Windows PCs and servers.
Under a "statement of objections" released yesterday, the EU's executive Commission said there was "no significant innovation" in the requested information. It also rejected 1,500 pages of submissions by Microsoft over the past three months and said Microsoft's price proposals were unreasonable.
"I am therefore again obliged to take formal measures to ensure that Microsoft complies with its obligations," Kroes said in a statement.
Work group servers are designed to let numerous users share and exchange information on projects so that groups of workers located near or far from their offices can collaborate on joint projects.
Microsoft is challenging the EU's original 2004 antitrust order at the EU's Court of First Instance. The 2004 antitrust order found the company broke competition law for abuse of a dominant position and fined the software maker a record 497 million euros (US$657 million).
To remedy Microsoft's antitrust abuse, the EU ordered the company to sell a copy of Windows without its media player software and told it to share communications code and information with rivals to help them develop server software that worked smoothly with Microsoft's ubiquitous Windows desktop operating system.
EU regulators fined Microsoft another 280.5 million euros last July for failing to supply the "complete and accurate" interoperability required.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained