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It's strong-arming if you vendor lock a customer than steeply raise rates.
blah blah free market blah blah still an adversarial dick move.

Not merely a dick move, but illegal under the Sherman and Clayton antitrust acts.

Sherman and Clayton are gay lovers

It's strong-arming if you vendor lock a customer than steeply raise rates.
blah blah free market blah blah still an adversarial dick move.

Not merely a dick move, but illegal under the Sherman and Clayton antitrust acts.

Not illegal, because this awesomely freetarded hobby OS breaks people free from using MS. If you use Linux, you'll never go back to M$, so there is no trust or monopoly. Linux can do everything a Windows desktop can do (except 95% of day-to-day computing), and it's free, as in free beer.

It's strong-arming if you vendor lock a customer than steeply raise rates.
blah blah free market blah blah still an adversarial dick move.

Not merely a dick move, but illegal under the Sherman and Clayton antitrust acts.

Nothing except the United States government. They smacked down e-gold nice and hard.
http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2007/April/07_crm_301.html

Try and provide falsification conditions for your statement. What would it take for you to feel that Google genuinely isn't evil?

Are fraud and deception proof enough that they are?

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2011/August/11-dag-1078.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704240004575084851798366446.html

http://www.zdnet.com/google-fined-for-obstructing-us-street-view-probe-4010025882/

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2402531,00.asp

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2011/03/google.shtm

Unless I'm missing something, the premise here is that felony monopolization is a fig leaf for not bribing bureaucrats.

Extortion, vandalism, making contracts with the intent of breaking them, none of these constitute crimes or even happened in this world you're painting for us, is that it?

Finally, Microsoft went beyond encouraging ICPs to take advantage of innovations in Microsoft's technology, explicitly requiring them to ensure that their content appeared degraded when viewed with Navigator rather than Internet Explorer.

That's one sentence from paragraph 328 of the document detailing their crimes. Them demanding exclusion and degraded functionality for a perceived threat to their market presence is nothing new, it'd fit right in with that document and with the cynics' view of their character -- and "felon" is unquestionably a characterization. Outside the courtroom it's a simple matter of perception. Legally, of course, it's an absolutely correct description of the corporation as a whole.

I know little of the case, but it looks like this case is being brought by Paul J. Fishman, the U.S. District Attorney for New Jersey. According to Wikipedia (it's always correct), he used to work for Friedman Kaplan Seiler & Adelman. A firm that represented the Communication Workers of America. Not surprisingly, the CWA regularly deals with AT&T.

Mr. Fishman was appointed by President Obama in 2009. If you don't like his actions, contact the Whitehouse and your representatives and let them know. Not that it'll matter, but maybe it'll make you feel better.

Or if you'd prefer, you can always contact his office directly for more information on the case: http://www.justice.gov/usao/nj/contact.html . Though, again, not that'll it matter.

I *really* hate /. sometime. I had a nice writeup done for you, with bulleted lists and everything. I hit options to change something, hit save, and it refreshed the page and destroyed my writeup.

So instead, here's the ugly version: All that bullshit about F&F that Fox News was spewing has been thoroughly debunked. AG Holder was not aware or culpable. The Federal government did not sell, transfer, give, or transport weapons to anyone. The IG Report on Fast and Furious is available. Feel free to read it.

Agents from the Phoenix Field Division screwed up. They allowed guns to walk in favor of trying to build a case against the entire organization, including drug traffickers on the Mexican side. They failed. These procedures were a carryover from the Bush administration and have been ended.

MS and Apple don't have any FRAND patents of their own to cross-license, so they are obligated to pay full freight (2.25% per device).

I'm pretty sure Apple does have FRAND patents, especially in H.264. Apple and Microsoft have also been buying out groups of FRAND patents.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/February/12-at-210.html

Many years ago, Microsoft got slapped with an anti-trust suite for bundling a web browser with their OS because it was apparently anti-competitive.

Apple is now bundling a mapping program with their OS and is being very competitive. How is this not anti-trust? Why are they not under fire?

If you can't see the blindingly obvious reason why, then I feel really sorry for you. I guess that explains why you can't figure out how to log in either.

Well you can feel sorry for me too, as I also cannot see how Microsoft getting fined for pre-loading their web browser in their products while Apple is getting away with not only pre-loading their products with their mapping software but actively preventing you from being able to choose an alternative. If this behaviour is not anti-competitive I don't know what is. Are you arguing that because they produce the hardware they somehow have the right to maintain an unprecedented stranglehold over what the customers can do with said devices?

No, I'm arguing that Microsoft holding a monopoly position in the OS market and *then* bundling a browser to kill Netscape on Windows was the problem.

Had Microsoft not had a monopoly in the OS space then bundling IE and killing off Netscape would have been a dick move, but perfectly legal and fine.

If Apple decides to reject the Google Maps app then it will be totally legal and fine - they absolutely do not hold a monopoly in smartphones and/or tablets - whether it is a smart move, or a dick move is entirely separate. What it will be is legal, however.

According to this website the Ipad claims 76.4% of the 2012 US tablet market, which is typically large enough to be considered a monopoly in the US (justice.gov). I find myself surprised that Apple do not have a monopoly in the smartphone market considering how many people I see using Iphones in New York.

As a reference:

"Certain antitrust violations, conventionally described as 'per se' offenses, do not require proof of market or monopoly power. [FN7] Indeed, the label 'per se' seems to point to the irrelevance of market power. An essential characteristic of a 'per se' offense, however, seems to be that it constitutes behavior that, if engaged in by a firm with market power, would be egregiously anticompetitive. [FN8] Market power is treated as irrelevant only because 'per se' offenses involve behavior that courts have determined virtually always lacks plausible efficiency justifications; no harm is done, therefore, by condemning the practice without undergoing the expense of an inquiry into monopoly or market power. [FN9]"

From: http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/hearings/single_firm/docs/222144.htm

It's funny how quickly people forget history. It wasn't just that they bundled a browser; it went something like this:

- Netscape creates what becomes the standard internet browser and publicly states that they believe it will make the desktop OS irrelevant. MS is afraid of this. Netscape was freely downloadable, but they nagged you to pay them $25 or so to license it.
- MS creates IE, and charges for it, but no one buys it because it sucked.
- MS, still wanting browser market share, starts giving away IE for free. People continue to use Netscape.
- MS bundles IE with Windows and forbids OEMs from adding an alternative browser. Some people switch to IE because it saves them the download step.
- MS creates Front Page, a WYSIWYG HTML editor which was bundled with Office, the already dominant office suite.
- MS creates IIS and ASP, technologies which only worked on Windows.
- With Java applets gaining popularity, MS makes applets created with Visual Studio only runnable on Windows.
- MS starts adding features to Front Page which make the generated HTML non standards-compliant, only viewable by IE and only servable by IIS.
- MS add features to Word to allow it to export to HTML which could only be viewed in IE.
- MS adds ActiveX control integration, making IE the only browser which supports it.
- MS muscles ISPs like Earthlink to place ActiveX controls on their main web pages so that they are only viewable by Windows machines running IE.
- People start switching to IE because Netscape doesn't render Front Page pages properly, so they think IE is a better browser.
- Netscape can't make any money and folds, opening the source to their browser, blaming MS's antitrust behavior for their demise.
- Netscape source code is picked up by the community, but can't support things like ActiveX due to wanting cross-platform feature parity.
- With Netscape dead and IE5/6 being used by nearly every web surfer on the planet, MS stops development on it, hindering web innovation.

As you can see, MS did a very good job of making sure that the web was only viewable by machines running IE on Windows and servable only by NT machines running IIS. That is what the antitrust suit was about, browser integration was just one key point in the whole mess.

That was just the browser side of things, they were also found guilty of using private, unpublished Windows APIs in Office so that it was impossible for a 3rd party software developer to compete at the same level as MS. This was why the original ruling was to split MS into an OS company and a software company.

Read http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm for full details.

Maybe this is off-topic, but I (and many others) believe that publicly funded research should be freely available to the public.

Yes, obviously. That means data sets, methods, apparatus, experiment outcomes, results, conclusions, papers (which shouldn't be limited to paywalled journals I.M.O.), and intellectual property (though these currently go to the university). I'm sure it means other things as well, such as transparency on funding.

That doesn't mean that you can record every aspect of one's job and hand it over to people on a witchhunt. The whole CRU email thingy itself shows why this is the case: it's easy to pick a few lines out of complex scientific dialog and distort them with a quick media blitz designed to portray someone as dishonest, or crooked, or biased, or incompetent, or silly. (As the saying goes, a lie gets half way around the world before the truth can get its shoes on.)

Moreover, doing so destroys the ability of people and organizations to think and act creatively. If this hasn't happened to you already, I am sure that one day you will be in a meeting, get-together, or other discussion where the team needs to figure out a difficult problem, and you'll see the entire conversation shut down by the negative attitude and comments of one person. That's why the first rule of any brainstorming session is to save critique until brainstorming is finished. It's also why the FOIA protects (under exemption 5) what the courts term "deliberative processes" so as to "prevent injury to the quality of agency decisions."

PEOPLE. PLEASE READ THE COMMENTS BEFORE POSTING!!!

YOU MAY THINK THAT SOMEONE IS CALLING YOUR SPECIFIC PHONE NUMBER.

THEY DID NOT. THEY DID NOT CALL YOUR NUMBER SPECIFICALLY.

YOU WERE RANDOMALLY "ROBO" CALLED WITH A SPOOFED PHONE NUMBER ON A CALLER ID FOR A SCAM COMPANY.

Important message to all those that have received a call from this number:

There are several companies engaged in scam business using auto dialers. They are ALL scam outfits. They spoof phone numbers of victims all the time. Sometimes, they spoof non-working phone numbers. The phone number you searched for is just another victim of these scumbags. I've done a lot of research of these companies. Actually, there are several affiliated companies, that try to scam innocent victims. They are either owned by the same people, or they sell their business model to other crooks.

One scam is about auto warranties. The other is about credit card debt relief. They even have scams about dish television, home alarms, carpet cleaning, political surveys, free cruises, and more. Their MO is the same. The use an auto dialer, and call thousands of random numbers. They have no regard to the do not call lists. Your demands or complaints to them are worthless. They will continue to call you.

They will not remove you from their call lists. Why? BECAUSE THEY DO NOT MAINTAIN ANY. THEY ARE CROOKS. THEY HAVE NO REGARD TO THE MANY LAWS THEY BREAK.

BEING ROBO CALLED BY A COMPUTER IS A FEDERAL CRIME. NEED WE SAY MORE?

If they call about a car warranty, the message says something as "This is the second notice on your extended vehicle warranty. Press one now to speak to a representative..." The message about credit debt mentions "This is Account Services. We are calling to lower your credit card debt. Press one now to speak to a representative..." or "The is an important call from your cardmember services. This is your Final Notice. We have been trying to contact youâ¦." The message about carpet cleaning begins "This is Diane, would like your carpet professionally steamed cleaned?"

These crooks can be beaten! Here is an example of what happens if ALL OF US contribute to taking them down by following the steps below:
http://www.justice.gov/usao/gan/press/2012/02-09-12.html

So, now you want to get these crooks. WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT THIS? If you want to stop these crooks do the following:
:
1) You need to speak to one of their customer service representatives. Pretend to be interested in either lowering your credit card interest rate or a car warranty, having your carpets cleaned, etc. DO NOT GIVE THEM ANY REAL INFORMATION. Do not ask how they "got" you number. (Remember, your number was randomly dialed by a computer)

Tell them you have $20,000 in credit card debt. Give them a fake credit card number, a fake name, and a fake SS#. If the call is about the auto warranty scam, tell them you own a Ferrari, or a 1937 Dodge (however, if you really own one of those two, tell them you own a Buick). Give a made up VIN number. Or tell them you have 15 rooms of beautiful plush wall to wall carpet. If they ask for your name and phone number, give them the info for the person you hate the most.

Your goal is simple. You want to engage them in friendly conversation to keep them on the phone for as long as possible. Be nice and friendly. Your goal is twofold. You want to learn as much as possible about them. They will refuse to give you a website, phone number, or maybe even a real company name. They will attempt to give you a generic name such as "Account Services," "Financial Services," or "Dealer Services." This is done for a reason, to throw you and the government off their tracks. Do not accept this. Keep pressing for info during casual conversation. You will need this (see below). Often when pressed for questions, they will hang up on you. Remember, they are instructed to do this. That is why you must not be confrontational. Be fr

By the way, restitution WAS paid out in this case. But it was $210,738, based not upon the number of victims but upon the number of airbags that were seized (300).

Wow, that's one of the more ignorant statements I've read on Slashdot, and that's saying something!

grenadeh, you might want to go read this:
http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm#iiih

" Microsoft attaches to a Windows license conditions that restrict the ability of OEMs to promote software that Microsoft believes could weaken the applications barrier to entry. "
"Microsoft charges a lower price to OEMs who agree to ship all but a minute fraction of their machines with an operating system pre- installed. "

If that's what they're doing it's easily detectable.

If only someone was really looking... and there was the will to prosecute people for fraud.

You missed this? http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/May/12-ag-568.html and this? http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2011-08-29/Health-care-fraud-prosecutions-on-pace-to-rise-85/50180282/1 "WASHINGTON – New government statistics show federal health care fraud prosecutions in the first eight months of 2011 are on pace to rise 85% over last year due in large part to ramped-up enforcement efforts under the Obama administration...."

You know, this is way off topic, but let me school you a little bit because it might make the political discourse a little more interesting this silly season. This "Hurr, durr" crap isn't going to put anybody over and it's not interesting at all.

The President was editor of the Harvard Law Review and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago for many years. He is a constitutional scholar. These are historical facts you can't change. If you want to work this against him you can, but not by trying to deny historical facts. The tack you need to take is that given this special education and experience "he should know better than to do what he's done". Make it the thing where despite his scholarship he's made the wrong moral choice, which works his education and experience against him. The more knowledgeable and experienced with constitutional law he is, the wronger the moral choice is and it turns against him more because he should know better. If he were just some business geek like Romney he could be forgiven for this lapse. If he were some policy wonk, likewise. But he's not. He taught constitutional law and should know better.

For example on election he took his vice president Joe Biden's advice and nominated many tools of the Hollywood and Software Industry to important positions in the Justice Department in the first few days of his presidency. One of these was US Attorney Neil H. Macbride. Mr. Macbride, formerly of the Business Software Alliance has become an embarrassment by trying to extend US Jurisprudence beyond its jurisdiction, notably in the case against Kim Dotcom in New Zealand. Mr. Macbride alone has become an embarassment bordering on an international incident. By prosecuting Mr. Dotcom without evidence and outside of his jurisdiction Mr. Macbride appears to have violated the constitutional guarantees of security of property without due process of many hundreds of thousands of Mr. Dotcom's US customers by seizing their intellectual property and refusing to release it back to them. The proposal now is to let this property be destroyed.

So throw that back at him. Say he should know better. Really, he should. But don't try to say he isn't schooled and experienced in constitutional law, because he is and trying to deny historical facts just makes you come off as intellectually "special".

In other words, Godwin observed that, given enough time, in any online discussion—regardless of topic or scope—someone inevitably makes a comparison to Hitler and the Nazis.

Apparently you can't be bothered to read.

If I had proof of illegal acts by MS, you'd dismiss them without reading, with more lies about why.

You never had any proof. ANY. Of course I dismiss your lack of proof. Then you have mere hypotheticals about what I might have done. Speculation. Hypotheticals. Suspicions. These are not proof or evidence not matter what how you want to frame them.

Your facts have been nothing more than what you read on a website you agree with.

The court findings of fact hosted on a government website summarizing the court's findings is not some personal blog. This the official record of the trial. Of course did you didn't read it because it completely eviscerates all of your opinions. When presented with actual proof, you grew hostile and started insults because thats all you have.

Freedom of information request denied, and I'll paraphrase here, "because he was just doing his job." The argument didn't stand at Nuremberg, and I hope it won't stand today.

Right or wrong, I'm sure the court had a real reason for upholding the denial, undoubtedly expressed in voluminous PDF somewhere. Anyone care to locate it?

IANAL, but I suspect that the request was denied using Exemption 5's Deliberative Process Privelege; however, that may only apply to policy formations.

So you read those emails yourself and saw the verified chain of evidence?

It's called Google or Wikipedia. Here is a condensed version. But feel free to request the full file in Washington if you want.

You are being deliberately obtuse. I have no proof. You have no proof. You just accept someone else's statement as "proof" if you agree with the conclusion, and not if you don't like the conclusion.

You have no proof, yet you have a conclusion. In my world that's called "speculation." Also I am not the one who has been leveraging insults because I lost the argument. I am not the one who invoked Godwin's law.

It's rather silly to commit individual crime when corporate crime pays more and there's usually no time served.

White collar criminals do indeed go to jail.

Former Chairman and CEO of Kellogg, Brown & Root Inc. Sentenced to 30 Months in Prison for Foreign Bribery and Kickback Schemes

WASHINGTON—Albert “Jack” Stanley, a former chairman and chief executive officer of Kellogg, Brown & Root Inc. (KBR), was sentenced today to 30 months in prison for conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) by participating in a decade-long scheme to bribe Nigerian government officials to obtain engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts and for conspiring to commit mail and wire fraud as part of a separate kickback scheme, the Justice Department’s Criminal Division today announced.

Former TBW CEO Sentenced to 40 Months in Prison for Fraud Scheme

WASHINGTON—The former chief executive officer (CEO) of Taylor, Bean & Whitaker (TBW) was sentenced today to 40 months in prison for his role in a more than $2.9 billion fraud scheme that contributed to the failure of TBW. At one time, TBW was one of the largest privately held mortgage lending companies in the United States.

Two Former Canopy Financial Co-Founders Sentenced to 15 and 13 Years in Prison for $75 Million Investment Fraud and Raiding $18 Million from Custodial Heath Care Expense Accounts of 1,600 Customers

Allen Stanford Convicted in Houston for Orchestrating $7 Billion Investment Fraud Scheme

WASHINGTON—A Houston federal jury today convicted Robert Allen Stanford, the former board of directors chairman of Stanford International Bank (SIB), for orchestrating a 20-year investment fraud scheme in which he misappropriated $7 billion from SIB to finance his personal businesses.

On June 14, 2012, Robert Allen Stanford, the former Chairman of Stanford International Bank (SIB), was sentenced to 110 years in prison for orchestrating a 20 year investment fraud scheme in which he misappropriated $7 billion from SIB to finance his personal businesses and lifestyle. -- United States v. Robert Allen Stanford et al.
 

Just a sample. Just search for "CEO" to see more. It's not hard to find other examples.

He's confusing marketshare with technological progress. The main reason Linux hasn't progressed on the desktop has been the restrictive licenses Microsoft forced on the OEMs, as in they pay for the number of boxes shifted, even if sold without Windows. They're currently transferring that revenue model to the mobile market with the Android tax.

`Microsoft's licenses impose a penalty or "tax" paid to Microsoft upon OEMs' use of competing PC operating systems. "Per processor" licenses require OEMs to pay a royalty for each computer the OEM sells containing a particular processor (e.g., an Intel 386 microprocessor) whether or not the OEM has included a Microsoft operating system with that computer', DOJ v. Microsoft

'de Icaza .. thinks the real reason Linux lost .. because the developers behind .. graphical Linux applications didn't do a good enough job ..

Ubuntu 3D Desktop | Linux Gaming: Duke Nukem3D

It wasn't *quite* that bad (but almost!)

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/Pre_96/November95/596.txt.html

Basically the ECU tuning required to pass EPA requirements was causing stalls, etc, so GM changed it to enrich the fuel ratio when the A/C was on (which caused illegal levels of pollution) - without telling the EPA. I suppose if the EPA testing was allowed to be done with A/C off it could have been an intentional dodge...

Doesn't the FBI have a cybercrime phone number or email address to contact them?

Apparently they (and a couple of other .gov organizations) do:

http://www.justice.gov/criminal/cybercrime/reporting.html#C4

Wait, Title IX is Islamic? I knew that Obama was a Muslim.

Well, if an Islamic (or Christian or Jewish or...) institution were to argue that the requirements of 20 USC 1681, which is the the first part of changes to the U. S. Code introduced by Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, "would not be consistent with the religious tenets of such organization", then those requirements wouldn't apply to that institution, so I guess it's at least accommodating to Muslims (and Christians and Jews and...).

It's not "Islamic" in the sense of the sex discrimination DarkOx says is holding back the Islamic world, though, given that 20 USC 1681 starts out saying "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance", which is banning sex discrimination.

"IBM signed the license agreement because of an old antitrust lawsuit regarding the bundling of their OS with their hardware (mainframes at the time). Had they done otherwise, they would have opened up a whole new can of worms. Besides, this was back in the days when people thought the real money was in hardware", crrkrieger"

What lawsuit, how did they sell, and continue to sell their OS bundled with their own hardware. How does Apple do it? Please give verifiable citations?

The lawsuit was United States v. IBM, 69 Civ. 200 (S.D.N.Y. 1969); in a subsequent case, the Justice Dept. provided a good summary of it.

Apple does it because the USDOJ hasn't sued them as a monopoly and forced them to unbundle. (The relevant 'market' is "personal computers," not "OS X personal computers," and Apple, while prominent, has nowhere near a monopoly position in the computer world -- unlike IBM circa the late 1960s.)

Lots of replies to your post! The bank collapse could have been contained had government enforced existing laws. There is/was a massive amount of fraud in the bubble, which the FBI was aware of at the time, as well as others who paid attention.. At the least, fraudulent loan applications could have been pursued. At a better level, bank/finance firms clearly misrepresented to investors about the underwriting standards when they sold the bundled products. We also have fraudulently signed and notarized documents on titles. So, lots of low hanging fruit in the real estate bubble.

The Federal Reserve has injected massive amounts of money into the system to try to contain the crash, and bubbles still persist. In the stock market, only chumps are getting prosecuted. The major players (Goldman Sachs and other HFT firms) are untouched.

The fine article states (on page 7): "The thing is, the SEC already has rules against placing orders not intended to be filled. Obviously, it doesn’t enforce them very well."

http://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=456724 is a nice PDF from where on page 126 we read:

"The FBI significantly reduced its investigative efforts for fraudulent activity involving financial institutions (such as banks). Principally, the FBI scaled back its handling of lower dollar cases [SENSITIVE INFORMATION REDACTED]. We agree that the FBI must prioritize its investigations and first address the most egregious criminal activities. However, discussions with USAOs and analysis of USAO data revealed that no other federal agency has replaced the reduced FBI effort in this crime area. Therefore, an investigative gap exists for financial institution fraud (FIF), [SENSITIVE INFORMATION REDACTED]."

This is also found at http://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/FBI/a0537/chapter13.htm

Michael Burry made billions (with a b) betting on the downfall of the CDO's. After writing an op-ed in the New York Times asking why the government (including the Federal Reserve) didn't see the same things he did, he was audited by the IRS. So, again we're looking at a massive financial system where the rules are not being enforced.

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

- Winston Churchill

It's not the representative form of government that's at fault, it's the influence that money has on the political process. Representatives want to get elected and keep their jobs, that takes money but also if you serve in the Government you shouldn't be allowed to go back and lobby that same Government when you leave your job or to be able to go to work for somebody who has significant financial interest in your former position or influence within the government. It creates undue influence that not only compromises sound decision making but also introduces more chances for corruption and conflict of interest. Unfortunately conflicts of interest usually aren't discovered until it's too late and we the taxypayers wind up picking up the tab for it.

Anybody remember the Air Force tanker deal? and all the BS after that? Does the Air Force have new tankers? No so the old KC10s and KC135s are still flying and costing us more according to this.

"I think no matter how we look at it, there's no time to lose," she said. "We know that the oldest KC-135 is due for some significant structural overhaul in the years 2019 to 2037. The cost for these types of overhaul could boost the bill to maintain the KC 135 force to over $6 billion per year."

So now the Tanker Deal, which may face delays and is estimated to cost $51B for the replacements, may also cost us more because we have to maintain and upgrade the older planes because they'll be in service longer. So let's see, wity Druyun's help Boeing was awarded a contract for twice the street price of their 767 aircraft, this sent off warning signals and it all went downhill from there. 9 months in prison? This woman cost us billions and will continue to cost us billions because of the influence of money and the revolving door of contractors and government workers.

It's not only in big deals either, it can take the form of relatively small ones as well.

There are checks and balances, but it doesn't mean the Executive can always take their ball and go home. Federal officers swear to uphold the Constitution, not serve Barack Obama or Eric Holder in an extralegal fashion.

Please explain that to This Guy. He seems not to care about your checks and balances. He seems to be laughing at you while singing and dancing to a song made popular by This Guy.

I guess it's up to this guy.

And who does he report to?

Why, lo and behold its This Guy
Who in turn reports to This Guy.

Now do you see the problem?

I guess it's up to this guy.

And who does he report to?

Why, lo and behold its This Guy
Who in turn reports to This Guy.

Now do you see the problem?

I guess it's up to this guy.

Read this and see just how badly behaved Microsoft were. All caps fuckwit.

Why are Microsoft apologists so clueless?

http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm

Umm, you are completely wrong, sir. There already exists laws on the books for campfires that say if the fire gets out of control it's your fault. There is already precedent in case law for idiots that throw lit cigarettes out of cars and start fires that they are responsible. Quit trying to duck responsibility for your actions. If something *YOU* did started a fire, *YOU* are responsible. Period. Nothing "superficial" about it. And the people that are caught aren't usually turned in or self-sacrificing either. There's usually an investigation into who did it because the responsible party must face justice for their actions. The ones who get caught certainly face stiff fines, bills for cleanup and jail time. I don't see a logical reason why a gun owner would get a pass.

Collusion could also land Apple in trouble. You don't have to have a majority market.

Price Fixing, Bid Rigging, and Market Allocation Schemes: What They Are and What to Look For
http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/guidelines/211578.htm

Killing foreigners? Okay. Killing Americans? A violation of the president's oath to uphold Constituional Law: "No person shall... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." A kill list may exist, but a kill list that includes Americans citizens is tyrannical.

I don't know where the fuck you've been man, but they think that they're giving people due process!

As a libertarian-leaning Democrat (yes, we exist), Holder has been nothing but a walking, talking fuckup machine. First, the asshole seems to want to tell me who to spend my weekends with (4th paragraph), but then wants to brainwash people in his anti-Second Amendment campaign.

As a centrist Dem, I'm going to say right now to Obama: get rid of this shit stain or lose in November.. full stop. And don't get me wrong, Romney is going to be a disaster, but Holder is evil incarnate.

Don't lie. The reason that browser had any market at all was that M$ had illegally abused its desktop monopoly to stifle competition in the browser market. Quite simply, every desktop computer sold came with a copy of Windows, and every copy of Windows came with a copy of MSIE. Netscape, the then superior browser, could not compete with pre-installed.

This appears to be the Justice department budget request for the project.

http://www.justice.gov/jmd/2012factsheets/docs/fy12-national-security.pdf

Time to spend more time improving Tor

https://www.torproject.org/

Ambitious, maybe, but not very original. This seems to be a common thing, here it is in 2009 ($7,000 in Lego) and 2005 ($200,000 in Lego).

See U.S. Code Title 18 Sections 241 and 242:

http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/crm/241fin.php
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/242

Money laundering means taking money earned from illegal activities, using it in a legal activity that makes it hard to figure out where it came from, and then receiving a portion of it back again

...

What would make it difficult is if there was a legitimate, legal service being run in the middle. Then the bitcoins going out the end could be ordinary people. But there is no such service as you point out. Virtually all the money being used in Bitcoin is for illegal activity.

In the US, it doesn't have to be a legal activity. Any transaction designed to conceal the source of cash from an illegal activity is per-se money laundering. Merely transferring a bag of cash from one car to another and driving away constitutes a transaction.

The act of cash -> bitcoin -> cash is not illegal in itself. I illustrated this with gold in a previous message with a real world example. However, attaching this to the exchange for drugs or other contraband, the feds can, and will, nail people eventually for money laundering for this. Because that is the definition in the law itself.

To quote Bitcoin magazine for epic logic failure : http://bitcoinmagazine.net/some-measure-of-anonymity/

In especially sticky situations, where specific coins could lead to dangerous assumptions, there are Bitcoin laundry services (or âoetumblersâ). The concept is pretty straight-forward, coins sent through the tumbler are exchanged for different coins and sent on to another address of the senderâ(TM)s choice, minus a small percentage as a fee. This is unlike money laundering in the fact that it doesnâ(TM)t serve to aid in reintegration of illicit funds into a legitimate system but it does make the transaction almost impossible to track.

The lie here is that it is not money laundering because it's a transaction with bitcoins and not cash. The other lie is that you need conversion to cash for it to be money laundering. The law itself does not specify cash as the instrument. It specifies "property" and is inclusive of cash. Bitcoins are property. It's funny how the article actually comes out and says "laundry" and then denies what it is. Under US law, any transaction involving "specified unlawful activities" (drugs, etc) with the intent to disguise the source of money is, per-se money laundering. There is no lower limit. The definition is broad. You're screwed if they tie your transactions to illegal activity and a method of obfuscating it by a single transaction. There is no getting around this.

More than you ever wanted to know about money laundering, which includes the law itself and commentary on the law and current use.

http://www.justice.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usab5505.pdf

As for the brokerages/exchanges:

If the brokers/exchanges "knew or should have known" by the standard of the "reasonable person" that Bitcoin is being used explicitly for illegal activity, then whoever runs a brokerage/exchange is probably in trouble for RICO and/or money laundering too. The "intent" part of the law probably covers their asses for now, but it's a pretty thin cover. They should pray every day that more people use bitcoins for legitimate uses. Unfortunately that does not seem to be happening.

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BMO

The monopoly part was for pushing their browser

Please, before repeating Microsoft's lies for them again, get the facts.

Among other things, besides making contracts with the intent of breaking them, they withheld millions of dollars worth of incentives unless one victim broke a working product's compatibility and severed all marketing relationships with one of their partners.

Too many of the people who conceived, directed and executed Microsoft's felony are still there, still running things.

Since when has violating the law deterred the actions of our government? With the wiretapping of people without a warrant, search and seizure of anyone unfortunate enough to require air travel or border crossing, detainment of individuals without due process, to instigating of torture of war prisoners, I'm somewhat surprised we don't hear more stories like this.

Don't forget Asset Forfeiture -- you don't even have to be charged with a crime, much less convicted.

More text from the complaint suggesting that DOJ has hard evidence:

"Beginning no later than September 2008, the Publisher Defendants' senior executives engaged in a series of meetings, telephone conversations and other communication in which they jointly acknowledged to each other the threat posed by Amazon's pricing strategy and the need to work collectively to end that strategy. By the end of the summer of 2009, the Publisher Defendants had agreed to act collectively to force up Amazon's retail prices and thereafter considered and implemented various means to accomplish that goal."

"The Publisher Defendants directly discussed, agreed to, and encouraged each other to collective action to force Amazon to raise its retail e-book prices."

"Publisher Defendants took steps to conceal their communications with one another, including instructions to 'double delete' e-mail and taking other measures to avoid leaving a paper trail."

"They received assurances from both each other and Apple that they all would move together to raise retail e-book prices."

"All five Publisher Defendants agreed in 2009 at the latest to act collectively to raise retail prices for the most popular e-books above $9.99. [Then quotes internal email]."

"Apple concluded that competition from other retailers, especially Amazon, would prevent Apple from earning its desired 30 percent margins on e-book sales. Ultimately, Apple, together with the Publisher Defendants, set in motion a plan that would compel all non-Apple e-book retailers also to sign onto agency or else, as Apple's CEO put it, the Publisher Defendants all would say, 'we're not going to give you the books'."

"As it negotiated with the Publisher Defendants in December 2009 and January 2010, Apple kept each Publisher Defendant informed of the status of its negotiations with the other Publisher Defendants. Apple also assured the Publisher Defendants that its proposals were the same to each and that no deal Apple agreed to with one publisher would be materially different from any deal it agreed to with another publisher."

"Each publisher defendant rquired assurances that it would not be the only publisher to sign an agreement with Apple that would compel it either to take pricing authority from Amazon or to pull its e-books from Amazon. The Publisher Defendants continued to fear that Amazon would act to protect its ability to price e-books at $9.99 or less if any one of them acted alone. Apple supplied the needed assurances."

"Near the time Apple first presented the agency model, one Publisher Defendant's CEO used a telephone call, ostensibly made to discuss a marketing joint venture, to tell Penguin USA CEO David Shanks that 'everyone is in the same place with Apple'."

"On the evening of Saturday, January 23, 2010, Apple's Mr. Cue e-mailed his boss, Steve Jobs, and noted that Penguin USA CEO David Shanks 'wanted an assurance that he is 1 of 4 before signing'."

There's about 20 pages worth of evidence, with email and telephone conversations quoted. This will be a big case. It looks like Steve Jobs and the publishing companies' CEOs were personally involved in the conspiracy.

They are asking why prices went up from $9.99 to $14.99 uniformly for ebooks sold by publishers after Apple entered the market. New competition is supposed to drive prices down not up. Costs didn't go up. Demand didn't go up. Supply did not go down. Ebooks didn't suddely become longer or increase in quality. The only thing that changed was that the publishers met with Apple and set prices.

No, they aren't asking a question about why it happened, nor are they inferring a conspiracy merely from the absence of some other explanation.

They are alleging a very specific conspiracy with the intent of jointly raising prices by implementing the agency model as a universal norm that was agreed to by publishers before Apple tried to enter the market, that Apple was brought into and actively participated in for its own gain, and that the publishers worked together to protect when Amazon pushed back after Apple entered the market.

Specific communications between the colluding publishers and specific actions in furtherance of the conspiracy are alleged.

This is all laid out in the complaint.

It sounds like the DOJ has evidence that collusion occurred. From the complaint filed today: "As a result of discussions with the Publisher Defendants, Apple learned that the Publisher Defendants shared a common objective with Apple to limit e-book retail price competition, and that the Publisher Defendants also desired to have popular e-book retail prices stabilize at levels significantly higher than $9.99. Together, Apple and the Publisher Defendants reached an agreement whereby retail price competition would cease (which all the conspirators desired), retail e-book prices would increase significantly (which the Publisher Defendants desired), and Apple would be guaranteed a 30 percent "commission" on each e-book it sold (which Apple desired)."

Case information, including the complaint, is here.

The DOJ's angle appears to be the "most favored nation" clause

Actually, no, the DoJ's angle on collusion appears to be (from actually reading the complaint -- see the section "VI. DEFENDANTS' UNLAWFUL ACTIVITIES" beginning on page 12) the series of communications between the publishers in which they conspired to jointly raise the retail prices of e-books by establishing the agency model as standard, which was initiated prior to Apple's attempts to enter the e-book market, and continued after that entrance (and specifically included mutual support in conflicts with Amazon after the Apple deals were implemented.)

The MFN clause is alleged to have become a key signalling mechanism once Apple was brought in, but isn't the key of the case alleging the existence of collusion.

Looks like.

I could rant and complain about the cases they choose to ignore for political reasons, but I'd rather be happy that some division in there is doing something useful today.